Coop Scoop: The Dumb, the Evil, The Governors (Resend)

GOP governors willing to mandate death but not masks

August 7, 2021

By Marc Cooper

I suppose we could call them The Five Horses’ Asses of the Pandemic. But that might be injecting too much humor into a a situation that warrants only concern and, ultimately, contempt.

As the Delta variant blasted through the country, setting off a COVID-19 Fourth Wave, sending infection rates up more than a thousand percent, once again filling hospitals, and relentlessly hunting down the unvaccinated, a bloc of five Republican governors emerged in an effort to obstruct masking and of course any vaccine mandates in their states.

I have to say, it took about two minutes just to word the last half of that sentence because I can hardly believe I am writing it. I can hardly believe this is happening in such a “normal” way. I can’t believe legions of peasants with pitchforks and torches have not yet arisen against these malevolent Governors who, in the midst of a ruthless upsurge of COVID-19, are getting in the way of a full scale response.

It’s both repellant and hilarious to watch these five extreme right-wing trolls twist and turn like gymnasts to defend their stance. They are, they say, fighting for individual freedom! And, of course, these fervent anti-abortion pols are also now stressing “individual choice.” After all, THEIR delicate little bodies are sacred even if yours is not. Some of their allies have gone so far as to raise the old feminist slogan of “Our Bodies, Our Choice,” as if Qanon and the Proud Boys have merged with the Boston Women’s Health Collective.

So who are these miscreants?

Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds  attacked new CDC masking guidance for Delta as “counterproductive to our vaccination efforts” and “not grounded in reality or common sense.” From someone who has denied the most common sense for the last year.

Nebraska’s conservative Gov. Pete Ricketts balked at any new mandates and said the state’s “return to normal won’t be interrupted by” the new guidance from the federal government as it “flies in the face of the public health goals that should guide the agency’s decision making” and “only furthers the distrust” many have in the agency. No comment.

Then there’s the right-wing Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who keeps moving further and further to the right to head off a Trump-backed primary challenge. As he last week neared the very edge of the flat earth he inhabits, he sent out a tweet saying “the time for government mask mandates is over,” and added that every Texan has the “right to choose whether they (or their children) will wear a mask.” Just like he does NOT think they have the right to choose abortion.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has decreed a prohibition on mandates for masks, vaccines and vaccine passports. When the CDC came out with strengthened guidance to combat Delta, Ducey said the guidance is “just another example of the Biden-Harris Administration’s inability to effectively confront the Covid-19 pandemic” that will “only diminish confidence in the vaccine.”   For the record, note this is the same vaccine that he obstinately refused to promote until a couple of hours ago.

The undisputed leader of this pack, the Jefe Maximo, the Big Dog, the guy who is clearly positioning himself as Trump Redux for 2024, is none other than the current GOP Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis…heretofore to be known as simply DeathSantis.

“We are not shutting down,” he said as the virus began to wildly surge in his state. “We are going to have schools open. We are protecting every Floridian’s job in this state. We are protecting people’s small businesses. These interventions have failed time and time again throughout this pandemic, not just in the United States but abroad. They have not stopped the spread, particularly with delta.”

And then, this week, after getting in a verbal pissing match with Joe Biden, the Governor boasted: “We can either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state and I can tell you, Florida, we’re a free state.”

Well, give the Guv credit. He’s been more than successful in steering Florida away from the status of a “biomedical security state” because as I write this Florida is much closer to being a biological Chernobyl. Per capita it is the most diseased state in the nation and it alone is responsible for almost 20 percent of daily cases in America.

Infection rates are as high or higher than they have been at any point since the pandemic began. Hospitals are brimming with a record 12,000 new admittances. Children are starting to showing up as well, even some in ICU’s.

But DeathSantis’ most recent decree prohibits towns, localities and local school boards from implementing their own mandates and masks. I just want to make sure this is clear: He wants all kids back in school but he will not allow school districts to implement masking if they deem it appropriate.”

Most disturbing has been DeathSantis execrable contributions to the national discourse and his fervent bolstering of the Big Lie. This week he claimed the current COVID wave — now producing more than 100,000 cases a day nationwide— can be directly traced to Biden’s supposedly lax border policies. It’s the illegals bringing the disease, don’t you see? Not only a howler, but a deeply racist and xenophobic trope, a new variant to spice up the disinformation pandemic.

DeathSantis has been using his supposed commitment to the vaccine as a shield when criticized for his disavowal of masks and social distancing. Another boatload of BS. DeathSantis has openly mocked the public health doctors working on the disease and he has shamelessly engaged in marketing anti-Fauci merchandise.

As dangerous as he is, I’d love to laugh off characters like DeathSantis. Maybe it’s best to let him keep being himself as his re-election poll numbers have fallen in the last few weeks and he’s now in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent (election is next year). A few Florida school districts are also defying his ban on masks and once the schools fill, and kids get sick (and they will), he could face civil lawsuits from parents of the sort brought in Arkansas.

I think elements like DeathSantis, however, deserve a more forceful response. I am sure many millions of other Americans also recoil in anger and fury when hearing the nonsense he spews. We also experience a great frustration as it seems in a normal world a guy like this would be ignored, or prosecuted or put into treatment instead of his current continuing status as governor and presumed 2024 Republican frontrunner (if the Other Frontrunner does not run).

There’s one avenue of recourse, a difficult even remote one, but a real one.

It goes like this:

Back in 1998, the former Chilean dictator. General Augusto Pinochet and then-Senator-for-Life, was in London having a cuppa with Maggie Thatcher. The general was also suffering some back problems. and checked into a local clinic for a few days.

What a surprise on that October afternoon when a couple of members of the Metropolitan Police entered his room and placed him under arrest. The dictator who everybody thought was invulnerable was busted by a couple of Bobbies.

Pinochet was arrested on an Interpol warrant issued on behalf of two crusading Spanish magistrates. They had opened a case against him for the disappearance of Spanish citizens during his dictatorship.

Pinochet’s arrest generated global headlines and along with them the new Pinochet Principle. The latter recognized that criminals like Pinochet could be prosecuted outside their home countries, especially when justice is impeded in their country of origin — as it was in Chile in 1998.

[The Brits refused to extradite Pinochet to Spain. After a year he was sent back to Chile. But he was soon indicted n Chile. He was able to delay trial due to poor health. He died while under house arrest in 2006, totally discredited and facing scores of murder charges).

The point is the Spanish Courts became a vessel for prosecution of rogue state criminals. Since the Pinochet affair, the Spaniards have somewhat limited their extra territorial investigations. But just two weeks ago, Spain allowed another Chile-related case to open. This one an investigation of the Banco De Chile where there is strong evidence that it helped Pinochet launder more than $25m. I know of similar third-party criminal investigations also having been conducted in Argentina and France.

And, hey, we do it right here in the U.S. Salvadoran war criminals living here, denounced by their victims in El Salvador, have been arrested, sometimes deported and sometimes tried by American officials.

Among the thousands who have perished during the pandemic here in the U.S., there must be some who are dual citizens with Spanish or French nationality, or maybe some unlucky tourists who came here at the wrong times and left the hard way.

DeathSantis, Abbott and…why not Trump… could be, I repeat COULD be held accountable if their victims’ families got together, and filed a criminal case overseas. (I am assuming such a move would go nowhere domestically).

It’s a long shot. A real long shot. So was arresting Pinochet. And DeathSantis, for all his swagger, is but a wee guppy compared to who the dictator was at the moment of his fall. ++

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