Things Will Never Get Back To Normal

This is not what you want to hear, but I’m going to say it. Things will never get back to normal again.

But that’s what we want, right?  We want to have this all over with and get back to life as it was in January. We want to swat all this unpleasantness away like it was a fly pestering us. We want to wake up tomorrow and bound out of bed and get back to the schedule and the pace of a usual weekday morning.

Sorry to tell you this, but that’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen at the end of this month.  We will be sheltering in place for a while. And when that is lifted, and maybe that’s the end of summer, the end of the year, or for some of us, when the vaccine is out.

But when we get back to normal, we will not be getting back to the normal we knew at the start of this year.

Of course, the administration is pushing for opening up society so business can get chugging along again. This is the administration that does nothing to dissuade voices that call for seniors to be willing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the Economy. While the rest of the population kneels down and prays to the Dow Jones for salvation.

Things aren’t going to be normal ever again.  And here’s some ideas I have about things that won’t return to normal.

1.     Handshaking. Dr. Anthony Fauci says we should never shake hands again, but instead come up with other forms of greeting.  And how about hugs?  Will we quite as generous as we were before? Will we be quite selective about whom we hug?

2,     Hand washing and hand sanitizers.  The average person will be left with looking like what we before would have thought of as a germophobe.  We will be cleaner. We will urge our children to wash their hands all the time. And we will never be without hand sanitizer. That will be something we always stick in our pockets or briefcase or bags.

3.     Work. Big pause here. Do you really think your company is going to want to keep all that real estate, when they can have you work from home some or all of the time, and probably get more work out of you and not have to pay for space and a desk for you at the main office?

4.     Education.  Another pause.  Big pause. I think higher education will be irrevocably changed. Delivery of coursework will be more and more electronic. It makes sense, after all.  Get more students in, fewer professors, who are having to work harder to deliver the content.  Makes total economic sense for the colleges and universities. Maybe they can eventually sell some real estate and make some money off of that too.

Elementary and high school, I am not sure about.  I think they will be changed some but will the government encourage people to home school with support and pedagogy from a central place?  I am not sure, but for safety’s sake, maybe this will happen.  (I’d be interested in hearing any ideas from primary and secondary school teachers.)

5.     Very large gatherings, like music festivals, professional sporting events, large trade shows and conventions.  These will change also.  Will there be limits as to size? Will there be screening of attendees? Will people be required to wear masks?  Since there are projections that the COVID-19 virus is going to be around for quite a while, and could mutate,  who knows?

6.     More decentralized production of televised and live-streamed events.  For an example, look at the Saturday Night Live  program from last night.  Produced remotely. 



More of that?  More live-streamed musical performances instead of in front of audiences?

7.     More draconian policies will be enforced as we move back into society. Remember before you had to take off your shoes an belt and go through a scanner before boarding an airplane?  Somehow we accepted that and it became part of our new normal. What new policies and procedures will be imposed on us?

These all seem rather negative, don’t they?  And I think there are more possibilities how things will not get back to normal that I haven’t covered here.  Let me know what you think.

My next blog post, I’m going to talk about ways that it might be good if we didn’t get back to normal.  What are you noticing right now that you would not like to lose?

posted by Etta Worthington

What To Make of The Mueller Report

Are you feeling a little overwhelmed with news right now?

Did you watch the press conference by Attorney General Barr yesterday morning? 

I did, and it was abundantly clear what he was doing was defending the President. I didn't need to hear pundits expounding on that later.

Did you download the text of the redacted Special Counsel report? With every intention to really plow into it. Right away.

(By the way, if you would like to have a copy of the report, you can download it here.) 

Well, I did start reading the report. I skimmed the Table of Contents and got a couple of pages into the Introduction and . . .

Maybe like me you are finding this all so very overwhelming--not just the size of the document but mostly the enormity of the issue.  And maybe like me, you would would like to know how to talk about this; how to understand the most salient points of the report.

 Just a few minutes ago, I received an email with a copy of a press release  prepared by the Office of the Speaker and Majority Staff on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, and Ways and Means Committees.  And I am going to quote that in its entirety.

 

The report does not exonerate the President.

• The report concludes the Trump team was aware and openly supportive of Russian attempts to interfere in the election because they “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
• The report lays out multiple instances in which the President tried to obstruct the investigation, stating, “our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations.” 
• The Special Counsel determined that he would not make a traditional charging decision on obstruction of justice not because of lack of evidence, but because of the Department of Justice policy that a sitting President cannot be indicted.
• The voluminous evidence collected by the Special Counsel “indicate[s] that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would have risen to personal and political concerns.”

 

Attorney General Barr deliberately distorted significant portions of Special Counsel Mueller’s report.There are at least four significant ways that Barr has misled the public on the contents of the Mueller report.

• The Special Counsel did not reach a charging decision in large part because of the Department’s policy on not indicting a sitting president;

• That there is no “evidence of collusion,” when the report outlines numerous illicit and improper contacts between Russians and Trump campaign officials;

• The President’s “overall pattern of conduct … to protect himself from investigations into his campaign,” including by firing the FBI Director, pressuring senior officials to lie, refusing to be interviewed, and attempting to fire the Special Counsel himself; and
• The conclusion that the Trump team was aware and openly supportive of Russian attempts to interfere in the election.
• Contrary to the Attorney General’s assertion, the report “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations.  The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels.”

 

The President demonstrated a pattern of unacceptable and unpatriotic conduct in an effort to obstruct the Special Counsel’s investigation.

• There was an extensive and troubling pattern of calculated efforts by Trump to interfere with and obstruct the Special Counsel’s investigation, and subsequent repeated attempts to cover it up through lies. 
• In some cases, Trump tried to get his aides and associates to do his dirty work for him, placing them in legal jeopardy. 
  • Trump directed White House officials and aides to lie and suppress evidence, and then lied about it.
  • Trump tried to interfere with the Special Counsel’s investigation, and then lied about it.
  • Trump and his personal attorneys tried to intimidate witnesses, particularly those cooperating with the Government.
• Just because Trump’s aides and associates refused his orders, or failed to follow through, does not make Trump’s actions ethical or remotely ok. They are wrong, immoral, unethical, corrupt and unpatriotic.

 

Congress has a constitutional responsibility to continue its investigations.

• Special Counsel Mueller’s report paints a disturbing picture of a president who has been weaving a web of deceit, lies and improper behavior and acting as if the law doesn’t apply to him.
• The report rejects the outlandish legal claims offered by President Trump’s defense lawyers.  The Report explains that, “Congress has authority to prohibit a president’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,” which “accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.” 
• The report also states that key officials associated with the Trump campaign “materially impaired” the Special Counsel’s investigation, that gaps in information exist, and that there is the “possibility that the unavailable would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.”  In addition, the Special Counsel “learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated-including some associated with the Trump Campaign---deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period.”

Mueller must testify before Congress.  

• Attorney General Barr’s regrettably partisan handling of the Mueller report, including his slanted March 24^th summary letter, his irresponsible testimony before Congress last week, and his indefensible plan to spin the report in a press conference later this morning — hours before he allowed the public or Congress to see it — have resulted in a crisis of confidence in his independence and impartiality. 
• We believe the only way to begin restoring public trust in the handling of the Special Counsel’s investigation is for Special Counsel Mueller himself to provide public testimony in the House and Senate as soon as possible. The American people deserve to hear the truth.
• It is imperative that the rest of the report and the underlying documents be made available to Congress and that Special Counsel Mueller testify before both chambers as soon as possible.

 

The integrity of our very democracy is at stake.

• The report explicitly states that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” The Trump Campaign not only welcomed the assistance, but once President Trump was in office, he repeatedly tried to dismantle the investigation through a pattern of bullying and deceit.

So the question is, what are we going to do about this? What MUST we do about this?  I'd love to hear your comments.