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The president has Covid. I just wrote that sentence and then sat and stared at it for the longest time, not sure how to proceed. Maybe I'll start with the clichés: Karma's a bitch. You reap what you sow. You made your bed, now you have to lie in it. And my favorite from my father: Hoisted on his own petard.

I'll follow that up with the tweet that a friend forwarded to me the following night (I am not on twitter, facebook, any of that.... stuff) by Jess Dweck (an Emmy-award nominated Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon writer):

I wish we could have our memories wiped so they can announce it again tonight

Now, that's funny, but I am writing this squeamishly. Because of the karma thing. But also because I was brought up to respect the president. This was hard during Nixon's second term. But as people complained so nastily about Obama, and before that about Clinton and Bush, I still clung to my girl scout mentality that, after all, it is our president. And we are taught to respect him. He's the president. He's not symbolic like the flag or an anthem. He's the man. That ended with Trump. Do I wish him ill through this illness? Absolutely not. Do I wish that he will resign before he loses the election? Sure. But, I am fully cognizant of the trouble ahead.

I support candidates in some out-of-state senate races. But over the weekend, I was thinking: Can we worry less about getting republicans senators out of office, now that Trump seems hellbent on purging that party via deadly virus? I mean, it really was stupendously shocking to see the degree of their cavalier attitude toward ANY of even the most basic precautions against this virus. Stupendously. As if they thought they owned a free pass.

A friend writes that we must brace ourselves for the coming inevitable and ridiculous conspiracy theories. Can we blame antifa? That's funny. Can we blame Islam extremists? Of course we won't blame the domestic, far-right extremist groups that have perpetrated more terrorism in the United States than any group from outside the United States, 9/11 included. Fact check, people.

Or, maybe we can blame Obama and Hillary. There's an idea. But that's hardly possible. They were too busy drinking children's blood while trying not to fall off the flat edge of the earth. I haven't said or written this in at least two decades, but...Give me a break. So, here's my theory: The Rose Garden reception for Coney Barrett's nomination appears to be the superspreader event. So, maybe God doesn't want Roe v. Wade repealed, regardless of what old male Republican politicians think.

As Crash Davis famously said in Bull Durham: We're dealing with a lot of shit here. But what I really believe is that we are dealing with a lot of ignorance here. I am not in favor of free college education, but, as in health care, I think education should be very affordable. And it should not be job training, or worse, a conduit to moneymaking. If you want to be an influencer, you don't need to go to university. Higher education should provide a solid grounding in liberal arts that can provide young people with a route to thought and logic. And, if along the way it models compassion and humanity which students might not have garnered from their families, schools, and religious education, so much the better. Because we are looking at a country where too many do not have empathy for each other. An epidemic of callousness. And that now clearly starts right at the top, and with the people who support him.

For myself, I look forward to a time when politics are removed from: A) my blog; B) conversations with friends; C) mask-wearing during a contagious viral pandemic, and D) all of the above. Enough is enough. But the situation in our country, with a president who flaunted all precautions and is now hospitalized with an apolitical, deadly virus, and a populace who is spasming in all different directions in response to a variety of issues besides the virus, is dire.

Back in the summer of my youth, Jessie Colin Young sang: Come on people now, Smile on your brother, Everybody get together, Try to love one another right now. It all seemed so possible back in my idealistic youth. Le sigh. Now, with everything that is going on, it just makes me feel sad. Oh, and very, very frustrated. Thanks for reading my blog. Avoid large crowds. Especially at the White House.