Trump has been trying to market himself as a “war-time president.” Thank heaven we are not at war! Trump has been behaving like a wind-up toy, reeling all over the place, bouncing off this, rebounding from that. How do you think he would manage a nuclear attack? or a really successful terrorist attack? 

He has made the crisis significantly worse by spreading misinformation (seems he can’t stop doing this) and by setting a pernicious example for the ignorant and Republican politicians by his intermittent breezy optimism about the pandemic.

Purchase of firearms and ammunition is booming. Does anyone know why? Is it a survivalist instinct that is leading people to buy guns to protect their toilet paper? Or are we going to have a civil war between the sane and those who “do not believe” in the corona virus? I rather think that, at least right now, people are purchasing these heaps of guns to dispel their fear of the corona virus. In these days of insecurity, lack of leadership, and uncertainty about the future Americans are turning to their favorite fetish, the gun. What a comfort to have guns in the house, keeping us safe from burglars, wild animals, poverty, and the corona virus! Or is this binge in gun purchases the response to a conspiracy theory that the feds, the deep state, anarchists, or semipelagians will enact emergency measures that will enable them to come and take away our penises — oops, I mean pistols.

Much of the South is acting right in character in this public health crisis. I read a piece on Politico that identified one set of governors who are doing a good job in the corona virus pandemic and another who are screwing up as badly as Trump. And where are the screwups? Why in Dixie! Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, all homes of ignorant voters and bad government.