Yup. And unfortunately, so are the folks that would be responsible for removing him from office,i.e., Republican Senators. The fear he instills is not what makes him especially dangerous -- that's his mental problems -- but it's what paralyses our ability to do anything about the threat he poses, or to put an end to the on-going harm. Our country is, to borrow a Trump word, in "tremendous" peril. His personal incompetence and that of his appointees, appointed on the basis of loyalty and sufficient fearfulness, is literally killing us. Had it not been for this incompetence, we in the United States would have had more than enough time to ramp up testing and PPE inventories sufficiently to give use workable options to the near shut-down of the entire nation and its economy. Unfortunately. the Trump administration intentionally killed our human-run early pandemic warning and response apparatus, thinking, I suppose, that it was useless. It hasn't escaped me that that apparatus was significantly enhanced during the Barrack Obama administration. Trump and his appointees have worked insidiously to dismantle Obama administration accomplishments, and Trump is still doing it! His petulant insistence on denigrating Obama at every opportunity and taking a wrecking ball to accomplishments that Obama may be identified with has an origin in Obama jokes targeted at Trump, in Trump's presence. These good humored jokes have been long forgotten by everyone except Donald Trump. The following two paragraphs I have excerpted from a March Atlantic Article entitled "We Were Warned" https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...c-coronavirus-united-states-trump-cdc/608215/ ...a week before [the Trump] inauguration day, when Lisa Monaco, Barack Obama’s outgoing homeland-security adviser, gathered with Donald Trump’s incoming national-security officials and conducted an exercise modeled on the administration’s experiences with outbreaks of swine flu, Ebola, and Zika. The simulation explored how the U.S. government should respond to a flu pandemic that halts international travel, upends global supply chains, tanks the stock market, and burdens health-care systems—all with a vaccine many months from materializing. “The nightmare scenario for us, and frankly to any public-health expert that you would talk to, has always been a new strain of flu or a respiratory illness because of how much easier it is to spread” relative to other pandemic diseases that aren’t airborne, Monaco told me. ... [Then in 2018] Luciana Borio, then the director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, told a symposium that “the threat of pandemic flu is our number-one health security concern.” Serving under a president who’d come to office on the pledge to wall off the United States, she noted that such a threat could not “be stopped at the border.” The very next day, news broke that National Security Adviser John Bolton had shuttered the NSC’s unit for preparing and responding to pandemics, of which Borio was a part. The White House official in charge of spearheading such a response to infectious threats departed as well and was not replaced. ... (Underlining is mine of course)
- Founding Fathers: Beware the Two Party System "...repeatedly warned that there is a scripted, psuedo-war between Dems and Repubs, liberals and conservatives which is in reality a false divide-and-conquer dog-and-pony show created by the powers that be to keep the American people divided and distracted. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this. In fact, the Founding Fathers warned us about the threat from a two party system. John Adams said: There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution. George Washington agreed, saying in his farewell presidential speech: The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume. https://ritholtz.com/2011/07/founding-fathers-beware-two-party-system/
So, why for Christ's sake did they build the Electoral College into the Constitution, leaving the manner of choosing electors up to the States, unless they were hoping that the House would decide most Presidential elections? If they weren't hoping that, I doubt they were, then they inadvertently, virtually guaranteed a two-party political system with the adoption of the electoral college with a simple majority being required to win election. In fact, and about this, there can be no dispute, the founders wanted a government run by wealthy male land owners. So when Hamilton, in the Federalist papers speaks of "The People's House," he means a House composed of male property owners, that statistically would be dominated by wealthy male property owners. He didn't intend that the dispossessed should be thought of necessarily as people. Those founders would be very pleased at how their desires have stood the test of time. Even though the House has backslid terribly, the Senate has saved the day, as it is still firmly under absolute control of wealthy, pudgy-triple-chinned, old, male property owners. If that ever changes, then god help us all. We'd be in danger of becoming a democracy! As it is, we have the best government money can buy, and we are holding democracy firmly at bay. They only place that I see where the Founders would give us a failing mark is in our modern administrative structure. They wanted the House and Senate to decide how the Country should be run and The President to run it, and also serve punch to visiting foreign dignitaries. They would be decidedly chagrined if they knew we had replaced our President with a Monarch, the majority of Senators were courtiers, and the House was ignored when possible -- they probably would be cheered a bit by the latter, noting how the House has so terribly backslid.