Our Best Stuff From a Week Where We Felt Stuck in Place

Supreme Court decisions, Roger Stone's commutation, and more.

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It’s not an understatement to say that the pandemic has created a few different kinds of time warps. We’ve all joked that April lasted six months, or two years, or more. Same with May. The coming return of professional sports creates its own distortion: regular season NBA games in July? Playoffs in September? Major League opening day on July 23? It’s weird. (I’ll be honest. I’m not going to complain.)

It happens on a smaller scale, too. I’ll get a Facebook memory about an end-of-season baseball tournament or swim meet, and it feels off because this year baseball season started in late May, and, well, no one is sure when we’ll have swim meets again. 

And now, with cases spiking around the country, it almost feels like time is at once on hold and rushing forward. When schools first closed back in March, it was supposed to be for a few weeks. Now a new school year looms and very few people have any idea whether their kids will be in classrooms in the fall. Office workers are looking at an indefinite future of Zoom calls and apologizing to colleagues and clients for the dog barking in the background. (Sorry, Dispatch colleagues!)

We can’t move forward until things get better⁠—governors in the South and the Sun Belt who are experiencing the worst outbreaks are walking back or pausing their reopening measures. The Ivy League schools canceled fall sports. I would crack a joke about them not being missed, but just days later the Big Ten said it would cancel all non-conference competition to free up schedules for possible delay, so it appears they may be a canary in the coal mine. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Jason

    Great point here. This is a triple crisis: public health, economic, civil liberties. Our media elite are focusing on the public health aspect at the expense of the others.

    I thought a lot about this as a few days I stood on the other side of the glass from my grandmother as an aide (bless her heart and keep her safe) held up her phone so we could talk while looking at each other through the glass. I wondered if this would be the last time I’d see my Grandma. She understands very little and so the inability to embrace her and express my love and respect that way was painful.

    I say this not as a condemnation of those who created those rules - they are necessary and that facility has had zero Covid areas - but this is simply to nod in assent to the complexity you discuss. I felt rage. This isn’t because I’m unwilling to personally sacrifice but it’s the sacrifice she’s being asked to make that she can’t possibly understand, and it could be the end of her experience here on earth.

    The unwillingness to give that feeling its due by a generation of well off commentators and public health officials - that resentment will last.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Mudskipper

      Your post touched me, Jason. I sincerely hope you will be able to give your Grandmother a hug in person before too long.

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      1. Scott Mc

        Agreed

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          Jason

          Much appreciated both.

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  2. Avatar photo
    JohnM.

    Thanks for the heads up on Audrey Fahlberg's piece. Lauren Boebert won her nomination in my district in western Colorado over our solidly conservative congressman Scott Tipton, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump. A perfect example of extremist primary voters cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Remember Christine ('I'm not a witch') O'Donnell? Her opponent Diane Bush must have fallen to her knees in eternal gratitude to get Boebert as her opponent rather than Tipton.

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    Rick Harlan

    The Ivy League cancelling its season is logically equivalent to the Big Ten cancelling its non-conference games.

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  4. Avatar photo
    DougAz

    The Declaration of Independence of Donald Trump

    In Trump Tower, July 4, 2020.

    The unanimous Declaration of the Trump Family, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people, the MAGA, to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, the OTHERS, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and UNEQUAL station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle THE TRUMPS, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they TRUMPS should declare the causes which impel them to the MONARCHY.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all TRUMPS are created MORE THAN equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are A LIFE OF PLEASURE, LIBERTY TO DO ANYTHING, Pand the pursuit of Happiness with ANY WOMAN.--That to secure these rights, TRUMPS are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed MAGAs --That whenever any Form of DEMOCRATIC Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the TRUMPS to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to the TRUMPS shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness of the TRUMP FAMILY. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that DEMOCRATIC Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that MY VOTERS are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object of TRUMP HATE evinces a design to reduce them TRUMPS under absolute LAWFUL DEMOCRATIC Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new ARMED Guards for the future security OF TRUMPS.--Such has been the patient sufferance of THE TRUMPs; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of DEMOCRATIC Government. The history of the present DEMOCRATS of THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these TRUMPS. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

    ADAM SCHIFF has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the TRUMP good.

    PELOSI has forbidden HER PEOPLE to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance TO THE TRUMPS, unless suspended in their operation till HER Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, SHE has utterly neglected to attend to them.

    PELOSI has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, MY VOTERS, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

    DEMOCRATS HAVE called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with PELOSI's measures.

    DEMOCRATS have dissolved GOP Representative House COMMITTEEs INVESTIGATING REPEATEDLY THE CLINTONS, for opposing with manly firmness THE CLINTON'S invasions on the rights of the people.


    In every stage of these Oppressions WE TRUMPS Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. NANCY PELOSI whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of MY people.

    We, therefore, the TRUMP FAMILY, in TRUMP TOWER, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good TRUMP VOTERS of these STATES, solemnly publish and declare, That these United STATES are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, and that all political connection between them and the State of THE UNITED STATES, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War against OTHERS, conclude Peace with TYRANTS, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor FOR THE TRUMP FAMILY.

    Donald J. TRUMP. President Monarch
    Donald Trump Jr. Monarch in Waiting
    Eric Trump. Ministry of Pers...Prosecution

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