America’s neofascist death cult won’t help stop the pandemic. We have to survive them, too

Channeling Charlton Heston in the original “Planet of the Apes” film: “It’s a madhouse! A madhouse!”

America is now experiencing a second wave of the deadly coronavirus pandemic. At least 600,000 people have died from the pandemic in the United States. That number will likely surpass one million by the time it is over. The country may even be forced to endure another wave of lockdowns and forced business closures intended to slow the spread of the disease. The economic and human consequences will be dire.

Time Magazine offers this snapshot:

The U.S. is now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day, returning to a milestone last seen during the winter surge in another bleak reminder of how quickly the delta variant has spread through the country.

Health officials fear that cases, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to soar if more Americans don’t embrace the COVID-19 vaccine. Nationwide, 50% of residents are fully vaccinated and more than 70% of adults have received at least one dose.

“The situation is particularly dire in the South,” Time reports, “which has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S. and has seen smaller hospitals overrun with patients.”

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“The health care system right now is nearly at a breaking point. … For the next three weeks or so, I see no relief on what’s happening in emergency departments,” Dr. David Persse, Houston’s chief medical officer, told Time.

This courting of even more disaster is a choice. Vaccines are free and readily available to all who want them. In that way, the Biden administration has made remarkable progress in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. But the Biden administration and common sense have shown themselves to be no match in a battle against the willful stupidity and evils of Trumpism and the Republican Party death cult. Trump’s followers and other Republicans and so-called conservatives are willing to risk death from the pandemic as proof of loyalty to “the cause.”

None of this is a surprise: Historically, the harvest of neofascism is death and destruction.

The Age of Trump is a nationwide crime scene; the Trump regime’s coronavirus democide is people’s exhibit number one. Donald Trump and his collaborators and allies committed these crimes before the world.

As part of their crimes against democracy, the rule of law, the Constitution, the common good and humanity, the Trump regime and its allies legitimated and circulated lethal lies and disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.

Moreover, the Age of Trump and American neofascism amplified the worst impulses of the Republican Party and right-wing, most notably anti-intellectualism and conspiracism.

For example, a new poll from the Economist and YouGov shows that some 30 percent of Republicans actually believe that the government put microchips inside the coronavirus vaccines to presumably track and otherwise control the American people.

Biological and chemical warfare are banned by international treaties. Of course, the Trump regime and the Republican Party could not resist the temptations of such evil and reckless behavior. Writing at the Guardian, Rebecca Solnit details how:

Some of the most powerful conservatives in the United States have, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, chosen to sow disinformation along with mockery and distrust of proven methods of combating the disease, from masks to vaccines to social distancing. Their actions have afflicted the nation as a whole with more disease and death and economic crisis than good leadership aligned with science might have, and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of well-documented deaths and a new surge, they continue. Their malice has become so normal that its real nature is rarely addressed. Call it biological warfare by propaganda….

An administration more committed to saving lives than scoring points could have contained the pandemic rather than made the US the worst-hit nation in the world. Illnesses and casualties could have been far lower, and we could have been better protected against the Delta variant.

Solnit concludes, “Covid-19 is far from the first time people have decided to profit from promoting the death of others: the fossil fuel industry plunging ahead while fully aware that climate catastrophe was the consequence of its product is the most extreme example. Manufacturers of guns and prescription opiates have done so as well. But it might be the first time that a new threat has been so dramatically increased not by direct profiteers but by those selling ideology and sowing division.”

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Neofascism’s toxic power is also shown through how domestic terrorism and other political violence are defining features of the Age of Trump and beyond.

Refusing to be vaccinated against the coronavirus pandemic is another way for such violent fantasies and behavior to assert themselves.

For example, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a noted conspiracy theorist who has shown herself to be a neofascist and white supremacist and professional ignoramus and loud public menace, is now encouraging “Southerners” to take up arms against public health outreach workers who are trying to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and its highly infectious Delta variant.

As Salon’s Jon Skolnik writes,

“[President] Joe Biden wants to come talk to you guys,” she said at the Alabama Federation of Republican Women on Tuesday. “He’s going to be sending one of his police state friends to your front door to knock on the door, take down your name, your address, your family members’ names, your phone numbers, your cellphone numbers, probably ask for your Social Security number and whether you’ve taken the vaccine or not.”

She continued: “What they don’t know is in the South, we all love our Second Amendment rights, and we’re not real big on strangers showing up on our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get.”

America has been amusing itself to death for a very long time. The coronavirus has not forced a new maturity and responsible behavior on to the American people as a whole. There are still too many Americans who embrace infantile and other irresponsible behavior as something to be idolized and not shunned and shamed.

Ultimately, what should responsible, reasonable, intelligent people who believe in the common good and basic principles of society do in a country where at least 30 percent of Republicans (which translates into millions of people) have surrendered to a type of derangement where such obligations to other human beings no longer apply?

Self-preservation should be the first priority. If one’s neighbors are not willing to do the responsible thing by being vaccinated against COVID-19 then we must look out for ourselves. In the face of a highly communicable disease such a decision may only offer temporary (if not wholly) illusory safety.

What of communicative democracy and finding common ground with those people who have embraced anti-social behavior by refusing to be vaccinated and rejecting other commonsense public health responses to a pandemic? There is nothing to discuss. Responsible citizens would be wise to spend their energy on other matters.

Government exists to resolve problems that are too large for any one person or group to confront and resolve on their own. By definition, a deadly pandemic is one such problem. But such an outcome requires some basic level of cooperation by the governed. If such cooperation is not forthcoming, then government coercion may be necessary. This coercion may also require the help of the private sector through vaccine passports and similar requirements to participate fully in society. Unfortunately, coercion can be a threat to government legitimacy. In a democracy, such a downward spiral is to be avoided whenever possible.

What of right-wing ideologues (especially libertarians) who believe that negative liberty (“freedom from” and how government is inherently tyrannical) is more important than positive liberty (“freedom to” and how the government can actually protect rights, human dignity, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness)?

There is nothing to be discussed with them. The premise of their claims are fantasies of White freedom, where skin color and other privileges of gender and money function as protections from reality — until reality asserts itself in ways that care not for the indulgences and assumptions of right-wing libertarianism. I have little doubt that many of the COVID deniers who are now making deathbed confessions and apologizing for not getting vaccinated likely identity as right-wing anti-government libertarians.

Abstract principles often melt under the fear of existential trials and judgement.

America’s coronavirus fascism madhouse is not something to be lived through but rather survived. If the Trump-Republicans continue to have their way with the coronavirus plague, this will be how the rest of us tell the tale of the Age of Trump and all the horribleness that it continues to reap even after its leader was expelled from the White House.

The first sentences of the tale chronicling an America possessed by the dream-nightmare of TrumpWorld and the MAGAverse have already been written. What will the next sentences be? And who is writing the story?

What happens to wildlife swimming in a sea of our drug residues?

Fish hooked on meth? It’s a catchy headline that made the rounds a few weeks ago, but it represents a serious and growing problem. Our rivers and streams have become a soup of hundreds of drugs — mostly pharmaceuticals — that come from the treated water released from wastewater facilities.

Conventional wastewater treatment can remove some, but not all, of the many chemical compounds we excrete from our bodies — or those we improperly dispose of — says Diana Aga, director of the RENEW (Research and Education in Energy, Environment and Water) Institute at the University at Buffalo.

One of the worst offenders, she says, are antidepressants, which are a real downer for wildlife health.

“Because [these chemicals] are persistent, they also tend to accumulate in fish,” she says. A study she co-authored in 2017 examined fish from the Niagara River and found the highest bioaccumulation of antidepressants occurred in the fishes’ brains, followed by their livers, muscles and gonads.

It’s not just fish at risk, either. Other aquatic species face the same contaminants, and new research shows it can influence their behavior. Spinycheek crayfish, for example, became bolder after being exposed to the common antidepressant citalopram. Bold isn’t a great trait for an animal low on the food chain.

That wasn’t the only side effect. “The accumulation of pharmaceuticals in aquatic invertebrates poses a range of potential impacts to the invertebrates themselves and their predators, including altered growth, reproduction and behavior,” the researchers wrote. Crayfish and other invertebrates play important roles in their ecosystems, so anything affecting them can cascade throughout a habitat.

Plants, too, can take up these chemicals. A study from False Bay, in Cape Town, South Africa found the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac in sea lettuce, an edible seaweed. The researchers also found traces of the drug, although in lower quantities, in marine invertebrates including starfish, mussels and sea urchins.

Learning Curve

Despites these studies, and another two decades of research that has identified more than 600 pharmaceutical residues in rivers and streams, there’s still a lot we don’t know about how the compounds affect biodiversity, says Aga. Part of the problem is that many studies have been done in the lab where animals are usually exposed to a single drug.

Outside the lab, there are a lot more variables.

“A lot of these pharmaceuticals may have either synergistic or additive or maybe even antagonistic effects when combined,” she says. The same thing can happen in humans taking multiple prescribed or over-the-counter medications, but the scope of drugs in the wild complicates the problem. “It’s very difficult to predict what happens in the wild when they’re exposed to hundreds of these pharmaceutical residues at once.”

There’s another obstacle. “A lot of times people only act when they think something is toxic or carcinogenic,” she says. That’s measured by tracking mortality or tumors. There’s less focus on how the compounds could affect animal behavior, which is more subtle, but also important.

“These are things that might affect biodiversity in the wild,” she says. “A population might decline because there’s less mating. Or if they don’t recognize predators, they more easily become prey.”

Potential Fixes

We might not know all there is to know how drugs in our surface waters affect plants and animals yet, but we do know how to tackle the problem.

“In our study from 2020 we found that advanced treatment systems, like ozonation, can remove a lot of these pharmaceuticals,” she explains. Since using ozone to disinfect water can also lead to the formation of potentially harmful by-products, Aga says it’s best to use another method — granular activated carbon — or both in combination.

“Together they could completely remove these pharmaceuticals,” she says.

Granular activated carbon systems for wastewater treatment are like large Brita filters commonly used for purifying water at home. Both technologies, though, will bump up the cost of treatment. For smaller water systems that lack economies of scale, that can be cost-prohibitive.

But it might not be long before such treatment systems become the norm anyway.

Other emerging contaminants in water like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) also pose threats to human health and potentially wildlife. As we learn more about these so-called “forever chemicals,” we may see regulations to curb their use and to treat contaminated water.

“There have been a lot of discussions from the EPA and some of the regulatory agencies that might require regulation of those PFAS, which would be a good driving force to update wastewater treatment systems,” says Aga.

Climate change could also help push along better wastewater-treatment systems, she says, especially in areas with declining freshwater resources and as the need develops in some places to reuse wastewater for drinking, irrigation or other uses.

Those changes could benefit wildlife by removing more chemical compounds and other contaminants before treated water is discharged back into the environment.

While that would be good news, it’s already long overdue.

“There have been discussions about pharmaceuticals in water for a long time, but the response has been slow,” says Aga. “When I started looking at this awhile back, I’d hear people say that pharmaceuticals can’t be toxic or that bad because we take them. But we need to broaden our minds — it’s not just the people we should be thinking about, we should think about biodiversity.”

DeSantis’ executive order is misleading about lack of scientific support for masking in schools

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recent guidance on students and masking “lacks a well-grounded scientific justification.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a July 30 executive order

On July 30, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order stating that schools couldn’t mandate that their students wear masks, and that it should be up to parents to decide whether they want their children masked in school buildings. The order also said the state can deny funding to districts that don’t comply.

One part of the order particularly caught our attention because of what it said about masks: “WHEREAS, despite recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ‘guidance,’ forcing students to wear masks lacks a well-grounded scientific justification; indeed, a Brown University study analyzed COVID-19 data for schools in Florida and found no correlation with mask mandates.”

The executive order came on the heels of the CDC guidelines for reopening K-12 schools, which recommended that everyone age 2 and up should wear masks whether they are vaccinated or not. This guidance was issued partly because of the increase in covid cases due to the delta variant, which is more contagious than other versions of the virus. It was also issued because covid vaccines have not yet been authorized for use in children under age 12.

During the pandemic, DeSantis, a Republican, has consistently taken positions contrary to public health guidance from experts and said he wants Florida to remain open.

“In Florida, there will be no lockdowns, there will be no school closures, there will be no restrictions and no mandates,” DeSantis said during a speech introducing the executive order, which drew immediate pushback. President Joe Biden criticized his position and a group of Florida parents filed a lawsuit to block the order.

But the state is currently considered a covid hot spot. The Florida Department of Health reported there were 134,506 new cases of COVID-19 from July 30 to Aug. 5. That’s compared to 11,837 new cases over the earlier week-long period beginning June 4, before the delta variant surge. Hospitalizations have also increased. Total COVID-related hospitalizations were at almost 14,000 on Aug. 9, compared to a seven-day average of 229 hospitalizations as of June 6.

DeSantis’ executive order cites a Brown University study to support his argument that schools can’t mandate masks.

We reached out to DeSantis’ office to confirm the role of that study and to ask if any other research was involved in the development of the executive order.

Press secretary Christina Pushaw replied with a statement reiterating the governor’s position that studies have shown covid’s spread in schools is typically less than within the larger community and that science has yet to substantiate the effectiveness of masks in reducing what she said was “an already very low risk of COVID-19 in children.” She acknowledged that the delta variant has been shown to be more transmissible — which means it could increase children’s risk — “but that is only a working theory as no studies have shown that conclusively.”

That made us wonder about key elements of the executive order — specifically, whether the Brown study indeed illustrated that mask mandates didn’t prevent transmission of covid-19 and if it’s correct that “forcing students to wear masks lacks a well-grounded scientific justification.”

The Brown Study

We reached out to Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University, and the lead author of the study that DeSantis’ order references. Oster became well known during the pandemic for issuing data-driven recommendations on parenting and schooling. Some experts, though, have taken issue with her being an economist and not an epidemiologist.

Oster told us she couldn’t participate in a direct interview about the study, but she sent us this statement:

“We did not consult with Gov. DeSantis on these issues. Our paper is currently a pre-print, undergoing peer review. It relies on data from the 2020-2021 school year, prior to the emergence of the more contagious delta variant. Current CDC guidance, taking into account the current virus situation and all available data on masking, suggests masking for all K-12 students and staff, regardless of vaccination status.”

The study analyzed whether mask mandates in school districts in Florida and other states influenced the number of covid cases among students and staff members by looking at mitigation strategies as well as covid case counts. The researchers found that staff rates of covid were slightly higher in districts without mask mandates, but the difference was not statistically significant. Overall, no correlation was found between mask mandates and covid cases in students.

But within the study itself, the authors wrote about the limitations of their methods.

For instance, the study looked only at whether mandates existed at particular schools — not at the mask-wearing behavior of students and staffers. The study also didn’t account for mitigation measures that might have been in place in the surrounding community, which would influence case counts.

At the end of the study, the authors offer a conclusion that undermines the executive order: “We would emphasize that in general this literature suggests in-person school can be operated safely with appropriate mitigation, which typically includes universal masking. It would be premature to draw any alternative conclusions about this question based on this preliminary data.”

Justin Lessler, an epidemiology professor at the University of North Carolina, who led a peer-reviewed study that found masking in schools was associated with a significantly reduced risk of covid transmission, said he didn’t think this Brown study showed any strong conclusions to support the governor’s position.

“I think the lack of correlation with mask mandates at the population level is pretty weak evidence,” Lessler wrote in an email. “Also, mechanistically, it is a little hard to believe masking would not have some effect.”

Other Studies on Masks in Schools and Covid in Children

Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University, said masks are absolutely effective in reducing covid transmission in children.

“What the science actually shows is that for children ages 2 and above, masks are not only protective but needed,” said Goldman, who is also a pediatrician. Since “those kids who are below the age of 12 cannot yet have the vaccine so they don’t have that layer of protection.”

Goldman also said studies show masking is effective in preventing covid transmission in schools.

The CDC guidance also cites several CDC-led studies that show the benefits of masking in schools, while independent researchers have shown similar results. Masking was often combined with other efforts to reduce spread, including improved ventilation and filtration systems.

These points counter a claim central to DeSantis’ executive order: that the CDC school-reopening guidance “lacks a well-grounded scientific justification.”

“I think this ‘whereas’ of DeSantis’ executive order is just false, it’s just patently false,” said Dr. Jeffrey Goldhagen, a pediatrics professor at the University of Florida Health in Jacksonville.

What About Infection Risks for Children?

Though studies early in the pandemic did seem to indicate children were less likely to get covid than adults, current CDC data suggests that no longer seems to be the case.

CDC data through March 2021 shows that covid infection and symptomatic illness in children ages 5 to 17 was comparable to infection and illness in adults ages 18 to 49. Studies have also shown that even if children have mild or asymptomatic cases of covid they can spread the disease to adults who may then develop more severe cases — meaning children can be significant vectors of disease.

Children also are susceptible to the delta variant, which is more transmissible than the alpha variant.

Goldhagen said he has already anecdotally heard and seen the spread of the delta variant among children in camps and in schools that have started their semesters.

Pediatric covid hospitalizations have also been increasing in Florida in the past week, likely due to the delta variant, and there are reports that some children are experiencing serious symptoms. “The increase in the number of patients that we have in our children’s hospital due to covid has increased 500%,” Goldhagen, who is also a pediatrician at Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, told us on Aug. 5.

Our Ruling

DeSantis’ July 30 executive order missed the mark with its claim that “forcing students to wear masks lacks a well-grounded scientific justification.”

It also cited a Brown University study as scientific evidence that there is no correlation between mask mandates and reduced covid spread. However, while that study didn’t show a correlation, its authors noted the study’s limitations and concluded that appropriate mitigation typically includes universal masking. It flatly stated it would be premature to draw other conclusions based on the researchers’ preliminary data. Multiple studies also show masking in schools does have an effect on preventing covid transmission.

DeSantis’ executive order cherry-picked a study that offers little basis for his position and includes a variety of elements that are not accurate. We rate this False.

Source List

ABC Science Collaborative, Final Report, June 2021

Bloomberg, “Florida Parents Sue DeSantis, Ask Court to Allow Mask Mandates,” Aug. 8, 2021

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mask Use and Ventilation Improvements to Reduce COVID-19 Incidence in Elementary Schools — Georgia, November 16-December 11, 2020, May 28, 2021

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 in Primary and Secondary School Settings During the First Semester of School Reopening — Florida, August-December 2020, March 26, 2021

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Trends in Number of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in the US Reported to CDC, by State/Territory, accessed Aug. 9, 2021

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Guidance for COVID-19 Prevention in K-12 Schools, updated July 9, 2021

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Science Brief: Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in K-12 Schools and Early Care and Education Programs – Updated, July 9, 2021

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Estimated COVID-19 Burden, updated July 27, 2021

Department of Health and Human Services, Protect Public Data Hub — Hospital Utilization, accessed Aug. 9, 2021

Email interview with Justin Lessler, epidemiology professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Aug. 5, 2021

Email interview with Jill Roberts, associate professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, Aug. 3, 2021

Email statement from Emily Oster, economics professor at Brown University, Aug. 3, 2021

Email statement from Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Gov. Ron DeSantis, Aug. 4, 2021

Harvard Medical School, Coronavirus Outbreak and Kids, Aug. 2, 2021

medRxiv, COVID-19 Mitigation Practices and COVID-19 Rates in Schools: Report on Data From Florida, New York and Massachusetts, May 21, 2021

The Miami Herald, “Florida Children’s Hospitals See Pediatric COVID Cases Soar Amid Delta Variant Surge,” updated Aug. 9, 2021

National Bureau of Economic Research, School Reopenings, Mobility, and COVID-19 Spread: Evidence From Texas, May 2021

NBC 6 South Florida, “‘Governor Who?’ Biden Hits Back at DeSantis as Feud Continues,” Aug. 6, 2021

The New York Times, “She Fought to Reopen Schools, Becoming a Hero and a Villain,” June 22, 2021

Office of Gov. Ron DeSantis, “Governor DeSantis Issues an Executive Order Ensuring Parents’ Freedom to Choose,” July 30, 2021

Phone interview with Katherine Drabiak, associate professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, August 3, 2021

Phone interview with Dr. Jeffrey Goldhagen, pediatrics professor at the University of Florida Health in Jacksonville, Aug. 5, 2021

Phone interview with Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, Aug. 6, 2021

Reuters, “Florida Governor Blocks School Mask Mandates, Says Parents Can Choose,” July 31, 2021

Science, “Household COVID-19 Risk and In-Person Schooling,” June 4, 2021

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Biden’s education secretary vows to pay salaries of school officials if Ron DeSantis blocks pay

As COVID-19’s highly infectious Delta variant continues to rage in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis not only opposes having a statewide mask mandate for schools — he has forbidden, through an executive order, local school districts from having them and even threatened to withhold funding from school districts that defy him. But Miguel Cardona, secretary of the U.S. Department of Education under the Biden administration, is saying that federal funds may be available to those officials if their pay is blocked.

In a letter dated August 13, Cardona wrote that school superintendents and school board members in Florida can use federal COVID-19 relief funds if their paychecks are blocked.

Cardona wrote, “This includes paying the full salaries of educators (including superintendents) and school board members, regardless of whether the State moves to withhold some of their salary as Florida is threatening.”

Douglas Ray, a journalist for the Gainesville Sun, reports, “Alachua County Public Schools and several other Florida school districts have required students to start the school year wearing masks as a safety measure against COVID-19, consistent with guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. DeSantis issued an executive order forbidding such mandates and has suggested the (Florida) Department of Education could withhold money for salaries in districts that don’t comply. He has since back-peddled a bit from that position.”

According to Ray, DeSantis’ office “acknowledged on Friday that the state has no direct control over the pay of superintendents and school board members who aren’t state employees.”

“Instead,” Ray reports, “the governor’s office is suggesting that the state will withhold funding to school districts in the exact amount of the salaries of the superintendents and school board members infringing the rule. The office added that the school officials should ‘own their decisions’ when it comes to the consequences of the lost funding.”

Lay off Joe Biden: He didn’t “lose” Afghanistan — we are finally leaving it alone

Do you really think our pull-out from Afghanistan would have looked any different under the man who handled the coronavirus pandemic so well that he cashiered 400,000 American lives? He claimed over and over that he was going to end the “forever wars” and get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan once and for all. He was the president who said he could “make a deal” with the Taliban that was supposed to lead to a peaceful reconciliation with the Afghan government upon the withdrawal of American troops.

Taliban insurgents cleverly allowed cameras from Al Jazeera to film them walking through the presidential palace in Kabul demonstrating how a neat and tidy transfer of power looks, compared with what was attempted by the violent Trump mob that tried to take over the U.S. Capitol. This has led to predictable hand-wringing and pearl-clutching by the usual gaggle of Trump puppets, who the likes of MSNBC and CNN have been only too happy to allow on air to spew their anti-Biden garbage.

I swear, if I see the grim visage of one more Republican congressman lamenting the “chaos” caused by Joe Biden and the promises we broke with our “Afghan partners,” I’m going to puke. We didn’t have Afghan partners; we had people in a foreign country we showered with money and ordered around and told what to think and who to believe, which was us. Republicans have been waiting to hang “losing” the Afghanistan war around the neck of Joe Biden since he announced back in April that we would withdraw the troops remaining in that country by the end of this month. Unmentioned by all the Trump-puppets is the fact that Biden is doing nothing more or less than carrying out to the letter the deal Trump made with the Taliban last year: that we would pull all our troops out, that we wouldn’t engage Taliban fighters in hostilities and they wouldn’t engage us, and that the Taliban would pledge not to turn the country back into a stronghold for terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

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Afghanistan didn’t have a functioning government, but rather a bunch of people with official titles who were paid to do what we told them. Afghanistan didn’t have a functioning army, it had a uniformed gang of men we gave M-16s and taught how to march and shoot. At least some of them were Taliban sympathizers. Some of those expensively trained Afghan soldiers shot and killed their American “partners,” proving just what side they were really on. That the Afghan army is said to have “melted” into the populace as the Taliban walked triumphantly into Kabul should hardly be a surprise. Raise your hand if you expected anything different to happen. I’ll wait.

Hmmm. No takers? I didn’t think so.

With Afghanistan, we didn’t even have the excuse that we were supporting a “war of independence” like we claimed about Vietnam. It was a big-power police action from day one. Bin Laden and al-Qaida hit us, so we went in there to take them out. We began losing Afghanistan the day we “took” Kabul from the Taliban and said we had driven al-Qaida terrorists out of the country.

Here’s the deal with a big, muscular country like the United States that thinks it should have so much say about the way the world is run that we have military outposts in 140 countries: The minute we “take” a city, or a region, or a country, we’ve lost it, because everyone who lives there knows two things.

One, that we were never really going to live there, like we would if we changed citizenship or got a visa to move to a country like France. That’s living in a country. We did what we always do in countries we occupy but don’t live in. We walled off limited areas and turned them into Little Americas and called them “base camps” complete with resident McDonald’s and KFC outlets. That’s where the Americans who “took” Afghanistan lived, and nobody knew that better than the Afghans themselves.

Sure, there were some American civilians who actually lived in Afghan homes or apartments they rented or bought. Most of them worked for NGOs or international aid organizations like Doctors Without Borders or the dozens of groups that set up programs to help establish schools to educate Afghan girls and women. But few were in that country on official business of the American government. Most of the Americans representing our government lived behind gigantic concrete walls or Hesco barriers topped with razor wire and traveled in armored SUVs and Humvees in heavily defended convoys.

When I was in Iraq and Afghanistan around American troops, I used to ask them how they would like it if some foreign country moved a bunch of soldiers into their hometowns and seized property owned by locals and walled off that property and topped it with razor wire and then began moving around their hometowns in armored vehicles carrying soldiers with machine guns and grenades and even heavier weapons. To a soldier, they replied that would never happen in their hometowns, because people wouldn’t let it.

Everywhere we established an American presence in Afghanistan was a hometown that didn’t like being occupied by heavily armed American soldiers. So what did we expect?

The other thing the locals know with certainty is that we would leave. Hell, they watched 20 years of American soldiers cycle through their service in one-year tours. If they worked with the American military, Afghans could get to know a lieutenant in 2002 and watch them return as a captain in 2006, as a major in 2010, as a colonel in 2016, even as a general in 2020. But nobody stayed. Few became familiar with Afghan customs. Even fewer learned the language. They knew we wouldn’t stay the course because most Americans Afghans came into contact with didn’t stay more than a year.

The very worst thing about an American occupation of a foreign country is our arrogance of power. It infects everything. We have the biggest army, we have the biggest air force, we have the biggest navy; we have the biggest, most accurate, deadliest weapons; we have the most money, we can buy the most stuff, we can provide the most aid, and we can spread the most influence, which is to say we can insist on setting the rules and we can get our way. Our arrogance breeds contempt for those who don’t recognize how right we are. If I had a dollar for every time I heard an American soldier use the word “backward” to describe something about either Iraq or Afghanistan, I could have retired by now.

The arrogance of belittling the “backward” way of life of those in a country like Afghanistan is breathtaking. I have known people in this country, the allegedly modern United States, who grew up without electricity in their homes, who carried water in a bucket from a spring to a house that had no indoor plumbing, who didn’t see a store-bought piece of clothing until they were 30 years old, who never slept under anything but a homemade quilt and didn’t see a wool blanket until they were middle aged; people who grew up without a family car, who fed themselves with what they grew and slaughtered. You want to talk about backward? How about refusing to be vaccinated for COVID, or states which have passed laws that control women’s lives by limiting or completely ending their right to abortions? Or worshiping god by holding that women cannot be leaders or pastors in church?

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The Afghan people know who they are and more than that, they know who they have always been, and they are just as proud as we are. I once sat down in a family compound behind 20-foot mud brick walls with a farmer and his sons who were descended from the family that had farmed that land and lived on it in mud brick compounds exactly like that one for more than 1000 years. When I used the word “Taliban” with the father, it meant “religious people” to him, not enemy. He took me outside and pointed down the road to a nearby farm. “Taliban,” he said. He pointed further to another farm. “No Taliban,” he said. Both farms were his neighbors. What he couldn’t point to was the presence of anyone or anything having to do with the Afghan government, because in the remote region where his farm was along the border with Pakistan, there was no Afghan government.

We spent 20 messed-up years in Afghanistan flexing our muscles and spreading our money around, and now we are making a messed-up exit. We are leaving behind a country comprised largely of people just like the farmer I visited in his mud-brick compound, people who have never had contact with their government, people who live by religious rules and customs which are foreign to us and with which we don’t agree, even rules which we consider to be cruel and “backward.”

But it’s their country, and those are their rules and customs, and now they will return to living as they did before we got there and started ordering them around and demanding that they do things our way, or else.

It’s “or else” time in Afghanistan, folks, only this time it’s their “or else” that counts. That’s what you get when you invade and occupy foreign countries. You get shown the door and told not to let it hit you on the way out.

Whether or not we’ll learn a lesson this time is doubtful. But what’s not doubtful is that it’s not Biden’s fault. It’s ours, because we paid the taxes and elected the politicians who put us there, and we elected the politicians who kept us there, and now we have elected the politician who is getting us out.

Good on him.

Rep. Ilhan Omar calls for coalition to “evacuate every Afghan citizen fleeing for their lives”

Following a major White House address on Monday for which he was both praised and panned by progressives after explaining his decision to withdraw most American troops from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden was urged to redouble efforts to ensure the safe passage of as many Afghan refugees as possible—especially those who aided the nearly 20-year U.S.-led invasion and occupation of the nation now reverting to Taliban rule.

“I stand squarely behind my decision,” Biden declared during a 20-minute speech that came amid the Taliban’s chaotic reconquest of Afghanistan. “After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.”

“I am deeply saddened by the facts we now face, but I do not regret my decision to end America’s warfighting in Afghanistan,” the president said. “I cannot and will not ask our troops to fight on endlessly in another country’s civil war.”

Biden continued:

The events we’re seeing now are sadly proof that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, secure Afghanistan as known in history as the graveyard of empires. What’s happening now could just as easily happened five years ago or 15 years in the future. We have to be honest, our mission in Afghanistan has taken many missteps, made many missteps over the past two decades. I’m now the fourth American president to preside over war in Afghanistan, two Democrats and two Republicans.

“I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth president,” Biden said. “I will not mislead the American people by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan will make all the difference. Nor will I shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today and how we must move forward from here.”

In a stark departure from his predecessor, Biden stated, “I am president of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me,” while also acknowledging that the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government “did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.”

While some progressive observers called Biden’s speech “honest,” “clear-eyed,” and a “refreshing” departure from former President Donald Trump, others accused the current president of “finger-pointing” and minimizing U.S. culpability in a crisis nearly 20 years in the making.

Feel like no matters one’s position on the specifics of Afghanistan withdrawal, everyone can agree “blame afghans for being weak” is pretty cynical shit https://t.co/JU7tJgIKqK

— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) August 16, 2021

Other progressive politicians, journalists, and advocates eschewed lauding or lambasting the president’s speech, instead focusing on the urgent need to evacuate and accommodate as many Afghan refugees as possible amid fear of renewed Taliban atrocities, especially against occupation collaborators.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) responded to Biden’s address by asserting that “the urgency of the moment now demands we marshal an international coalition to evacuate every Afghan citizen who is fleeing for their lives.”

There will be plenty of time for confronting the repeated failures of Afghanistan policy over the course of 4 presidencies. The urgency of the moment now demands we marshal an international coalition to evacuate every Afghan citizen who is fleeing for their lives. My statement: pic.twitter.com/rFJFbhxg3h

— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) August 16, 2021

In a statement, Refugee Council USA said that it “calls upon the Biden administration to bring Afghan refugees to safety immediately.”

“America’s resettlement agencies and other refugee-serving organizations are ready to help and are capable of welcoming many thousands of additional refugees, Special Immigrant Visa recipients (SIVs), and other Afghans in need of protection with the support of local communities,” the group added.

This crisis in #Afghanistan was preventable and the US has a moral obligation to support Afghans fleeing violence. Find our full remarks on our website.https://t.co/FP8e8K3vx4 pic.twitter.com/j6E1foRxFk

— Refugee Council USA (@RCUSA_DC) August 16, 2021

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, noted in a statement that “there are still roughly 80,000 Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders and their families in grave danger—not to mention the tens of thousands in other vulnerable populations, including journalists, women’s rights activists, NGO workers, and others.”

“To frame the perspectives on U.S. withdrawal as either ‘stay in a forever war’ or ‘save our allies’ is a false dichotomy,” O’Mara Vignarajah added. “We are simply calling on the administration to keep our promise. Our allies protected us, and in turn, we vowed to protect them. We call upon President Biden to immediately evacuate all U.S. citizens, American-affiliated Afghans, and other vulnerable populations.”

The National Iranian American Council called for “immediate steps to support Afghans on the ground and save as many lives as possible,” as well as “a shift away from militaristic policies and toward diplomacy-centric approaches that protect human rights and our shared humanity.”

Confusion reigns in Texas as legal fight over mask mandates rages between Abbott and local officials

A chaotic and confusing patchwork of mask mandates has cropped up across Texas as state officials and local governments duke it out in court and COVID-19 pummels the state.

Often, a county line or a school district border can be the difference between whether mask-wearing is required or not.

A number of cities, counties and school districts in the past week have defied Gov. Greg Abbott‘s executive order banning mask mandates and made mask-wearing mandatory in public schools in a bid to try to prevent the highly contagious delta variant from infecting schoolchildren too young to get vaccinated — and to keep hospitals from overflowing with COVID-19 patients.

Dallas County had the most wide-ranging mask mandate in the state — covering public schools, colleges, businesses and many government buildings. In neighboring Tarrant County, the county doesn’t require mask-wearing anywhere.

Colleges in Travis County must require masks — but not two hours south in Bexar County. There, officials decided to keep the mandate just to K-12 — a move intended to give state officials challenging the order in court fewer opportunities to strike it down.

“We restricted it because we didn’t want to overreach and have another reason [for the state] to knock down our order,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said.

For Texans living in urban areas, another source of confusion over mask-wearing are the pingpong legal battles between Abbott and local officials. In some cases, a local mask mandate has been overturned by one court, only to be reinstated within hours by another.

For example, the Texas Supreme Court temporarily nixed mask mandates in Bexar and Dallas counties Sunday evening. Less than a day later, a lower court judge essentially reinstated the Bexar mandate for public schools — though not without acknowledging the confusion.

“I just wanted to apologize to all those parents, school administrators, the superheroes that we call teachers for what someone called the equivalent to a legal tug of war, unfortunately where our children are right in the middle,” District Judge Antonia Arteaga said in making her ruling Monday afternoon.

After the Supreme Court ruling, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins insisted in a tweet that justices “did not strike down my face mask order.”

But the court made Jenkins’ order unenforceable by removing his ability to fine businesses that don’t comply, said Doug Alexander, a lawyer representing Jenkins.

“What’s ‘cray cray’ about it is that everybody’s telling [Jenkins] he needs mask mandates to save lives in Dallas County,” Alexander said. “For reasons that I can’t fathom, the governor and the attorney general are hell-bent on tying the arms of all governmental entities from doing exactly what the physicians on the front lines are telling them they must do to stop the surging pandemic.”

Amid the legal disarray, many school districts have walked back plans to require masks.

Northeast Independent School District in San Antonio imposed a mask order after Bexar County officials convinced a judge to pause Abbott’s ban on mask mandates. But after Sunday’s Supreme Court ruling, the district scuttled its plans.

The same goes for Fort Bend ISD — another district that was set to require masks, but changed course in defiance of Fort Bend County Judge KP George’s mask order for the county, which includes public schools.

Some districts aren’t waiting for the state to challenge local mask orders to reverse course. In Travis County, Eanes Independent School District pulled back its mask mandate after the state Supreme Court decision — even though the decision didn’t apply to Travis County and the county mask mandate remains in effect.

“We will follow the law as it is determined by the highest court at the time in this legal chess match,” the school district posted on Twitter.

Others have stuck with their mandates through the chaos. Dallas, Austin and San Antonio ISDs will continue to require masks despite the Supreme Court order.

In parts of the state where masking orders remain untouched by the legal crossfire, officials are weighing the possibility of expanding the mandate beyond schools and colleges.

Plenty of businesses in Austin have adopted their own masking requirements without a local mandate, Austin Mayor Steve Adler said. But he hasn’t ruled out mandating masks for private businesses if the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals continues to rise — though Adler doesn’t relish the idea.

“We’re all just trying to keep people safe and to keep the economy open,” he said.

Abbott has pushed back in recent days on the growing rebellion by cities, counties and school districts against his order — arguing in court that localities don’t have the authority to ignore his order and are creating undue confusion with local mandates. Texas is past the need for mask mandates, Abbott has said.

“Any confusion stems from local officials violating the governor’s executive order in their attempt to restrict the rights and freedoms of Texans,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement. “Every Texan has a right to choose for themselves and their children whether they will wear masks, open their businesses, or get vaccinated.”

To Adler, it’s Abbott who’s creating the confusion.

“I think there’s huge confusion when the science and the doctors all say that we need to do everything we can to get people to mask and to get vaccinated — and our governor won’t make it happen and will stop local communities from doing what they can to make it happen,” Adler said.

Disclosure: Steve Adler, a former Texas Tribune board chair, has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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“I did urge my brother to resign”: CNN host Chris Cuomo reacts to brother Andrew Cuomo’s resignation

Last week was a horrific week for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s political career and one CNN host was noticeably absent as the reports rolled in: his brother, Chris Cuomo.

Returning to the air Monday evening, the much younger Cuomo broke his silence, saying that he urged his brother to resign.

“There are a lot of people feeling a lot of hurt and a lot of pain right now,” Cuomo began. “My hope is that ultimately, everyone involved can get to a better place. That some higher good will be served in all of this. As for me, I’ve told you it’s never easy being in this business and coming from a political family, especially now. The situation is unlike anything I could have imagined. And yet, I know what matters at work and home. Everyone knows you support your family. You should also know I never covered my brother’s troubles because I obviously have a conflict, and there are rules at CNN about that. I said last year that his appearances on this show would be short-lived, and they were. The last was over a year ago, long before any kind of scandal.”

He went on to say he wasn’t in control of anything or an adviser. He was just a brother to the elder Cuomo.

“I was there to listen and offer my take, and my advice to my brother was simple and consistent,” he continued. “Own what you did, tell people what you’ll do to be better, be contrite, and finally, accept that it doesn’t matter what you intended. What matters is how your actions and words were perceived. And yes, while it was something I never ever imagined having to do, I did urge my brother to resign when the time came. There are critics saying things about me, many unsupported but know this, my position has never changed. I never misled anyone about the information I was delivering or not delivering on this program. I never attacked nor encouraged anyone to attack any woman who came forward. I never made calls to the press about my brother’s situation. I never influenced or attempted to control CNN’s coverage of my family.”

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

Trump hotels adopt mask policies as top Republicans wage war against mandates

At least two of former President Donald Trump’s properties have imposed mask mandates, even as GOP governors and Republicans in Congress rail against such requirements.

Politico reported Monday that Trump, who became “an emblem for anti-masking behavior” during his presidency, has remained relatively silent about the issue even as the emergence of the COVID-19 Delta variant has reignited the so-called mask wars this summer. In fact, Trump has signaled opposition to masks or mask mandates in only two of the hundreds of statements he’s issued through his Save America PAC since being banned by Twitter, and he recently dodged a question about masks on Fox News.

Meanwhile, Republican governors including Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Texas’ Greg Abbott have waged war against mask mandates in schools and elsewhere. And anti-mask Republicans in Congress have compared mandates to the Holocaust and sued House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy even selling T-shirts touting “freedom-loving Americans who oppose mask mandates.”

“For Republicans, the issue of masking has turned into a litmus test for one’s conservative bona fides,” Politico notes.

Trump’s lack of attention to the issue may be partly due to his laser focus on false claims of election fraud, according to Politico, but mask mandates are also “complicated for Trump and his family in part because of the implications they pose for their business holdings.”

“Trump hotels across the country have adopted a variety of different masking policies, some of which would qualify as mandates according to GOP critics,” the site reports. “The Trump International hotel in Miami, for instance, requires masks to be worn in all public places, according to its COVID-19 guidance and confirmed by a hotel representative . . . The Trump Hotel in Chicago has a COVID-19 policy that similarly suggests employees are required to wear masks.”

Read the full story here.

Biden defends U.S. withdrawal as Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, refuses to answer questions

President Biden refused to take questions after a Monday speech addressing the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan, even after admitting that the coup unfolded “more quickly” than his administration had anticipated.

Facing sharp criticism from the right, the president stood by his decision to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan. “I am deeply saddened by the facts we now face, but I do not regret my decision,” he stated. “The truth is this did unfold more quickly than we anticipated.”

Biden further claimed that U.S. interests in Afghanistan had never been aimed at “nation-building” or “creating a unified centralized democracy,” but rather “preventing a terrorist attack on American home land.”

The president also redirected blame from his own administration to that of Afghanistan, claiming that the U.S. had adequately prepared Afghanistan to arm themselves against a Taliban-led attack.

“We talked about how Afghanistan should prepare to fight their civil wars after the US military departed, to clean up the corruption in government, so the government could function for the Afghan people,” he said. “We talked extensively about the need for Afghan leaders to unite politically. They failed to do any of that. I also urged them to engage in diplomacy, to seek a political settlement with the Taliban. This advice was flatly refused.”

Biden additionally put emphasis on both the fiscal and human cost of the conflict. In fact, the War in Afghanistan, which dragged on for nearly two decades with no end in sight, marks the longest war that the U.S. had ever engaged in.

According to an AP report, the war saw the deaths of 2,448 American servicemembers, 66,000 Afghan national military and police, 7,245 Afghan civilians, and 51,191 Taliban and other opposition fighters. Experts estimate that the U.S. additionally spent over $2 trillion on on war-related expenditures.

“How many more lives, American lives, is it worth?” the president asked during his speech. “How many endless rows of headstones Arlington National Cemetery? I’m clear on my answer.”

The president said that his administration would “continue to speak out for the basic rights of Afghan people, of women and girls, as we speak out all over the world.”

“I’ve been clear—human rights must be the center of our foreign policy, not the periphery,” he added. “But the way to do it is not through endless military deployments—it is through diplomacy, economic tools, and rallying the world to join us.”

As Biden jaunts back to Camp David, the situation in Kabul remains in flux, with thousands of Afghan citizens having flocked to Kabul’s international airport in a bid to flee the country. At least seven people have died in the chaos. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that some 2,500 troops have been stationed at the airport and another 500 are set to arrive this Tuesday.

Marie Kondo takes her tidying ways to businesses in new “Sparking Joy” trailer

A household name for her organizational skills, tidying guru Marie Kondo returns in a new Netflix series titled “Sparking Joy” that goes beyond our homes but reaches small businesses and surrounding lives as well.

“I want to help people to find joy not just by tidying their homes but in every area of their lives,” said Kondo in a trailer Netflix released Monday.

Premiering on August 31st, the three-episode series takes a sharp turn from Kondo’s 2019 Netflix show “Tidying Up” where she guided families to clean up and minimize clutter in their homes. Instead, “Sparking Joy” widens this lens outward to focus on an “emotional tidy” of individuals’ lives, managing and clearing the negative energy from relationships, home and work life.

Each episode focuses on a different business that Kondo helps organize, yet she’ll also use her method to help others achieve balance and joy in deeper aspects of their lives that can’t be solved with a few hangers and trash bags.

Just from the title alone, the new series also serves as Kondo’s departure from the title of “tidy” that earned her immense fame and conversely, immense backlash. Her famed principle of throwing away what doesn’t spark joy has often been misinterpreted by largely white and western critics in a culture driven by consumerism and capitalism. While it may be hard to let go of what we own, Kondo doesn’t advocate throwing away whatever we have, but instead preaches holding onto what we find the most important and meaningful to ourselves.

“Sparking Joy” is about what lies beneath, and also promises viewers a peek into Kondo’s own family and daily life.

“Sparking Joy With Marie Kondo” premieres Aug. 31 on Netflix.

Unions warned the CDC’s mask rollback would have consequences. They were right

From the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic during the Trump administration, our national response has been fractured. Tragically, that dysfunctional response has continued under President Biden, who pledged during his campaign to defeat the virus by making decisions guided by sound public health science and not an economic calculus that was the hallmark of the Trump tenure.

In May, with Biden in for four months, the CDC executed a Bushesque “Mission Accomplished” move in the war on COVID. The nation’s premiere health agency inexplicably lifted the universal mask mandate for vaccinated Americans in public indoor settings, even as tens of millions of Americans were not vaccinated and living in counties where below 40 percent of the eligible population had their shots.

The unions that represent nurses and healthcare personnel, as well as essential workers in the food processing and distribution sectors, went ballistic fearing for the safety of its members. But because the corporate news media avoids labor stories you most likely missed it.

The unions warned that the CDC was relying on an honor system which would put their members at risk and would set the stage for the proliferation of an even more contagious variant that would hit hardest the communities of color with the lowest level of vaccine acceptance.

Both things happened and the results, though still unfolding, have been catastrophic.

In their drive to “return to normal” and “get the economy back on track,” our national policy makers opened the door wider to the ultra-contagious delta variant. As the variant started to get traction, President Biden described our pandemic as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” which ignored the possibility that Delta could set the stage for yet another variant that could be more effective at undermining the efficacy of the existing vaccines.

Nurses sound the alarm

In a May 17 tweet, the New York State Nurses Association, which represents 40,000 Registered Nurses, issued a warning: “The rushed CDC mask guidance is a rollback on patients’ & workers’ protections across the country. The path to stop the virus is more than the vaccine alone. This guidance will push communities to remove their masks sooner than recommended—risking lives.”

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Key among their concerns: In the neighborhoods of color hardest hit by the coronavirus, where a large portion of the essential workforce resides, the rate of vaccination is well below the 50-percent threshold found in whiter, more affluent areas.

Charlene Obernauer, the executive director of the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, said her group had heard from unions representing grocery-store workers that were pressing their employers to stick with the mask mandate.

“We would support the unions that are calling for the mask mandate to stay in place,” Obernauer said during a phone interview. “There is still a disparity in terms of the rates of vaccination between white communities and communities of color.”

“We are calling on all those businesses who employ Local 338 members to continue to encourage mask-wearing in their stores and following safe practices in their establishments,” texted Nikki Kateman, the political and communications director of Local 338 Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in New York. “Out of respect to the health, safety and sacrifices of our members, we strongly encourage everyone to mask up at places like the grocery store and pharmacy.

Local 338’s national union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents 1.3 million food and retail workers, also blasted the CDC’s new guidance, saying it would force retail workers to play “vaccination police” to sort out which customers needed to wear masks.

As the union said in a statement: “Since March 1, UFCW reports a nearly 35-percent increase in grocery-worker deaths and a nearly 30 percent increase in grocery workers infected or exposed following supermarket outbreaks at Whole Foods, Costco, Trader Joe’s and other chains across the country.”

The union estimated at least 185 grocery workers and 132 meatpacking workers have died from the virus, with tens of thousands of other union members infected or exposed, incurring potential long-term health risks.

During a May 19 press briefing by New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, epidemiologist Dr. Celine Gounder echoed NYSNA’s concerns about the rollback of the indoor-mask mandate. She told reporters the CDC should have coordinated the shift in guidance with “stakeholders” including labor unions and the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Honor system? Really?

Gounder was sharply critical of the CDC’s decision to rely on the “honor system” when it came to waiving the mask and social-distancing requirements for those that are vaccinated.

“You need to take into consideration other questions: for example, how can you be sure somebody has truly been vaccinated?” she said. “There’s a reason somebody goes into a bar and we card them when they want to buy alcohol.”

Dr. Gounder also noted that “some of those who have been most resistant to wearing a mask are also those who unfortunately may be most resistant to getting vaccinated right now. And so that does really pose a risk to other people.”

The public advocate’s health adviser told reporters that at that point, slightly more than one in four black Americans were vaccinated nationally, with the rate for Hispanics just a few percentage points higher. She maintained that the CDC should have waited for the vaccination rate in communities of color to hit the 50 percent threshold before rolling back the requirements.

“It is the duty of public health not to just look out for the individual, but the population—and specifically the most vulnerable among us,” she said.

After all of the rhetoric from politicians about being forever mindful of the vast race-based health disparities in communities revealed by COVID, they were suddenly oblivious to them in their drive to get back to normal.

It would be a July delta outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts that would send the CDC back to the drawing board on their rollback of universal masking, suggesting that Americans consult the agency’s county by county dashboard that tracks the level of virus transmission as low, moderate, substantial, or high.

What got the CDC’s attention in Provincetown was that three-quarters of the nearly 500 new COVID cases in July in that community were among people that were fully vaccinated — meaning that while the vaccines greatly reduced the chance of dying from the virus or landing in an ICU, it did not prevent the transmission of the virus in all cases.

According to CNN, there “were five hospitalizations associated with the outbreak — four of whom were fully vaccinated people.”

By the middle of August, thanks to delta, close to 84 percent of America’s counties were graded as a “high transmission area.” Yet politicians across the country were reluctant to reimpose the mask mandate. The CDC, just months after lifting the mask rule, was now suggesting the vaccinated return to masking in public indoor settings.

For unions, the mask flip-flop was the second time that “guidance” from the CDC would have catastrophic consequences, despite their protestations.

Mask deja vu

Even before New York was in lockdown mode, in mid-March of 2020, the New York State Nurses Association warned that the CDC’s emergency guidance that nurses should reuse N95 masks, rather than dispose of them after each clinical encounter, would result in their members catching COVID and dying; and that, in the process, the hospitals where they worked would become vectors for the deadly disease.

Again, both things happened. According to a joint reporting project produced by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News, over 3,600 healthcare professionals died as on the job in the course of the pandemic so far.

Initially the delta variant tore through states like Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Wyoming, where vaccination rates were lowest. Texas and Florida’s hospitals were sorely tested even as their Republican Governors did all they could to prevent local school districts from mandating masking, despite public health officials warning that delta was hitting children harder than previous variants.

On August 12, the Washington Post reported that “two-thirds of Americans in highly vaccinated counties now live in coronavirus hotspots … as outbreaks of the highly transmissible delta variant — once concentrated in poorly vaccinated pockets — ignite in more populated and immunized areas.”

“How rapidly the state of the pandemic changed in July from a problem for the unvaccinated to a nationwide concern,” the Post wrote. “Hospitalization rates in states with less than 40% of their population fully vaccinated are four times higher than states that are at least 54% vaccinated,” the newspaper also found.

The Washington Post’s analysis found that breakthrough infections, meaning someone who is vaccinated gets re-infected, did “not appear to be as extremely rare as hoped, accounting for more than a fifth of new recent infections in Los Angeles; New Haven, Conn.; and Oregon, officials said.”

While the media coverage and policy makers focus on the death toll and hospital admissions “dashboard,” what often goes underreported is that a significant percentage of those afflicted even with very mild COVID will suffer long-term health consequences of varying severity.

Even patients that tested positive for COVID, but were asymptomatic, have reported lingering health effects.

Multiple medical studies suggest that anywhere to one-quarter to on-third of COVID-19 survivors become so called “long-haul patients” reporting a range of symptoms including shortness of breath, chest pains, shortness of breath, fatigue and brain fog.”

“Doctors have been estimating one-quarter to one-third of COVID-19 patients become long haulers, as many patients call themselves,” reported the UC Davis Health’s Post-COVID-19 Clinic. “Now, four studies published since February confirm that range. They show that 27% to nearly 33% of patients who had COVID-19 but did not need to be hospitalized later developed some form of long-haul COVID.”

“Another consistent finding is that it does not appear to matter whether non-hospitalized patients had more severe cases of COVID-19, mild cases or even cases that caused no symptoms at all,” according the the UC Davis website. “Just as consistently, age or prior health – whether people were active and fit or had some previous health issues like diabetes or respiratory problems – made only a very small difference, if any, among non-hospitalized patients.”

As we approach the last half of the second year of this scourge, nearly 650,000 Americans have died. Another 37 million have been infected with COVID-19; in a nation with 330 million people, the number of infected is more than 10 percent of the population. The pandemic is likely to leave several million Americans dealing with long term health issues.

Maintaining the universal mask mandate would have meant less virus transmission, reduced the chance of spawning new variants and shown essential workers the protection they and their families deserved.

From “Gossip Girl” to “A Teacher,” TV is ending the romanticized “hot for teacher” student fantasy

The mythologized, student-teacher romance has long been a fixture in TV, movies and storytelling about young adults and angsty high school teens, in particular. We’re often presented with tales of forbidden love, of trusted adult figures who are somehow the only ones who can relate to particularly mature teens. Recall that in the 2010s, audiences were supposed to root for the happy ending wedding of Ezra and Aria in Freeform’s (then-ABC Family’s) “Pretty Little Liars,” when the former had started the series as the latter’s English teacher, and at varying points, stalked her and her friends.

Things have thankfully changed quite a bit since then. Case in point: the midseason finale of the rebooted “Gossip Girl,” the HBO Max dramedy featuring a new cast of privileged, exorbitantly wealthy students of the fictional Constance and St. Jude’s private schools. The teens, including Thomas Doherty’s notably bisexual Max Wolfe, are navigating all kinds of problems related to status, power, social media and, of course, relationships, and the most recent relationship-related conflict involves Max’s short, dangerous affair with a teacher, Rafa (Jason Gotay).

What seems to begin as a typical, romanticized affair between a good-hearted teacher concerned about the wellbeing of his student quickly takes a turn in the most recent episodes. Max learns Rafa has had relationships with underage high school students every school year, and that Rafa’s stories of family trauma are lies he tells to lure students in. When Max wants out, Rafa stalks him, spreads rumors about him, even contacts and tries to initiate an affair with Max’s gay father.

In other words, this “Gossip Girl” reboot has learned from the sins of its previous incarnation, in which relationships shared between then-it girl Serena (Blake Lively) and a boarding school teacher, and between Dan (Penn Badgley) and a young, beautiful English teacher, were either romanticized or wrongheadedly spun as sympathetic. Today, the rebooted “Gossip Girl” has gotten with the times, and recognizes relationships like this are inherently dangerous, predatory and abusive, exploiting the power dynamics between trusted adults and vulnerable youth, and potentially setting up young people for lifetimes of trauma, self-blaming, and struggles to have healthy relationships.

The timing of the reboot’s realistic spin on student-teacher relationships is notable, too. The Max-Rafa arc follows the portrayal of grooming and abuse in Freeform’s critically acclaimed “Cruel Summer,” which sees the charming new vice principal, Martin (Blake Lee), manipulate a local teen, Kate (Olivia Holt), into abandoning her old life to live with and have a romantic relationship in secrecy, eventually locking her in his basement for months when she wants to leave. The show masterfully presents the trauma that comes from being abused and deceived by a trusted adult as a child, and the insidious, comforting allure of a predator who acts as if they’re the only one who can understand a troubled young person’s pain.

The latest “Gossip Girl” arc also comes about one year after the controversial FX drama “A Teacher,” a miniseries that explores the relationship between a 32-year-old English teacher, Claire, and her 17-year-old student, Eric. The relationship appears romantic at first, until its twisted falling out when Claire is exposed to the police, the two are forced to part, and we’re presented a glimpse into how their relationship has affected Eric’s ability to have healthy relationships with anyone, including women his own age, even years later — all while Claire continues to deny wrongdoing.

“A Teacher” serves as a portrait of the selfishness of adult abusers and long-term harms of predatory student-teacher relationships on the victim. Still, the show has received mixed reception, some positive from those who see Claire as its rightful villain, and negative from those who are understandably critical of its sexual imagery and romantic presentation of the relationship, early on.

Stories like this have the potential to shed light on a frequent, traumatic experience and help victims of grooming feel seen, when done right. But until very recently, few onscreen portrayals of student-teacher relationships, or romantic relationships between adults and underage people, in general, have been clear about the inherent abusiveness of these situations. Not only can this be dangerous for impressionable youth who watch these young adult shows and are led to believe relationships with teachers or trusted adults are acceptable and even romantic, but they can also be triggering for those who have experienced grooming firsthand, and know how scarring these relationships are, off-screen.

The Max-Rafa relationship on “Gossip Girl” notably adds a new dimension to onscreen portrayals of student-teacher affairs as a same-sex affair, where portrayals of these inappropriate relationships have more often involved male teachers and female students. This makes sense — teenage girls are hypersexualized in our culture, with girls, and especially girls of color, as young as 12 being subject to cat-calling and sexual objectification. Girls are also often forced to become more mature than their young, male counterparts earlier on in their lives, thanks to our “boys will be boys” culture, which can make them more vulnerable to seemingly “mature” adult male predators.

But it’s also worth noting through the unique lens of Max and Rafa’s predatory affair that it’s not just teen girls who are dangerously hypersexualized — queer youth like Max are often hypersexualized, too, and through this hypersexualization, they’re more likely to be victim-blamed. When Max confronts Rafa after ending the affair, Rafa accuses Max of being the one who started it by coming onto Rafa with his supposedly aggressive sexuality.

In a world of adult creeps who have each state’s age of consent committed to memory, problematic and dangerous grooming relationships remain a prevalent problem in real life, even as onscreen representation becomes more self-aware and thoughtful. But that doesn’t mean representation, and revisiting what media portrays as acceptable, isn’t important.

Fortunate for today’s “Gossip Girl” fans, the show is clear where it stands on the insidious danger of the once-romanticized student-teacher relationship. But this level of moral clarity on the harms of grooming didn’t happen overnight, requiring years of cultural reckoning and pushback. Shows like “Gossip Girl” and “Cruel Summer” mark significant, hard-won progress in storytelling about youth, power dynamics and abuse, and offer some hope for more thoughtful, victim-centric young adult shows to come.

The new “Gossip Girl” is streaming on HBO Max, while “Cruel Summer” and “A Teacher” are streaming on Hulu.

Pfizer CEO to public: just trust us on the COVID booster

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was confident in June about the ability of his company’s vaccine to protect against the highly contagious delta variant, as it marched across the globe and filled U.S. hospitals with patients.

“I feel quite comfortable that we cover it,” Bourla said.

Just weeks later, Pfizer said it would seek authorization for a booster shot, after early trial results showed a third dose potentially increased protection. At the end of July, Pfizer and BioNTech announced findings that four to six months after a second dose, their vaccine’s efficacy dropped to about 84%.

Bourla was quick to promote a third dose after the discouraging news, saying he was “very, very confident” that a booster would increase immunity levels in the vaccinated.

There’s one hitch: Pfizer has not yet delivered conclusive proof to back up that confidence. The company lacks late-stage clinical trial results to confirm a booster will work against covid variants including delta, which now accounts for 93% of new infections across the U.S.

Pfizer announced its global phase 3 trial on a third dose in mid-July. That trial’s completion date is in 2022. Phase 3 results generally are required before regulatory approval.

“We are confident in this vaccine and the third dose, but you have to remember the vaccine efficacy study is still going on, so we need all the evidence to back up that,” Jerica Pitts, Pfizer’s director of global media relations, said Monday. The financial stakes are enormous: Pfizer announced in July that it expects $33.5 billion in covid-19 vaccine revenue this year.

Meanwhile, Pfizer recently said that if a third dose couldn’t combat the delta or other variants, the drugmaker is poised to come up with a “tailor-made” vaccine within 100 days.

All of this has sown a sense of confusion about what exactly will work, and when. The pharmaceutical industry’s rush to recommend boosters for the public is “a little frustrating,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an adviser to the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration. Even if a booster is found to be safe, he said, the U.S. effort should focus on “vaccinating people who are unvaccinated.”

In any case, decisions about boosters do not rest with vaccine makers, he said.

“Pharmaceutical companies aren’t public health agencies, it’s really not theirs to determine when or whether there should be booster dosing,” Offit said. “That is the purview of the CDC.”

Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA ― the federal agencies overseeing the authorization of covid vaccines ― said in July that fully vaccinated Americans do not need a booster shot. Currently authorized vaccines ― from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson ― are working as they should: All three lower the risk of covid severe enough to hospitalize or kill a person.

If hospitalization and death rates increase among the vaccinated, then it would be time to talk about boosters, Offit said, but “we’re not there, yet.”

The White House has added to the mixed messaging: Spokesperson Jen Psaki confirmed that the U.S. will buy an additional 200 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for inoculating children under 12 and for possible boosters.

Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University in Atlanta, said the confusion is not necessarily the fault of any one institution but rather “there is genuine scientific uncertainty about how well [existing] vaccines work against the new variant.”

Scientists are piecing together information from observational studies, outbreak investigations and analyses of antibody responses.

For many Americans ― especially those who struggled six months ago to find any dose, frantically hiring vaccine hunters and driving hours-long distances for their first jab ― the confusion has set off a feverish search for an illicit third dose just in case it’s necessary.

“I snuck in a dose of Pfizer last week,” Angie Melton, a 50-year-old mother of four, shared on Facebook. Melton received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot at a mass vaccination site in April and feared the highly contagious delta variant could infect her and, then, her unvaccinated 10-year-old son, who has asthma.

After consulting friends and doctors and seeing reports about mix-and-match approaches in Europe, Melton signed onto a local pharmacy site and made an appointment to get a Pfizer shot. She’s scheduled for a second shot as well.

“I’m trying to keep my family safe,” Melton said.

The CDC advisory panel was set to meet Friday to consider updates on whether additional vaccine doses are necessary for immunocompromised people. A presentation about boosters is also on the agenda.

Immunocompromised patients like Sarah Keitt, who has multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease, expressed relief that federal regulators planned to recommend a third dose. Keitt, a disability rights activist who lives in Connecticut, said her neurologist told her to get a booster even after she had received two doses of Moderna. On Thursday, she said she was eager to get another dose but still frustrated about a lack of confidence in how much protection it would offer.

“If someone could definitely say there is a 95% chance you are protected” by a booster, Keitt said, “I would love it.”

Despite widespread media reports of “breakthrough cases,” a recent data analysis by KFF found that hospitalizations and deaths are extremely rare among the fully vaccinated ― well below 1%.

Offit points to a recent outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in which only four of the 346 fully vaccinated people infected with covid were hospitalized, two of whom had underlying medical conditions. And no one died. “This vaccine still does an excellent job in the face of the delta variant at protecting people against severe, critical disease,” he said.

Yet the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against variants is still under debate. This month a new preprint study by the Mayo Clinic found that the product’s effectiveness against infection dropped to 42% from January to July ― as the delta variant’s prevalence markedly increased.

Pfizer and partner BioNTech announced they are developing an updated version of their vaccine in Germany to target the genomic features of the delta variant.

However, the idea that a new formulation could work better is “mostly hypothetical at this point,” said Vaughn Cooper, a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Vincent Rajkumar, a hematologist at the Mayo Clinic who closely studies his patients’ immune responses and antibody levels, said trying both strategies of using the current vaccine and testing a new version sounds reasonable.

There is one hypothesis that if “breakthrough” infections are due to a drop in antibody levels, boosting those levels will be enough, Rajkumar said. But the more worrisome hypothesis is that the delta variant, or any other variant, might respond considerably differently ― and be less threatened ― by the antibodies the current vaccine generates.

“So unless you boost [antibodies] with a vaccine that is specific to delta, it won’t work,” Rajkumar said. Rajkumar said testing both hypotheses is the “right thing to do in the interest of time.”

At the same time, though, the push for giving booster shots to healthy populations is premature, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist and cardiologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. That’s because even if those already fully vaccinated do get a third dose or booster, the virus is still circulating among millions of unvaccinated people.

“The overwhelming majority of infections and hospitalizations and deaths are occurring among those who are unvaccinated,” Khan said.

“Giving up on that greater strategy of vaccinating the population is going to lead to continued surges,” she said. “The potential for harm is quite large.”

KHN editor Arthur Allen contributed to this report.

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert ripped for mocking Afghans killed trying to flee on US plane

There has been a rush of Republican critiques and complaints about the Biden administration’s execution of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of fighting. But no reaction appears to have gone as low as that from freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who joked about Afghans filmed falling off a U.S. military plane to their deaths on Monday.

“At least they won’t have to read ‘mean tweets,'” the congresswoman tweeted on Monday. Boebert’s tweet was accompanied by a video of hundreds of Afghan men swarming a U.S. military plane as it takes off. Several men quickly fell off the plane. Their deaths were filmed.

At least they won’t have to read “mean tweets”… pic.twitter.com/P42ZOTEpra

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) August 16, 2021

Needless to say, many people did not find Boebert’s so-called joke funny:

Really sensitive to these people who are suffering. You never really cared about them, obviously. You just love the political talking point

— Honorable DF (@DF72811) August 16, 2021

All you are doing is using their suffering to knock the other side. Thays all you dont care you voted against them. You want to use them. Your guy gave them 5000 of their soldiers back. Gave them their new president back. Maybe a deal without the afghan gov was a bad idea pic.twitter.com/S89kS8PrNy

— Stelenj (@stelenj) August 16, 2021

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We all know the trope that Republicans don’t have backbones, but it is even funnier when they are caught flagrantly, without abandon, losing their “morals” for a brief moment before falling back to Earth, as was the case with another Boebert tweet.

Joe has a 48 year history of making bad decisions.

Add this weekend’s foreign policy decisions to the list.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) August 15, 2021

One Twitter user was quick to catch Boebert’s change in opinion from a tweet of her’s he pulled from last February.

This was you, only a few months ago…. pic.twitter.com/XWpwYAdJJu

— Martijn Janssen (@tweettinus) August 15, 2021

Boebert’s extremist opinions only continued on Monday:

The Taliban are the only people building back better.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) August 16, 2021

John Oliver shades not-so-”welcome” new “Jeopardy!” host Mike Richards

In case you missed it, not everyone is exactly thrilled about the newly selected hosts of “Jeopardy!,” as Mike Richards, current executive producer of the show, remains embroiled in scandal involving allegations of workplace mistreatment during his time at “The Price is Right!,” while his new co-host Mayim Bialik has drawn controversy for previous comments seeming to cast doubt on vaccines, and even the #MeToo movement. And another point against them, per the internet’s tally? Neither of them are LeVar Burton.

Well, “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver isn’t exactly thrilled about any of this either.

In Sunday night’s episode, as Oliver spoofs angry mobs protesting at local school board meetings over mask mandates ahead of the new school year, he also managed to throw in a dig at Richards. Playing a clip of a local man screaming “We know who you are!” at a school board member, Oliver notes, “It is genuinely hard to imagine a five-word phrase less welcome than ‘We know who you are,’ aside from obviously ‘new Jeopardy host Mike Richards.'”

He’s not exactly wrong — an impassioned Change.org petition against Richards’ new role as host calls this “the entertainment equivalent of insider trading,” and “in short . . . a crime.”

As “Jeopardy!” prepares to begin airing its new season in September, Richards still faces questions about lawsuits filed against him while he hosted “The Price is Right,” according to Variety. One of the women suing his former show alleges Richards retaliated against her for becoming pregnant, while the other says that she was “wrongfully terminated, constantly humiliated and berated in front of her peers by Richards and an additional producer.”

Despite these allegations, the show stands by Richards, who sent a message to “Jeopardy!” employees last week attempting to defend himself. “I want you all to know that the way in which my comments and actions have been characterized in these complaints does not reflect the reality of who I am or how we worked together on ‘The Price is Right,'” he wrote. “I know firsthand how special it is to be a parent. It is the most important thing in the world to me. I would not say anything to disrespect anyone’s pregnancy and have always supported my colleagues on their parenting journeys.”

“Jeopardy!” will return for its 38th season on Sept. 13, and “welcome” or not, Richards will be serving as host.

The UN report is scaring people. But what if fear isn’t enough?

It had the feeling of a scheduled fire drill. The release of a long-awaited report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday was met with appropriate alarm. The BBC warned that this was “code red for humanity.” The New York Times wrote, “A Hotter Future Is Certain.” A Guardian headlinestated that major changes to the climate were “inevitable” and “irreversible.”

Compared to previous versions, the latest U.N. report was unique in its emphasis on climate “tipping points” and used the most conclusive language about the state of climate science to date. The report’s first line was stark: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” Many advocates hoped that the report would serve as a “final wake-up call” that would inspire “quick and decisive action.”

Underlying most efforts to push for action on climate change is the belief that some combination of awareness, concern, and worry will be enough to inspire people. But what if that premise is flawed? The field of climate communication has devoted countless studies to the question of what emotion — fear, hope, or some other state of mind — will prompt people to call up their elected officials, eat less meat, or do any other number of things to help stabilize the climate. The results have been largely conflicting and inconclusive.

Kris De Meyer, a research fellow who studies neuroscience and geography at King’s College London, argues that all this effort may be misdirected. A long tradition of psychological research, largely ignored in the climate sphere, has found that beliefs don’t drive behavioral change or activism, he said. (In fact, it often happens the other way around — taking action drives beliefs, as people justify what they’re already doing.) And cognitive science has demonstrated that one thing in particular can motivate people to act differently: “social learning,” meaning that we take cues from others. If all the cars in front of you start swerving to the right, are you going to be the one who breaks ranks and hits the pothole?

The U.N. climate report made a splash in the media, but De Meyer said that some aspects of the coverage would likely leave people feeling defeated — particularly the headlines that imply it’s too late to do anything about climate change. The report showed the world careening past the threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming, the goal set out in a special IPCC report from 2018 that got interpreted as the world’s last defense against doomsday.

“If you’re trying to get people to act on climate change, then fear is not going to do it because it is so unpredictable,” De Meyer said, “and because you might push some people towards unhelpful solutions, or you might push them away from acting at all, or from paying attention at all.”

Human behavior is obviously tricky, which is why there are legions of psychologists and behavioral scientists studying it to figure out what’s most effective. “It’s really hard for people to take action, especially for people to take really meaningful action, and for people to take political action,” said Jennifer Carman, a postdoctoral associate studying behavior at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. A recent survey from that program found that there was a large gap between the people who were willing to take collective and political action to limit global warming versus those who have actually done it. For instance, 31 percent said they were willing to volunteer with an organization working to address climate change, while 6 percent said they’d actually done so in the last year.

So how do you close that gap? Sometimes, a sense of danger cando the job, De Meyer said, under very specific circumstances. The threat needs to feel personal and directed at you, and solutions to the problem must feel concrete, doable, and meaningful in removing that threat. If those conditions aren’t in place — if a person thinks it’s too late to address global warming, for instance — “you get unintended side effects,” De Meyer said.

While there are plenty of examples of people who have become activists or switched to a lower-carbon lifestyle because of scary messages, De Meyer says that many skeptics have become skeptical in part because they didn’t like that messaging — “because they looked at it and said, ‘These people are trying to manipulate me.'” What proponents of fear-inducing messaging “don’t look at is the strife and division that has been created by some of that messaging,” he said.

And this kind of “code red” language — a phrase repeated in many headlines, and one of the top Google searches related to climate change for this week — can be polarizing even among people who accept that there’s a problem. For the people who think crossing the 1.5-degree boundary is a threshold of doom, De Meyer said, they may be pushed toward more controversial solutions, like geoengineering, furthering divides even among the people who accept that there’s a problem.

This doesn’t mean people should stop talking about the threat of a warming planet, but simply that inspiring the masses to act calls for a different strategy. What’s missing from the picture, De Meyer said, are concrete examples of how to take action — not just a menu of items like “ditch your car for a bike, or organize a protest!” but, to extend the metaphor, the cookbooks and cooking shows that demonstrate how to do these things in-depth.

To be sure, the IPCC report did prompt some people into action — on their keyboards. Google Trends, which tracks search terms that suddenly surge in popularity, revealed a global populace split between freaking out about climate change and wanting to do something about it. Search trends indicate that people were Googling “how to survive climate change” and “how high above sea level am I?”, along with questions like “how can I help with climate change?”

The questions people were Googling haven’t yet been answered satisfactorily, De Meyer said. “The things that come up don’t feel meaningful or they don’t feel doable … That’s why people keep on asking that question again and again and again.”

Carman notes that the percentage of people who are acting, while seemingly small, translates to millions upon millions of Americans who are already calling up their representatives and signing petitions. And the more visible these actions become, the more likely others are to follow. Social norms come up over and over again as key to affecting people’s behavior, Carman said. In other words, peer pressure could help save us all.

Pompeo put on the spot by Fox News’ Wallace: “Do you regret giving the Taliban that legitimacy?”

Fox News host Chris Wallace challenged former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for criticizing the Biden administration’s failures in Afghanistan, pointing out that Pompeo had in fact “given the Taliban legitimacy” during the Trump administration.

Amid an unprecedented upheaval of political power in Kabul, where this past weekend the Taliban finally succeeded in a broad campaign to install its own regime, flooding the nation’s capital to declare a new government, conservatives have rushed to pin the blame on President Biden’s apparent inability to contain the terrorist group as he closes out the costliest war in U.S. history.

Chief among these critics is Pompeo, who oversaw negotiations with the Taliban during the Trump administration, and who, in a “Fox News Sunday” interview, said that the Biden administration had “just failed in its execution of its own plan.”

“It looks like they are now trying to get folks out,” Pompeo claimed. “This reminds me of when we have seen previous administrations allow embassies to be overrun, it’s starting to feel that way. It also looks like there’s a bit of panic having to reinsert soldiers to get them out.”

Pompeo specifically called out Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which he alleged gave the Taliban a window of opportunity to execute its coup.

“They should go crush these Taliban who are surrounding Kabul,” Pompeo added. “We should do it with American airpower, we should put pressure on them, we should inflict cost and pain on them. We shouldn’t be begging them to spare the lives of Americans, we should be imposing costs on the Taliban until they allow us to execute our plan in Afghanistan.”

But Wallace objected, noting that President Trump had in fact expressed a desire to withdraw from Afghanistan, and even led peace talks with the Taliban back in February of last year that ended in a U.S. vow to withdraw all troops by May of 2021.

“Critics say that for the U.S. to cut a deal with the Taliban without the Afghan government even in the room was hugely demoralizing and led inevitably to where we are today,” Wallace shot back.

Pomeo disputed this depiction, telling Wallace to “go read the deal, go read the conditions that were built into the deal.” But Wallace stuck to his line of questioning, continuing to press Pompeo on whether any deal should have been made with a terrorist organization in the first place.

“Do you regret giving the Taliban that legitimacy?” Wallace asked. “Do you regret pressing the Afghan government to release 5,000 prisoners? Which they did, some of whom are now back on the battlefield fighting with the Taliban.”

“You make peace with your enemies,” Pompeo said, adding that he “never trusted the Taliban.”

The former official continued: “We didn’t take the word of the Taliban, we watched their actions on the ground. When they did the right thing and helped us against terror, that was all good, and when they didn’t, we crushed them.”

On Sunday, CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen echoed Wallace, claiming that the Trump administration had emboldened the Taliban with a poorly structured deal. “It was the Trump administration, Secretary Pompeo’s staff that negotiated with the Taliban beginning in 2018 and they did a rather crucial thing that I think has been part of the failure here which is they excluded the Afghan government from the negotiations,” Bergen argued.

Despite the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, President Biden has stuck by his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country, citing that the U.S. had already quashed Al Qaeda and eliminated Osama bin Laden.

UK defense minister blames Trump’s “peace plan” for Taliban retaking Afghanistan: “A rotten deal”

Many far-right MAGA Republicans are blaming President Joe Biden for the disaster in Afghanistan, where Taliban extremists have seized control following the withdrawal of U.S. troops — and are conveniently overlooking the fact that Biden was mostly following former President Donald Trump’s plan for withdrawal. But one non-U.S. politician who isn’t overlooking that fact is U.K. Defense Minister Ben Wallace, who was vehemently critical of Trump’s “peace plan” for Afghanistan during an August 16 interview with “BBC Breakfast.”

Wallace, a member of the Conservative Party who serves under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, argued, “The die was cast when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation. President Biden inherited a momentum, a momentum that had been given to the Taliban because they felt they had now won. He’d also inherited a momentum of troop withdrawal from the international community, the U.S.”

In 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Taliban extremists to discuss Trump’s “peace plan.” Trump believed that U.S. troops had been in Afghanistan “way too long,” and on April 19 — almost three months into Biden’s presidency — Trump said that U.S. troops needed to “get out” sooner rather than what Biden had in mind. Biden wanted to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11, which will be the 20^thanniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country, and Taliban fighters have overthrown the government that the U.S. was supporting.

Wallace told the BBC, “The seeds of what we’re seeing today were before President Biden took office. The seeds were a peace deal that was (effectively) rushed, that wasn’t done in collaboration properly with the international community — and then, a dividend taken out incredibly quickly.”

During an interview with Sky News, Wallace was equally critical of Trump’s “peace plan.”

Wallace told Sky News, “At the time of the Trump deal with, obviously, the Taliban, I felt that that was a mistake to have done it that way. That, we’ll all, as an international community, probably pay the consequences of that…. I think that deal that was done in Doha was a rotten deal. It told a Taliban that wasn’t winning that they were winning, and it undermined the government of Afghanistan.”

RNC quietly deletes webpage touting Trump’s call for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan

The Republican National Committee was caught attempting to quietly erase history on Sunday when a page on GOP.com praising former President Donald Trump’s “historic peace agreement with the Taliban” was deleted as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.

The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel first noticed the apparent takedown, which an RNC spokesperson later billed as a routine update to the website.

“How quickly can the politics around Afghanistan change? Here’s a section on the RNC’s website in June; click it now, and you get a 404 error.” Weigel added alongside an image of the dated page.

How quickly can the politics around Afghanistan change? Here's a section on the RNC's website in June; click it now and you get a 404 error. (Rest of page was about Kosovo/Israel-Arab deals.) https://t.co/kDJo95QfiF pic.twitter.com/HkZok9mgJW

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) August 15, 2021

Hours later, RNC spokesperson Mike Reed said the site’s page was missing due to the GOP operation launching a new website and the old content not being carried over.

“This is so dishonest,” Reed tweeted. “We launched a new website last week… some of the old posts haven’t been carried over yet. Go look… all blog/research pieces from years ago aren’t there. But good try attempting to divert attention from the folks actually in charge of this disaster.”

Additionally, on Sunday evening, Trump called for Biden to “resign in disgrace” over his role in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

“It is time for Joe Biden to resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan, along with the tremendous surge in COVID, the Border catastrophe, the destruction of energy independence, and our crippled economy,” Trump declared in a statement. “It shouldn’t be a big deal, because he wasn’t elected legitimately in the first place!”

Notably, as the situation quickly unravels in Afghanistan, many Republicans are already flipping on positions about withdrawing troops from the region held only months ago.

Worth remembering that some Trump-aligned Republicans argued last fall that Biden was the candidate who’d continue wars in the Middle East and Trump was the withdrawal candidate. pic.twitter.com/LPvR8DAbzZ

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 15, 2021

On Monday afternoon, President Joe Biden, amid backlash from both the political right and left, is slated to address the nation from the White House regarding the Taliban taking control of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. As United States personnel attempted to make a last-ditch effort to evacuate Kabul on Sunday, Afghan refugees could be seen being tossed off the side of a US aircraft as they tried to cling onto the side upon takeoff.

Liz Cheney: Donald Trump’s meeting with the Taliban “set all this in motion”

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., spoke on “The Brian Kilmeade Show” about the devolving situation in Afghanistan and appeared to lay some of the blame on the Trump administration.

“The fact that Mike Pompeo was the first Secretary of State to meet with the Taliban, the fact that they were considering inviting the Taliban to Camp David on 9/11 — that set this all in motion,” Liz Cheney said of former President Donald Trump and his administration.

She continued to say that she, as well as other ranking members of the party, were told by the former president and Pompeo that “we were going to renounce the Taliban, we were going to renounce Al-Qaeda…none of that happened.”

As the well-known war hawk warned in early 2020, as the Trump administration left the Afghan government out of negotiations with the Taliban, “Any deal that the United States would contemplate entering into with the Taliban should be made public in its entirety.” The peace agreement, she warned, may be lopsided in the Taliban’s favor without a verification mechanism. “I’ve expressed my serious concerns about the lack of verification mechanism, about the commitment and the agreement that we would go to zero and primarily about the fact that what we have here are a number of promises by the Taliban.”

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She continued: “Many of them are promises that have been made before, and I think that the decisions about American troop levels in Afghanistan have to be made based on America’s national security interests, not based on empty promises from the Taliban and an agreement that doesn’t have any disclosed verification mechanism.”

On Monday, however, after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, Cheney still laid the ultimate blame on the Democrat currently occupying the White House. “What we are seeing today absolutely is the responsibility of Joe Biden.”

This isn’t “ending endless wars.” This is American surrender, empowering our enemies, and ensuring our children and grandchildren will have to fight this war, at much higher cost. https://t.co/USZ3Npn2mI

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) August 15, 2021

Donald Trump Jr. slammed after “gloating” on Twitter over the turmoil in Afghanistan

Donald Trump Jr is being accused on Twitter of celebrating scenes of the Taliban’s takeover in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Despite agreeing to the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan last year, Donald Trump’s eldest son tweeted a string of brutal tweets against President Joe Biden and the way his administration over the weekend.

Not surprising.

Biden’s woke “intelligence” gurus are the same ones who were WRONG on Russian collusion & Russian bounties, WRONG about China & Iran being “competitors,” WRONG on Covid origins, WRONG on Hunter’s laptop, & WRONG on basically everything else. https://t.co/KUEt9lDz7N

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) August 15, 2021

In a tweet, Trump Jr. said Biden’s ‘intelligence gurus’ were wrong about Russian collusion, Russian bounties, China and Iran being in competition and heaps of other issues. So one Twitter user responded by saying: “your father’s agreement with the Taliban started this chaos.”

Your father's agreement with Taliban started this chaos pic.twitter.com/0cmIdAcL5Z

— Peter Gumedia (@zoehime) August 15, 2021

Last April, his father, former President Donald Trump said in a written statement that pulling all U.S. troops from Afghanistan was “a wonderful and positive thing to do,” he just didn’t agree with Biden’s way of using 9/11 as a reason to do so.

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On Aug. 9, the U.S. embassy in Kabul made a tweet regarding peaceful negotiations in Doha which was aptly titled #PeaceMonday. Days later, Trump Jr. retweeted it, mocking the idea of peace in the region.

LOL, this is real!!! https://t.co/y8hvgcdvLe

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) August 13, 2021

A user named @TzuSays replied and said, “Imagine gloating while thousands of people are going to be killed.”

The Afghanistan blame game begins — and the media immediately ignores what triggered this disaster

Watching the swift fall of the Afghan government to the hands of the Taliban this weekend, my gut reaction is one I suspect may be true of most Americans watching this disaster unfold: If 20 years of occupation did diddly squat to set up Afghanistan for success, it’s doubtful that another 20 years was going to do the trick.

“One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country,” President Joe Biden, who unlike most Americans actually pays attention to the military and political details of the Afghanistan war, said in a statement released on Saturday. “I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.”

The mainstream media, needless to say, does not truck with Biden’s common-sense argument.

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The same media that embraces an often absurd allergy to the appearance of “bias” in domestic politics showed no similar modesty in letting enthusiasm for American imperialism fly over the weekend. Instead, the collapse of the Afghan government was portrayed as a massive political liability for Biden.

Jake Tapper of CNN described it as “a tragic foreign policy disaster unfold before our eyes” and described the White House as “flat-footed.”

“Defiant and defensive, a president known for empathy takes a cold-eyed approach to Afghanistan debacle,” blares Monday’s front-page headline at the Washington Post.

Republicans have an opportunity to turn America’s longest war into something Democrats own. They are saying — and probably will be saying for a long time — that Biden owns the fall of Afghanistan.https://t.co/UHJULk7Rcp

— Amber Phillips (@byamberphillips) August 16, 2021

“‘Clearly botched’: Biden White House under assault on Afghanistan drawdown,” reads a Politico headline.

“President Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan,” reads a secondary headline at the New York Times.

“The debacle of the US defeat and chaotic retreat in Afghanistan is a political disaster for Joe Biden,” declares the opening line of Monday’s CNN analysis. A few paragraphs in, after most people have stopped reading, the analyst Stephen Collinson admits that the disaster actually “underscored [Biden’s] core point” that “US visions of forging a functioning nation were illusory and that many more years of US involvement would not make any difference.”

So, if Biden is right, why should we be so certain this is all a political disaster?

For those of us who remember well how the mainstream media enthusiasm for war helped fuel not just this ill-advised war in Afghanistan twenty years ago, but the even bigger debacle in Iraq, the current media narrative is both bewildering and exhausting.

To be clear, there are some errors Biden made in withdrawing. Critics focused on the Afghans trying to flee the country without help from Americans are 100% right, and every effort should be made to get refugees to safety. Still, this larger media outrage over the withdrawal is a dark reminder of the pro-war bias in the press that helped create this mess in the first place: luring the American public into thinking a war in Afghanistan could ever end in any other way.

This past weekend felt like being sucked back in time to the 2003-2005 era, when one had to turn to the lefty press and the blogosphere for sensical analysis because the mainstream media was so bought into the jingoistic war-mongering of the George W. Bush administration. Journalist Michael Cohen on his Substack blog, for instance, correctly denounced “every armchair pundit” who is refusing to admit that they are “basically asserting that US troops should have never left the country.” As Michael Tomasky at the New Republic writes, “The lesson of the post-9/11 era is that American power has limits—very severe limits at that.” National security blogger Marcy Wheeler at Empty Wheel laments that we spent 20 years on this failed war when we could have instead “done something about climate change.” Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money writes, “The foreign policy and military establishment will do everything they can to blame Biden, but the bottom line remains that Afghanistan is a massive failure on their part, and Biden is being asked to believe the same lies he was told as vice president.”

On that front, despite smug claims from a Politico headline that “Biden’s foreign policy experience fails him,” there is good reason to think Biden did what he did because of that hard-won experience.

Biden spent eight years watching military leaders mislead President Barack Obama into believing that there was a way to win this war. Indeed, as blogger-turned-journalist-turned-blogger-again Matthew Yglesias — who also learned the hard way the dangers of buying into the media’s imperialist war hype during the Iraq War — pointed out on Twitter, military leaders “were still hoping that turning the Trump/Biden withdrawal policy into an embarrassing shitshow would successfully bully the White House into reversing course the way they squeezed Obama in 2009 and Trump in 2017.” He also suggested it would have worked if Biden hadn’t spent 8 years witnessing that bamboozling in action.

The generous view of this pro-war bias on the media’s part is that journalists give undue credence to the opinions of military brass and foreign policy hawks. It’s tempting for a lot of journalists to treat these leaders as objective experts, rather than as people whose own egos have led them to embrace forever war to avoid admitting defeat. Certainly, it seems that the “defer to the experts” mentality is why Obama, who went into office with an anti-war message, was so easy to cow on these matters. But even the Washington Post’s own reporting shows how much of a lost cause the Afghanistan war has been for years, and probably always was, making this “Biden screwed up” narrative even more inexcusable.

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The less generous interpretation is that the mainstream media is thick with dudes (and a few women) who have read one too many doorstopper histories of WWII and are still wrapped up in fantasies of American military triumph. Either way, the result is what we saw over the weekend: A press that appears to have learned nothing about the dangers of reflexively backing a hawkish foreign policy and military establishment, despite debacles dating back to the Vietnam War.

“Perhaps the only thing Trump has in common with the current president is that Biden’s also been an Afghanistan skeptic for years and was known as a voice pushing for ending American involvement within the Obama administration,” Heather “Digby” Parton wrote back in April. Donald Trump had “no understanding of the complexities and only saw it as a way to burnish his reputation as a ‘winner’ and a ‘deal maker,'” she added, and yet even he still understood that there is no value in a forever war.

This is why it’s good to be skeptical of the kneejerk assumption in the mainstream media that Biden will pay politically for “losing” the unwinnable war. Polling data on American attitudes about Afghanistan has long shown a mess. Most Americans don’t know or care enough about the issue to have informed opinions. But this tacit agreement between Trump and Biden that it’s time to get out — again, probably the only thing they agree about — points to the fact that this endless conflict in Afghanistan doesn’t really fit into what ordinary Americans, right or left, believe the American military is for. Liberals tend to reject American imperialism outright and see the military only in defensive terms. As for conservatives, well, Trump’s tendency to talk about “keeping the oil” from Middle Eastern countries was, as usual for him, gross and illegal. But it was also an insight into how ordinary conservatives see American imperialism, as something only worth engaging in as a pillaging exercise. This whole pretense that we’re going to set up other nations as democracies at the end of a gun no longer holds interest among ordinary Republican voters.

I suspect the only people left who really are invested in the imperialism masquerading as American beneficence are concentrated in elite political circles in D.C. and thus have an outsized impact on how the media frames this story. It’s doubtful, however, that most Americans will ultimately remember this differently than they do the end of the Vietnam War or the withdrawal from Iraq — as a sad but inevitable end to yet another misguided American adventure war. Biden won’t be seen as a failure, so much as the guy who just accepted a reality that multiple presidents refused to embrace.

Unfortunately, the media response to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan after 20 years doesn’t leave one with much hope that the mainstream press will be wiser the next time the hawks start beating the war drums, trying to lure the U.S. into yet another expensive entanglement bound for failure.

“White Lotus” star bids Aloha to a shocking finale: “Privileged, rich people get away with stuff”

As tourist visits — and with them, COVID infection rates — surge in Hawaii, HBO Max’s subversive satire “The White Lotus,” concluded its first season on Sunday. The eerie and at times darkly funny story follows a group of mostly white, wealthy guests tending to their dramatic rich people problems at a luxury resort in Hawaii. The guests seem immune to both consequences and self-awareness, and the show also focuses a good deal on the resort workers who have the displeasure of catering to their every whim.

There’s something about “The White Lotus” that’s felt almost prophetic, as if the show, filmed last summer, predicted how many privileged people would flock to escape to Hawaii at the first chance, with little to no consideration for how their travels could affect an island with a vast Indigenous population and many vulnerable hospitality workers. On “The White Lotus,” one such hospitality worker is Armond, played by Murray Bartlett.

Despite publicly performing as the perfect hotel manager and host, Armond loathes the self-centered guests with a passion that becomes clear early on, and his character provides a relatable lens through which audiences glimpse and come to understand some of the truly loathsome characters in “The White Lotus.” There’s Shane (Jake Lacy), the poster boy of white, male privilege and entitled generational wealth; the self-pitying, self-centered Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge); and the out-of-touch Mossbacher family and their performatively woke yet conspicuously complicit daughter Liv (Sydney Sweeney).

Teased in the first episode, the identity of the person who dies is finally revealed to be . . . none other than Armond in the season finale. After a truly trying time dealing with the resort guests and especially the demanding, entitled Shane, Armond learns he’s going to be fired and decides to go out in a blaze of glory. He snorts the last of the drugs he appropriated, which leads to a bizarre sequence of events that includes Armond taking a retaliatory dump in Shane’s luggage and then hiding when Shane returns to his room. Upon finding the unexpected gift and hearing what appears to be an intruder, Shane grabs a blade, rounds a corner and ends up stabbing Armond out of fear.

It’s a memorable end (to say the least) for a memorable character, Bartlett said in an interview with Salon.

“He’s an amazing metaphor for our public face and our private face, how we manage this. At what point does it become unmanageable to keep those two separate, or keep up this public face that denies what’s going on internally, pretends everything’s alright, when you’re being treated badly?” he said.

Armond similarly presents a metaphor for many hospitality workers in Hawaii, left with virtually no other options but to serve privileged vacationers as a direct result of the legacy of American imperialism. Kai (Kekoa Scott Kekumano), a Native Hawaiian forced to work at “The White Lotus,” saw his family’s land seized by vulturous tourist companies. The fates of these two characters, juxtaposed with the guests walking away from the resort unscathed, present the thesis of the show, Bartlett says. “Those privileged, rich people — not to say they’re all terrible — but there’s a lot of people like those, and they get away with stuff, and it’s really frustrating,” he explained.

Bartlett spoke to Salon about “The White Lotus” and the twists and turns of its finale, his initial guesses about who was in the body bag in the first episode, how previous experiences working in hospitality shaped his performance of Armond, and the show’s future.

What was it like filming “The White Lotus” during the pandemic? And what has it been like watching the show over the past weeks, during the surge of tourists going to Hawaii?

It was very unexpected to work on this show because we were in the middle of a pandemic, and I assumed I wasn’t going to work for a while. So, it was a shock to get a job, and for the job to be with Mike White, who I’ve always wanted to work with and I admire so much. The scripts were so wonderful, and it was an incredible group of people. Then, to be in Hawaii! I couldn’t talk to many people about it because it felt completely unfair; I felt kind of guilty talking about it.

It was also very bizarre. We were tested stringently before we left, we quarantined when we got there. We couldn’t leave the resort we were shooting in at all. We could go down to the beach, which was lovely, but it was overall a really unique and amazing experience, with an incredibly talented group of really lovely people, and we had an amazing time. It was a very unique experience in that it was almost pressurized, like a boot camp, because we were living and working in the same place and couldn’t leave. But it was incredible. And today with tourists, I wonder whether the show’s made people a little more self-aware from watching this. I hope so!

What was your first reaction to reading Armond on the page? What do you think of his philosophy about performing “tropical kabuki” for the guests?

I think Armond is an amazing character because he’s complex and has this public face, the face he has in his job. He maintains this game that he and the guests play, where he gives them whatever they need and plays this role, and they expect a lot. But he also has this very rich inner life, his own pain and demons he’s dealing with, in terms of his addiction issues and probably other stuff that’s not in the script, who he is and where he’s coming from.

When I first read it, I only read the first script, and in the first episode, the majority of what you see of him is playing this public face. So I was like, I love this character, I know Mike White’s work and there’s a lot going on underneath this. That’s true of all of us, and I found that really fascinating.

Who or what was your inspiration for your portrayal of Armond? While Armond is cynical and intense about how he approaches his role, did you find sympathy for the demands of hospitality workers in portraying him?

Yes, absolutely, to your second question. I worked in hospitality when I was starting out as an actor, so I had a lot of my own experiences as reference points of being in those situations that Armond finds himself in. But really, the script is so well-written, there was so much that was on the page. I wanted to do justice to what Mike had written. I had to find my inner Armond! I explored the aspects of his character, like having a public face and a private face, that we can all relate to — maybe we don’t all have addiction issues, but we all have things we fall back on to help us get through whatever.

I never felt a lack of sympathy for him. Some of the ways he treats people could be kind of horrific, especially the people who are under him, but I also think he has a level of self-awareness some of the guests lack. At some point, when Lani is having a baby at the end of the first episode, he does realize he messed up, and he’s horrified. But he’s so caught up in this role he’s playing, and the system he’s sort of playing into, that he becomes part of it. He does have enough self-awareness to self-reflect and feel crappy about it, but it’s his job to do what he does, and that’s the insidious thing about this hierarchical system, where there’s privileged, wealthy people at the top — everyone has a role to play and you’re sort of expected to play that role.

Eventually it becomes autopilot, and you’re like, ‘Who am I? What is this?’ That’s the trajectory of Armond, ultimately. ‘What is this world I’m in? What have I become? What is this? Get me out!’ But he’s at an age where he’s like, what would he do if he left? So he’s trapped in a way. I always felt empathy for him from the beginning, through all the crazy, sometimes horrible things he’d done, I think his humanity is also very present.

There’s something so eerie about Armond’s final, downward spiral in the finale, ultimately leading to his death. How did you prepare for this scene, and really give audiences a glimpse into his psyche?

Again, it’s brilliantly written! Those plot points and the trajectories of the characters are so clear in the script, so it was a joy to play because all the pieces are there. We were shooting completely out of order because the schedule was so intense. But there was something about mapping where he was in terms of what kinds of drugs he was taking, what level he was at, especially toward the end.

It was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle in terms of keeping track of where he was emotionally, where he was with the drugs in his system, which was sometimes a challenge but ultimately fun to hold those pieces together. I just was lucky to have an amazing script, and an amazing character written. Some of the drugs he’s taken I haven’t taken, so I had to do research, find out as much as you can, ask a lot of questions to people, try and stitch it all together,

In many ways, Armond and his disdain for the privileged, demanding guests provide a lens through which audiences watch and understand the show. For you, was the ending of the season frustrating, watching these guests get away with everything, and leave the resort with nothing having changed for them?

It is frustrating in a great way, because that’s what happens! It’s frustrating that that’s what happens in this hierarchal system where people with privilege and power at the top, if they misuse it, can literally get away with murder and all sorts of stuff. [The ending] should be frustrating! It made me feel all sorts of mixed emotions at the end.

So, when Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) and Shane get back together, I didn’t like it, I was like, ‘What? I don’t understand!’ And then a bit later, I’m like, of course, that’s what happens — she’ll be miserable, he’ll be oblivious, but they’ll just go on and live this life, and they can afford to put all this stuff behind them and be oblivious, because they can hover above it and let everyone else be broken and suffer below them. I love the way it ends for those reasons. It is incredibly frustrating, it reminds us of many aspects of the society we live in, where that plays out.

Murray Bartlett in “The White Lotus” (HBO)

Almost all of the guests are frustrating to watch in their own ways. But what was it like actually working with the actors and the cast?

It was fun, really, really fun. Mike White set the tone of fun, of let’s play, and dive in and have fun with this. Everyone was on board with that. And it’s such a talented group of actors, and you’re all in the spirit of play, it’s just a recipe for a joyful experience. The scenes I got to do with Jake Lacy — he’s such a great actor with such a great sense of humor, so being in those scenes with someone like that, where there’s such great conflict and tension, it was just fun.

It was really a dream, this experience, because it is such a talented, wonderful group of people. We were lucky we were all stuck together, everyone got on really well, a really lovely group. It was a very unique experience because we all felt incredibly fortunate to be there in the middle of a pandemic, in this beautiful place with this great script, hanging out with each other, having fun. I don’t think we were ever not aware of that, we felt very lucky. It was an experience like no other, and I hope we don’t have to experience working in a pandemic again!

Finally, we learn it was Armond who’s killed and sent home in the cardboard coffin. People had a lot of guesses about who would die — did you have any favorite fan theories? Were you initially surprised by Armond’s fate?

I was surprised — I didn’t know who it was, I suspected at some point that it might be him, and then there were a few other contenders. I sort of thought it was going to be Rachel, and then all the way through, maybe it would be John, the guy that Tanya dates because he seems sick. It could be a number of different people! But I kept coming back to think these are all just red herrings, mainly I thought, it’s Rachel. So, I was shocked when it was Armond! I haven’t keyed into what different fan theories are, or I haven’t come across those. But I love that people are guessing, and I hope people were surprised!

Your character may have been killed off in this season’s final twist, but do you know anything about Season 2 at this point? What are your thoughts on how a second season could go?

I know as much as you do! But it’s Mike White. He can do anything, he’s got such an amazing mind and imagination. Obviously, I would love to be part of Season 2; I don’t know how that would be possible, but it’s Mike White! He can come up with something! [laughs] I’m just thrilled the show is getting a lot of love, to the extent they want to do more, and I think whatever way it goes, I have complete faith Mike will come up with something extraordinary. As much as I love the idea of being in a second season, I also think a season with a new cast and completely different location could be amazing. It’ll be great whatever it is!