Week of 07/20/2020

KempTrump Endangers His State
– by David Matthews 2

Does the governor of Georgia really want to see his constituents die?

That’s the question that we have to seriously ask of Governor Brian Kemp, aka Governor KempTrump.

The state of Georgia was slow to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.  One of the last states to order “shelter-in-place” and the very first to demand the state “open up”.  Even Narcissist Trump commented that KempTrump’s decision to end restrictions may have been too soon.  And yet, KempTrump supposedly got the “blessing” of his orange lord and savior before public opinion shifted against it.

So, no surprise, Georgia is exploding with new cases of coronavirus.  More people getting sick.  More people going to the hospital.  More people dying.

And Governor KempTrump does nothing about that except “strongly urges” people to social distance and wear masks as he continues to tell businesses to go ahead and resume operations.  Go out and shop!  Go out and work!  Get your kids to school!  It’s all about the businesses, don’t you know?  It’s all about the economy!  Just wear a mask and practice social distancing.

Yeah, except that we don’t want to.  Because we Georgians are listening to the orange-skinned narcissist and his myriad of talk radio and cable propaganda cohorts who all say that this is a hoax, it’s less than the flu, it’s all a plot to make their orange lord and savior look bad, and it will all magically go away. We don’t want to wear masks, we don’t want to socially distance, we don’t want to stay home anymore.  We want to go out, we want to go party, and we want to be around our friends.

So when the local cities and counties are faced with this, faced with skyrocketing outbreaks and hospitalizations and deaths, and with a governor that seemingly just does not give one care about human beings and is only concerned with businesses, what do you expect them to do?  They’re going to take action.  They’re going to exact mask mandates and start rolling back the openings.

Except, whoops, that bring them directly in conflict with Governor KempTrump and his idea of reopening the state in record time.  You can’t go “forward” when all of these cities and counties are pulling back.

So Governor KempTrump did what he did before; he issued a new executive order that dictates that the cities and counties must follow his plans to the letter, no more and no less.

Now that would be reasonable if his “plans” were similar to his first executive order, which was to have a uniform shelter-in-place policy so you would not have one city be stricter and one being more lax.  Except these are not.  These “plans” fly in the face of the resurging numbers of coronavirus infections.  Governor KempTrump is forcing local governing bodies to ignore those rising numbers of infection and hospitalization and deaths and follow his reopening plans to the letter.

Oh, but it gets even worse... KempTrump’s new executive order singles out the City of Atlanta, whose mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, recently tested positive for COVID-19 along with her family, and declares that no municipality at all shall override his will.  He then follows up with a lawsuit – yes, a lawsuit – directed at Mayor Bottoms to essentially strip her of her local authority as mayor and to silence her from speaking about the subject.

And now, governor, you have a problem.

The first part of the act, the executive order, was within the scope of his power.  I don’t agree with it.  You will be hard-pressed to find any thinking human being agreeing with putting businesses over people.  But it is within his power.

The personal lawsuit, on the other hand, does not.

This is a tactic straight out of the playbook of KempTrump’s lord and savior, Narcissist Trump.  You cross that person, they sue you.  And they keep suing you and drag it out to infinity until you stand down.  And it should come as to no surprise that this lawsuit was filed right after KempTrump was visited by his lord and savior in Atlanta.

Now I’m sure you’ll probably say that this lawsuit is ultimately meaningless, that some judge will simply dismiss it later on.  But it has nothing at all to do with validity.  It’s about silence.  It’s about bullying.  It is about the governor of the state usurping the duly-elected mayor’s authority and forcing her into silence.  It is about the Governor of Georgia assimilating the office of Mayor of the City of Atlanta.  This is the go-to tactic of a malignant narcissist, and we’ve been seeing this happen in front of the world for years, and now it’s happening in Georgia with his orange-ass-kissing acolyte.

Let’s get brutally honest here... this blatant power-grab by Governor KempTrump endangers the citizens of Georgia, young and old.  And all to appease his lord and savior’s quest for economic prosperity.  He puts businesses over people in the fervent hope that he could bring an economic turnaround that would save Narcissist Trump’s re-election.  And in doing so, he does not care one whit about the people that of the state.

Oh, yes, he “strongly urges” people to wear masks to social distance.  But he considers a mask mandate “unenforceable”.  So is the law requiring people to wear seat belts, but I have yet to hear anyone say that it should be a reason to ignore it.  So are speed limits on the highways, which this commentator has seen people violate every single day on more than one occasion on Interstate 85.  But does anyone say we should ignore those because the police aren’t enforcing them like they used to?  The State of Georgia is fighting in court to impose the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the state’s history, but a mask mandate in a time of a global pandemic is “unenforceable”?  I call BS on that!

I will make this as plain and simple as possible: every single COVID-19 infection from this point on in the state of Georgia is the fault of Governor Brian Porter Kemp.  Every coronavirus hospitalization from this past week forward is on him.  Every death because of that pandemic from this point on is on him.  He could have stopped it.  He could have taken the steps to minimize it like many other governors and mayors are doing across the country.  He could have done what businesses like WalMart and Target and Kohl’s and CVS are putting in.  He didn’t.  He chose to put business over people.  He chose to put money over people.  Because of that, every case that could have been prevented because of his actions is on him, personally.

You want to take the credit for an economic boom, Governor?  Then you also take the consequence of putting money over people at a time of a global pandemic.  A pandemic that most of the world has been able to contain at this point because they did what you did not.  They responded early, swiftly, and they waited until their numbers were far better that ours before even thinking about opening up again.

And now it is up to your constituents, governor, to fend for themselves.  We know that we cannot count on you, and you will not let any other municipality to step up to do what you refuse to do.  We now know where your true fealty lies, sir, and it is not with the people of Georgia.