Three Weeks Out
Almost exactly a year ago, on Oct 15, 2019, Jodi Maroney took her own life. While every suicide is a tragedy, they are unfortunately all too common — it is the 10th leading cause of death in the US. Even in this context, Jodi’s story is particularly tragic because it was eminently avoidable. Jodi was a remarkable person — she started flying when she was in high school and in her junior year of college, joined the Marines, where she became a helicopter pilot. She was one of the first pilots to cross into Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later served in Afghanistan as well. In 2006, she transitioned into the reserves, but continued flying for the US Customs and Border Protection. In her spare time, she coached basketball, volunteered at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, and tutored refugee children. However, years after leaving active duty, the stress and trauma of her military experience started catching up to her. It started with insomnia in 2010 and progressed rapidly to a full-blown PTSD diagnosis only a few years later. She tried over 70 different treatments, all to no avail. Beset by constant suicidal thoughts, she finally found a lifeline in a treatment pioneered by a San Diego doctor — Dr. Keifel, founder of the Kadima Neuropsychiatry Institute in La Jolla. The treatment was injections of the drug Ketamine, which was first approved by the FDA (as an anesthetic) in the late 60s (and used in the battlefield in Vietnam). Ketamine is not a silver bullet, but for a certain subset of veterans with acute PTSD, it is the only treatment that has helped and the VA regularly referred eligible patients to Kadima. That is, until Trump showed up.
Faced with rising suicide rates amongst the veterans that he promised to take care of, Trump started touting a new drug from Johnson & Johnson — Spravato, which is a derivative of Ketamine. At his urging, it was fast tracked by the FDA and approved for use in March 2019. However, there was very little clinical evidence about its efficacy and doctors in the VA were reluctant to switch patients on Ketamine injections to Spravato. That didn’t last long though, and with almost zero warning, Ketamine treatments were unilaterally stopped and the patients were switched to Spravato. Nominally, the patients were to be given a choice of Spravato and an IV version of Ketamine, but in practice, there was no such choice. Predictably, the results were disastrous, with most patients getting no relief with Spravato. The most tragic consequence was the suicide of Jodi Maroney — she found it impossible to carry on without the relief offered by Ketamine treatments. This is not speculation or even informed guesswork — she explicitly said so in the suicide note that she left behind. (I want to acknowledge the reporting from KPBS and inewssource that I based most of the above write-up on.)
And why exactly did Trump promote this (unproven) cure? Turns out that the makers of Spravato lobbied Trump via his associates at his Mar-a-Lago club and in return Trump promised to “persuade” the VA to start using this drug to treat veterans. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to backroom deals done by the Trump administration — the latest installment of NY Times investigation into Trump’s taxes makes that abundantly clear.
The mainstream press has not been lax about documenting the excesses and failures of the Trump administration, but they are so voluminous and continuous that “smaller” transgressions such as the one above don’t get much mindshare. You are left to wonder about the lack of humanity and callous cruelty of a group of people that is willing to risk the lives of battle scarred soldiers simply to make a little bit more money.
The other defining quality of the Trump regime has been the presumption of competence and regal entitlement when neither is even remotely warranted. Mix in the sanctimonious claims to the moral high ground and it’s readily obvious why the words and, more crucially, the actions of this administration are forever setting our collective teeth on edge. Taken as a whole, Trump’s cabinet is a perfect embodiment of this quality — peopled as it is with one supremely unqualified person after the other. Betsy DeVos used her family’s Amway fortune to contribute her way to be Education Secretary. Her signature achievement is going to be a 2,033 page update to the handling of campus sexual assault allegations, that is part of the Title IX statute. Her update, somewhat ironically pushed through in the #MeToo era, gives expanded rights to the accused party and requires universities to conduct a court-like proceeding to rule on any allegation. The updates were opposed from the very start by various women’s groups, Democrats, and indeed the universities themselves, but they were pushed through anyway. The other stalwart of the Trump cabinet is Ben Carson, the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary who is most known for two things — ordering $40,000 worth of furniture for his office (only to cancel the order when it became public) and for confusing ‘Real Estate Owned’ (REO) — a term that should have been very familiar to a HUD secretary — for ‘Oreo’. Actually, it’s possible that he would be known for a great many other things, but his speech pattern is so lugubrious that most listeners likely nod off before he gets to the end of his first sentence.
The apotheosis though have to be the roles assumed by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. One could easily extend this to the entire Trump clan, but at least Trump Jr and Eric have largely limited themselves to serving themselves or their father’s political fortunes. Ivanka and Jared, however, have deemed themselves experts on any and all issues facing the country and have been ubiquitous in thrusting themselves into the spotlight. With no demonstrated diplomatic experience, Ivanka has led multiple delegations to various foreign countries where the local Heads of State are forced to kowtow to her simply because they are aware that she is The Donald’s favorite child. And then there is Jared Kushner — the leader of the “Slim Suit Crowd.” It was way back in March 2017 when Kushner was put in charge of the newly created “White House Office of American Innovation” whose remit was to bring in “fresh thinking” to the US government and infuse it with solutions from the private sector. Kushner was given an all-encompassing portfolio under the aegis of this office — they would tackle the opioid crisis, trade deals, and of course the Middle East. After working his magic on the opioid crisis (by essentially doing nothing), he reserved his best for the perennial conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In what can be at best dismissed as hubris on steroids, Jared promised us peace in the Middle East within a few months of Trump’s inauguration. Here we are almost 4 years later and all he has to show for it are the shifting of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and signing of agreements between Israel and UAE and Bahrain — both of which largely just put on paper what was already the reality on the ground. A case could very well be made that the shifting of the embassy actually set the peace process backwards since it basically was a poke in the eye for the Palestinians. He did produce a “peace proposal”, which was promptly rejected by the Palestinians — not terribly surprising since they were not consulted on it at all. Oh, don’t forget his bromance with MBS — the acknowledged mastermind behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and various other atrocities in Saudi Arabia.
Despite the real world consequences of this man-child dabbling in the highest echelons of diplomacy, the most painful and tragic impact was felt here right at home. In late March, as the chaotic and disorganized Trump administration struggled to respond to a crisis that they wouldn’t admit even existed, Jared rode in as a self-appointed savior. Simply by virtue of being the President’s favorite son-in-law (or the son he wishes he had), he took charge of the US government’s pandemic response. Not officially mind you — nominally, Mike Pence still had that role. With zero experience or knowledge of public health, disaster response, logistics, or indeed the gears and machinery of the federal and state governments (not to mention, the myriad agencies, hospitals, and medical equipment manufacturers involved), Jared Kushner brought in his team of “bros” to manage the crisis. The main qualification seemed to be sartorial, for which they earned the derisive “Slim Suit Crowd” moniker. This group took charge of organizing the acquisition and distribution of PPE, ventilators, and other other scarce resources right when everything was falling apart. In his infinite wisdom (and reflexive invocation of the omnipotence of the private sector), he also dispatched many of his minions (with equally thin resumes) to take charge of various government agencies. A lot of this was reported in the press at that time, with his petulant response of “It’s ours” as his reasoning for rejecting requests from states for an allocation from the federal stockpile of PPEs drawing particular derision. However, the real depth of their dysfunction only came to light via a whistleblower complaint from a volunteer on Kushner’s pandemic self-titled “Impact Team.” And in a really delicious twist, this whistleblower turns out to be a Kennedy, RFK’s grandson, to be specific. The 26 year-old Max Kennedy Jr was so alarmed by what he saw and experienced that he filed the whistleblower complaint in violation of an NDA he had signed. In Max’s description (as outlined in a recent New Yorker article), Kushner’s team responded to what was the biggest mobilization challenge since World War II with a group of frat boys and unpaid volunteers. Veterans of FEMA and other disaster management experts were pushed aside as this group made a mockery of the crisis with their cavalier, self-important approach. It is clear that they made an already terrible crisis into an unmitigated catastrophe. Hopefully someday there will be a full accounting of the number of lives that could have been saved with a competent response to this pandemic.
Trump gave a number of “interviews” in the steroid induced post-hospitalization fog. I almost felt sorry for Trump, watching his contortions in these interviews. The poor guy couldn’t decide if his position should be the macho one of being a “perfect physical specimen” who had little need for any drugs (let alone the experimental ones that he did take) and who could have returned from Walter Reed in “less than 24 hours” or should he talk up the “very powerful drugs” that were developed on his watch, that not only “cured” him in record time but he would also soon make available “for free” to the entire nation. So, he simply took both positions simultaneously — being at no risk of being challenged in the friendly confines of Fox News.
I realized yesterday (with some alarm) that Lindsey Graham and I did agree on at least one thing: the ongoing hearings for the SCOTUS nominee, Amy Coney Barrett are largely political theater that will change nobody’s mind. The pattern was clear even in the small portions that I watched. It was mostly speeches from both sides, with very few actual questions. Not that it would have mattered — like every other nominee in recent memory, ACB has refused to take a position on anything — including, if a President of the US should always commit to a peaceful transfer of power. In fact, the only thing I learned from these hearings is that ACB would be an excellent poker player. She has this amazing ability to sit still (without appearing stiff) for hours on end and keep a perfectly neutral expression, irrespective whatever the senators — Republican and Democratic alike — were spouting. It was also jarring (in 2020) to hear Republican senator after Republican senator talk up the “large” family of ACB — 7 kids, including two adopted from Haiti. The clear implication was that here is a woman who has achieved career success while also doing the right thing on the family front and hence, well deserving of our support. No male nominee’s parenting skills or child care ability has come in for so much note during their hearings. It is infuriating that this is still the standard being held up the GOP and that too for someone seeking to fill the seat occupied by Justice Ginsburg.
‘Schadenfreude’ began to trend as soon as Trump’s positive COVID-19 test became public. But as he continued to command the spotlight with one shameless and self-serving action and pronouncement after the other from his hospital room, the more appropriate word seems to be weltschmerz. Did anything matter anymore? The butchered response to the pandemic, the invocation of racist tropes and stoking of racial biases, the unwillingness to acknowledge (let alone fix) systemic injustices, the dismissal of concern for our air and water, the denial of climate change, the cruel and indefensible policies towards asylum seekers on the southern border, the coddling of dictators, the dismissal and disdain of allies, the abrogation of America’s sacred promise to the world, the sheer incompetence of a cabinet of cronies and yes-men, the meanness, the brazen corruption and sense of entitlement — they have auditioned one by one to be the last straw. And they have all failed.
Here we are, 21 days from a momentous general election and all I want is to just fast forward through them and get to Nov 3rd. So much seems to happen news-wise every single day, but nothing really changes. For every poll that shows Biden increasing his polling lead, there is an ‘analysis’ that shows how Trump could still win in Michigan or Pennsylvania. There is always a fresh outrage du jour, but all it does is supplant the one from the previous day. Doomsday scenarios detailing of all the ways Trump and his supporters could (& will) throw the election results and the nation into disarray are met by opinion pieces (albeit a smaller number) that seek to convince us that none of that will come to pass, perhaps because Trump is not really the Machiavelli that many of us assume him to be. There is simply no escaping the collective angst about this election — after the shock of 2016, the only thing that we will consider definitive are the actual poll results. Can we hold our breath for 21 days? I am sure going to give it a shot.