The Grand Inquisitors

[izmeina]

Izzie is the saddest and most tragic of serpents
Whereas normal creatures are curled up in the sack at the stroke of midnight especially during the Viral times when most late night venues are still closed for business, there I was once again glued to the tiny tweet stone screen

For once I was not scrolling or trolling trump but glued to C Span for the live coverage of the Dr Rick Bright testimony
It was like the impeachment hearings all over again but with a much smaller audience and much more riveting drama. For this time, there were a lot more lives on the line


I missed the opening address but did catch Question Time where the politicians were given 5 minutes each to ask questions. Most of course spent their allocated time on making grand speeches and statements or doing Dorothy Dixers (not sure if that is a term used outside of Oz)



Not knowing or recognizing most of the names or faces (Ms Dingell was the only one I had ever heard of before) I had no preconceived notions of who they were or what party they represented. But of course it quickly became apparent. If any speaker ever mentioned or paid respects to the more than 80,000 dead in the USA, it was a good give away they were a Democrat. If anyone praised the amazing leadership of the president, obviously GOP.

Likewise - anyone who mentioned the magical powers of Hydroxychloroquine. I was absolutely astonished that there was not one but at least 5 of them when I was watching. They were all following the mantra - desperate times call for desperate measures. To which Dr Bright replied that while the ideal of double blind randomized tests were not always possible, safety was simply non negotiable and HCQ failed especially the giant stockpile that had been imported without meeting the usual standards.

The most shocking of all was the only pharmacist in the house. Aside from singing the praises of HCQ, he kept asking Dr Bright when he WENT SOUR on HCQ since he had originally seemed to support its use. With the obligatory mention of THAT FRENCH TRIAL
DB explained that he had supported the drug until the results started coming in. The pharmacist got on his high horse and implied that DB had gone sour only when the President spoke up in favour of HCQ so that therefore he was just being an oppositional and defiant party hack and a NEVER TRUMPER
He just went on and on, ignored all warning bells and went a whole 2 minutes over time

Another guttersnipe with a beetroot face and pig eyes kept going on about not following the chain of command and the rule of law and the usual procedural box ticking so beloved of this lot of Republicans.

But the worst of all was the creature who was almost on top of Dr Bright grilling him about his job, his sick leave and how he had the nerve to turn up there on the tax payer's dime when DB had explained quite clearly that he had been on sick leave but was now using up his annual leave to make his appearance before them. But aside from being bullying and rude and bringing up private matters of health and employment in a public forum, this gutter snipe lacked the basic insight that workplace bullying is a major cause of workplace stress and sickness.

It is stressful enough being demoted and locked out of your workplace but when your boss is going out of his way to make it impossible for you to do the actual job that you are being paid for and you know that people have DIED as a consequence and that there is NOTHING at all that you can do to stop it, that must be the most painful mental anguish imaginable.
I could so relate to his situation because I also had a boss who made it impossible to do the job which I was paid for which was to look after old people in a nursing home)

It is not quite true that he could do nothing. Dr Bright chose to be a whistle blower and despite the stress he was under, turns up to face this nasty petty bunch of GOP inquisitors hell bent on dragging his name and reputation through the dirt while they were all too damned gutless to obey their oaths of impartiality as jurors in the Senate trial

After filling in HCQ for the 5th time on my imaginary bingo card, I called it quits for the night. It was 2am by then. Time for some rage tweeting ;)
When I did check Twitter the following morning, I found out that Mike Bowen had also given evidence. He was the owner and manager of the last remaining producer of medical masks in the USA. All the others had gone off shore. He had been offering the government first option on production way back in January. The orders were coming in thick and fast and he was reading the signs. Without the resources of 17 intelligence agencies at his disposal.

They kept giving him the run around. So while he did increase production to meet rapidly rising demand from overseas, he never did run the 4 idle mask making machines because he could not risk it without guaranteed contracts.

I got to see snippets of his testimony on twitter. A no nonsense no BS guy who wiped the floor with the snivelling GOP guttersnipes. And he had voted R all his life and for trump too!

This missed chance to increase PPE supply, Dr Bright's desperate attempts to get his bosses to take the virus seriously, the push to distribute vast quantities of an an untested imported drug WITHOUT medical supervision, the distribution of expired and substandard masks to front line healthcare workers and the unrelenting pressure on all the medics and scientists to put the desires of the politicians above science and evidence was absolutely damning.

The trump spin doctors will need to work overtime to smear and destroy this story. I guess they can always come up with a trade war or a real war to provide a temporary distraction

I was 12 years old when I read Animal Farm followed by 1984. I never imagined that I would see it play out in real life. In my own lifetime

It's like 1938 Germany all over again.