Madness

Pandemic

I was kind of grumpy this morning. Because I’m pissed now at both Ken Ganley Toyota and Spitzer Toyota, I’d gone to Rohrich Toyota to try and get new windshield wiper blades (this is the time of year to do that here) and found a big sign on the door saying they were closed due to COVID-19.

Auto parts, like auto repair, are an essential service, exempt from the governor’s shutdown order. And I don’t like aftermarket windshield wiper blades so I always go to a dealer for these.

So I went to South Hills Toyota in Washington County. I had to fill out a night drop form, including the vehicle identification number (VIN), and leave it in the service bay. This after having ordered the parts on the phone.

Normally, I just go to the parts counter and they install the new windshield wiper blades. And as it happened (I found this out after I’d failed at Rohrich) I also needed a battery for my keyless entry fob, making all this all the more urgent—another parts counter function.

And in the end, this was really what it pretty much came down to, apart from having to leave the car in the service bay and walk away because I couldn’t even wait in their waiting room.

So I walked across the street to a Sheetz convenience store. While trying to figure out what I’d order or purchase, the service department called me and informed me that they’d need the car all day because I didn’t have an appointment. I just told them, no. I’d come back and retrieve the car.

As I was walking back, there was the parts guy replacing the windshield wiper blades. He said it’d just take a few seconds, explained the guy from the service department. As I carefully maintained an ample social distance between myself and them, he then replaced the battery in the fob and informed me there’s a little corrosion there—bad news, but the fob can be replaced at some expense.

So in the end, I accomplished what I set out to accomplish, which was great, but the drama seems more than a bit much.

I know I’ve been asking how long we can go on with a precipitous economic collapse. Apart from that is the question of how long I can sustain this madness.

David Roth is blistering on both Donald Trump and media coverage of Trump,[1] who, along with fellow Republicans, seems to have used an initial denial and minimization of the seriousness of COVID-19 to cover a retreat from stocks[2] and to enable his fellow Republicans to develop a stimulus plan that, at the time and to many, seemed serious.[3] But what remains crystal clear is that the poor still cannot afford to stop working and rarely have the opportunity to work from home.[4]

David Roth, “The Enduring Delusion of a Chastened Trump,” New Republic, April 3, 2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/157154/enduring-delusion-chastened-trump

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Denise Lu, and Gabriel J.X. Dance, “Location Data Says It All: Staying at Home During Coronavirus Is a Luxury,” New York Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/us/coronavirus-stay-home-rich-poor.html


  1. [1]David Roth, “The Enduring Delusion of a Chastened Trump,” New Republic, April 3, 2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/157154/enduring-delusion-chastened-trump
  2. [2]Adam Gaffney, “Trump sees the coronavirus as a threat to his self-interest – not to people,” Guardian, March 17, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/17/trump-sees-the-coronavirus-as-a-threat-to-his-self-interest-not-to-people; Susan B. Glasser, “A President Unequal to the Moment,” New Yorker, March 12, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/a-president-unequal-to-the-moment; Dana Milbank, “For Trump, a reckoning has come,” Washington Post, February 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/28/trump-reckoning-has-come/; Ashley Parker, Yasmeen Abutaleb, and Lena H. Sun, “Squandered time: How the Trump administration lost control of the coronavirus crisis,” Washington Post, March 7, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-squandered-time/2020/03/07/5c47d3d0-5fcb-11ea-9055-5fa12981bbbf_story.html; David Remnick, “How the Coronavirus Shattered Trump’s Serene Confidence,” New Yorker, March 22, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/30/how-the-coronavirus-shattered-trumps-serene-confidence; Paul Waldman, “How coronavirus has deeply flummoxed conservative media,” Washington Post, February 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/28/how-coronavirus-has-deeply-flummuxed-conservative-media/; Kevin D. Williamson, “History Called — and Senator Burr Called His Broker,” National Review, March 20, 2020, https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/history-called-and-senator-burr-called-his-broker/
  3. [3]Jeff Stein et al., “Senate Republicans release massive economic stimulus bill for coronavirus response,” Washington Post, March 19, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/19/trump-coronavirus-economic-plan-stimulus/
  4. [4]Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Denise Lu, and Gabriel J.X. Dance, “Location Data Says It All: Staying at Home During Coronavirus Is a Luxury,” New York Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/us/coronavirus-stay-home-rich-poor.html

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