American Turmoil | ModeShift

On Covid-19 News Coverage: Praising Mainstream Media, Reviling “Fake” Fox News

by Keith SchneiderApril 6, 2020April 22, 20202

The International Society for Infectious Diseases, founded in 1986 and based in Brookline, Mass., is a global network of 90,000 scientists and health specialists from around the world. The Society facilitates the exchange of knowledge about dangerous diseases in people, animals, and plants. One of the celebrated projects undertaken by the society is its ProMed listserv that posts alerts of disease anomalies everywhere on the planet. On December 30, 2019 ProMed posted an “urgent notice …

In China Authorities Knew About Corona Virus As Early as November and Lied; In U.S. Authorities Knew in Early January and Failed To Act

by Keith SchneiderMarch 31, 2020April 22, 20205

Seen from the screen of an electron microscope, coronaviruses are a single strand of RNA surrounded by a fatty outer envelope and contained in a crown of spiky hazard. Like Velcro, they are perfectly designed to latch onto host cells and inject genetic instructions that so confuse the cells that they produce more virus to infect more cells to produce more virus. Typically the consequence of a corona virus attack is an illness familiar to …

Behind Trump’s Decisions, Unfathomable to the Left, Lies a Deep Reserve of Tribute on the Right

by Keith SchneiderMarch 26, 2020November 27, 20206

Three days ago, March 23, President Trump signaled his intent to relax guidelines on self-quarantining, saying “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.” Health authorities and citizens all over the country (including me) reacted with profound dismay at such a precipitous and apparently dangerous decision. But across a separate civic and political landscape — call it The Great Divide — the president’s decision to open the economy and tilt away from public safety is …

Dangerous Work For Virus Truthtellers in the Trump Realm; Tony Fauci Navigated It and Rescued America

by Keith SchneiderMarch 17, 2020May 4, 20205

SOMERSET, KY — On Tuesday, February 25, when there were just 14 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases , a unit of the Centers for Disease Control, participated in a news conference during which she delivered an accurate and disturbing projection about what was occurring. The consequences of the virus’s spread, she said, “may seem overwhelming and disruption to everyday …

COVID-19 and 9/11 — Catastrophes of Leadership

by Keith SchneiderMarch 16, 2020October 18, 20203

SOMERSET, KY — An editor in New York who is a good friend and one of the great newsroom leaders of our time remarked to me four days ago, “Honestly, I think this is going to be far bigger than 9/11 in its impact on Americans’ lives.” In a brief sentence he tied together the two national catastrophes of this century, and projected the COVID-19 pandemic will be worse. There is one more way the …

Alien Nation In Time of Virus

by Keith SchneiderMarch 15, 2020January 18, 20252

SOMERSET, KY — On February 29, 2020, a day after President Trump headlined one of his cult rallies in South Carolina and called the coronavirus the Democrats’ “new hoax,” I was in New York City with my wife, Gabrielle Gray, celebrating my mother’s 90th birthday. The timeline, as you’ll see, is crucial to understanding the dimensions of an emergency that has unfolded in New York and the United States in the 15 days since, and …

“That’s Not Who We Are.” Wrong. It Is Who We Are. So Let’s Deal With It.

by Keith SchneiderDecember 29, 2019October 18, 20202

SOMERSET, KY. — “That’s not who we are.” A number of Democratic presidential candidates have joined other national leaders in uttering these words. Presumably they’re meant as a rallying cry for the sane among us, served up to define principles of fairness and justice — the country’s core values. Actually, it’s not who we are. What we are is the spasm of lies, violence, injustice, and hate that has characterized much of American history, a …

In Montgomery, Bryan Stevenson is Thurgood Marshall’s Heir Apparent For Supreme Court

by Keith SchneiderOctober 9, 2019May 4, 20200

Montgomery, which has occupied one bank of the Alabama River since 1819, never deliberately set out to distinguish itself as the white hot furnace of American racial injustice, or the historic hearth of reconciliation. That’s what Alabama’s capital has become, though. Yesterday the city of 200,000, where slaves were sold and where the Civil Rights movement was born, took another memorable step. It elected Steven Reed, Montgomery County’s first African American probate judge, as its …

Will Americans Defend Our Democracy?

by Keith SchneiderApril 21, 2019April 21, 20192

SOMERSET, KY. — During the first week of March 2016, nine months after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidency, the Russian Federationâ€™s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), opened their online assault on American democracy. The Russian military intelligence unit began to hack, according to Robert Mueller’s special counsel report, “the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees, and volunteers supporting the Clinton campaign, including the email account of campaign …

What Keeps Us Sane – Family and Friends

by Keith SchneiderDecember 4, 2018June 22, 20208

SOMERSET, KY — This is the week that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is supposed to make public sentencing memorandums for three Trump allies who pled guilty to various illegal acts committed in and out of service to the president. From what’s been made public, and from what I know from fact-checking Seth Abramson’s book, Proof of Collusion, it’s not going to be pretty or something to celebrate. The country has been in a state …