Anybody with eyes can’t help but notice the racist and politicized way that the Trump administration is aiding states and cities. Nothing subtle about it. It’s in our face and it’s deadly. The immorality of this president has no bounds.

In a conference call to governors a few days ago, Trump said that he was prepared to be a backup to their efforts to mitigate the health care crisis. In the conversation that followed, Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, replied that they didn’t need a backup. What they need is a Tom Brady. Last night Trump attacked Inslee as well as some other governors.

My father was a very quiet man. But one thing he would say to me and my brothers on many occasions is “Keep on Keeping On.” Good advice in these times of a pandemic, economic lock down and fraying nerves.

One can’t fully understand Trump’s every word and action in this pandemic crisis without taking into account his narcissism, reelection mania, and instinct to polarize people. Any sort of class analysis that leaves these factors on the edges will come up largely empty.

“Democracy can only be saved by democratic men and women,” Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist once wrote in the midst of the Great Depression and fascism’s rise. “The war against democracy begins by the destruction of the democratic temper, the democratic method and the democratic heart.”

As I’ve grown older, and hopefully a little wiser on the edges anyway, I have gained a deeper appreciation of the essential place role of democracy in society. Neither as a core value or necessary practice is it expendable. And this is so in capitalist and socialist societies.