Today is day -1 of the official COVID-19 lockdown of Washington state. By close of business tomorrow, we take 14 days to try to stop or at least slow the number of newly infected patients and prevent utter chaos in our hospitals.
It’s been relatively quiet here. My morning walks with the dog are basically the same as they have been for the last 3 years, slightly quieter I guess with fewer cars roaring past on the way to work. But the park I take the pup to still had a number of people walking – in groups.
I’m trying not to judge people. I’m trying to be gentle and kind and forgiving. I am trying to be trusting and child-like. The people in groups don’t make me angry, just a bit frustrated.
Most of the public response to this so far has been frustrating and yet also simultaneously not frustrating because it followed the same pattern in each city where the virus touched down.
The first wave of folks denied the severity. These were the “flu kills more people” people. I tried to tell these folks that no, this is different because we don’t have any immunity to the virus and because it seems to kill people at random. And I pointed to China – they shut down their entire economy, the locked people in their homes, why would they intentionally tank billions of dollars in lost productivity if this wasn’t serious?
And then the second wave hit, the people who didn’t want to be inconvenienced. Those folks know that people are going to die, that this is a pretty serious disease, but seem to either deliberately ignore the advice of governments or just didn’t want to hear it. These are the people going to spring break, playing football in the park, gathering to watch football matches, and who still gather in groups. In Italy it took massive numbers of horrific deaths to reach these people. Basically, someone they knew needed to die.
And now we have the third wave, the “you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet” folks. The people who are saying that some people will have to die because otherwise the American economy will fail. These are the actual psychopaths and sociopaths. Anyone who can devalue human life to that point is just a straight up psychopath.
I’ve long said that Trump isn’t an outlier in the Republican Party. His views aren’t especially odd. In some cases they may be a slightly more right-wing version of what many Republicans believe but at the basics of their philosophy are all the things that Trump stands for. The difference is that Trump says the things out loud that people used to only say in either code or behind closed doors.
Trump’s position that “some people have to die to save the economy” isn’t a radical departure from the party platform. That’s the fundamental argument behind the right’s hatred of universal healthcare: that some people should die for lack of care, because they are poor. And before you criticize me for just picking on Republicans, there are plenty of Democrats who believe the same. We basically have two parties whose main concern is taking care of the oligarchs. One is just more overtly evil about it.
And the part about saying the quiet stuff out loud is still very true. Whether it’s COVID-19 or the climate crisis, the policy of the United States is to let the poor people die. That corporations are not just people, they are MORE important than people. And that my friends is pure evil.
The thing about the economy and productivity is that it will all come back. It’s not like we are all going to stop working forever. Like we are all just going to stay home forever. We will all go back to work when this is over. The stocks will go back up. People at the top will continue raking in billions. It has always come back, every single time.
I’m trying not to let all of this get me down. My city is largely unaffected by COVID-19 and my state is doing a lockdown starting tomorrow. We are a mostly blue state and they are trying their best to flatten the curve here to protect the people who will be most devastated by this virus. And I don’t mean the elderly or sick. I mean the healthcare workers. That’s the thing about Trump’s proclamation, it’s not JUST the elderly (as if that wasn’t disgusting enough) it’s the nurses and doctors who will have to go to work without adequate equipment to do their jobs. They will get infected, some of them will die. A nurse was discovered in Georgia today, she had expired 12-16 hours earlier in her home where her pre-school child was nearby.
There are going to be so many tragedies. And this is a timely reminder that death is often random, violent, and unexpected. We are all hanging above the abyss by a single thread. Love people if you can. And pass on positive memories for them to cherish for as long as they are alive.
Let’s talk about Cesc baby
I’d been wondering why Cesc Fabregas had been on my Twitter timeline more than usual these last few months. He’d been tweeting about how much he hates Tottenham or something and seemed to me like he was looking for a way to get back into the graces of the Arsenal supporters.
And today we get to listen to a rather candid interview with Cesc by Andrew of Arseblog and… Ok, fine. I don’t have the energy or anger left to fight this whole thing anymore
Step 1 – go listen to Arseblog’s interview with Fabregas. Step 2 – I don’t know, whatever you want to do from here on out is fine.
There were lots of eyebrow raising moments in the interview but my overall takeaway is that Cesc and Arsenal both shoulder some of the blame for his departure and for the fact that he ended up going to Chelsea to play for Mourinho.
Cesc admits that in 2011 he downed tools. It’s not a direct quote but he says he did things he regrets to force the move to Barcelona. That was always plainly obvious. There’s no chance Arsenal would have sold a player of Cesc’s quality, with the contract he had remaining, for the cut rate price they sold him for, unless there was some extraordinary action by the player to force such a move.
But I also have some sympathy for him. In the summer of 2010 when he first asked to leave, he was surrounded by some teammates who – while they may be a bit fun to remember now – weren’t very serious as footballers. And not only that but Cesc lets out that Xabi Alonso was so eager to come to Arsenal in summer 2009 he was begging. Cesc tried to get the club to buy him but they didn’t. And it wasn’t for lack of money. Arsenal sold Adebayor and Kolo Toure that summer and raised £40m – they also bought Vermaelen for £10m and Xabi went to Real Madrid for just £30m. Maybe it wouldn’t have been that easy but for a young player like Cesc to be at a club where his teammates in midfield were Alex Song and Denilson – and it could have been Xabi Alonso – that drop in quality had to be hard to take.
Especially after he’d just won the World Cup with Spain, playing with Iniesta, Puyols, Pique, Ramos, Busquets, and Xabi Alonso. The idea that trophies were just another year away when the club were selling players and socking away the profits, while getting top quality from just one or two guys, enbough to just keep the whole boat afloat couldn’t have sat well. Few of you, if any, would stay at a company which did that.
And even the whole thing about the summer he went to Chelsea. He said that he wanted to come back to Arsenal. Arsenal were informed and had one week to answer. Instead of responding right away with a yes or a no, just waited the week and in the end said nothing.
And you know what? My curse is that I see all the sides to this. Of course the club waited a week, not just because Wenger was hurt but why let Chelsea, etc., get him in as soon as possible?
Anyway, it’s a great little interview. And at the end of it I guess I’m just ready to say, ok, fine. Whatever. It’s not hard to forgive him wanting to go to Barcelona. It’s a little more difficult to forget the 2-0 loss in 2014. Or him hugging Mourinho that season. But whatever, let’s just take the good memories and move on. There’s too much to worry about right now.
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I’m not really happy about Cesc downing tools, but can’t blame him too much…he came from there, and who wouldn’t have wanted to play on that Barca team(aside from maybe CR7).
Nor can I blame him much for the Chelsea thing. As you said, it was pretty clear he wanted to come back to Arsenal at the time, but we didn’t make that happen. Same as I don’t really blame Giroud for making the same journey. At least neither went to Spurs or Utd.
It was interesting to see how hard he turned on his teammates in the interview, just short of calling some of them “fucktards” and “assclowns”. It felt harsh but then I remember how we went into whole entire Premier League campaigns and played actual Champions League football with Alex Song, Eboue, and Bendtner and I can kind of see his point. For an athlete at the highest level it’s incredibly hard to watch your team get clowned because they play with mediocre players. And worse to see that the club aren’t building toward anything.
The defensive pair was Squillaci and a young Kos!
“you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet”
This line never fails to disgust me, whether I hear it from people talking about protestors molotoving counter-protestors, collateral damage to an Iraqi hospital or how the Earth is too populated to support its ecology. No one HAS to make that omelet in the first place.
As for Cesc, I listened through the interview as well, and my main takeaway is that he is a guy who adjusts to the situation, with loyalty to his current club extending to so far as alignment with his personal goals. As he should.
His career plan was well thought out two or three years in advance, and with enough time at each club(or stage) to try to make it work. Path at Barcelona first team blocked by Iniesta, Xavi? Move to Arsenal where there was no other young midfielder in his way. Invincibles disband, and he is made the talisman in a team full of talented hopefuls- Grow into the role and make his name.
He then said that the only two players on his level were RvP and Nasri. At this point, he knew that he had outgrown the club’s limited ambitions. Plus, there was a twinge of bitterness at the pressure of the captaincy at 21 (“I had to hold player meetings! At 21!”). By this point, his move to Barcelona was attractive as the pressure was off and he could focus back on being a player.
The Xabi Alonso part was soul crushing. To think we were so close to having the world’s best deep-lying playmaker lining up next to the world’s best young midfielder!
Chelsea… By then, he had lost his legs and that bite in the tackle. He wouldn’t have been able to dovetail with Ozil and Ramsey.
I’ve always had time for Cesc. He’s no more than any of us: he’s human, with all frailties and faults and gifts and magic that goes with it. At 24, I downed tools too, I’d had it with my employer who promised me one thing but delivered another. I left to pursue music. But I’ve regretted the way I left ever since. It’s the one time in my life when I stopped giving a s%&t and I wasn’t a professional. But I’m human. It happens. You learn and you move on. As I think and hope, Cesc has done as well. He’s top class. Great interview.
I enjoyed the interview. I always felt a bit sorry for Cesc in his last few years. He was desperate for the team to succeed. I saw it on his face week after week. It was painful. We had one of the best creative midfielders in Europe and we surrounded him with just plain average. Such a waste. It’s clear from the interview he has regrets about how he engineered the move to Barcelona, and rightly so, but you look at the other side of things and realize the club did nothing to convince him its ambitions lay anywhere beyond the hope/faith that Wenger could somehow manage to get the team into the top four year after year by punching above its weight. How that ‘strategy’ came home to roost is evidenced in the last several years. A Europa club, and maybe no longer even that.
This is going to take years to fix. I hope Arteta is up for the task. I certainly want him to be.
Thanks for the post Tim
It’s great that you keep posting and I love to read the stuff you are doing. I have 2 dogs that I walk everyday and sometimes twice a day. They absolutely love our walks and I am really glad to hear that you can still get out and walk pork chop everyday. I am also glad you are safe.
With regard to the Cesc interview, it was certainly interesting. I understand why he pushed so hard for the move to Barca. Fair or not I partially blame Arsene for the lack of talent around Cesc. . I remember he was once quoted as saying we don’t have to buy superstars because we build our own. He believed he could take average players that he obtained at a bargain and improve them and turn them into great players. I think he also believed he could take youth players from his academy and develop a steady stream of superstars. In reality I don’t think either of those goals were realistic. Its just my own speculation but I think Arsene let his ego get the best of him and believed the hype which had built around him after the invincibles.
Gehlomar
Cesc was only 27 when he joined Chelsea. It seems like he has been around forever but is still only 32. Why would his legs give out at age 27? We have talked about this a lot when we discussed Mesut Ozil but players lose their effectiveness and their ability to influence the games begins to decline at different ages.
Arsene had the reputation of being a great developer of youth players but if you look at his record I think its pretty clear the his ability was over rated. My self I don’t think a manager really can consistently be successful developing youth players. Sometimes they get lucky such as Fergie when the Scholes, Beckham, Giggs group all came along about the same time. I was not following English football at the time but I am sure at the time Fergie was hailed as a great developer of youth but he was never able to come close to replicating what happened with that group. Barca has the reputation of being the worlds best youth academy but I don’t think they have produced a regular home grown first team starter from their academy since Pedro who came out around 2008
Bill I believe cesc himself was made by arsene.i guess cesc is overrated then.rvp kolo Ashley Henry anelka edu viera adebayor pires Freddie Gilberto cesc woj sagna just a few overrated guys he made.for me he felt bigger than the club.he did give his all.but why join Chelsea n mourinho while claiming you love arsenal.man city Milan all wanted him then.gerard was made by Liverpool and stood with them till the end.how many trophies did he win beyond istanbul.did he play with the best players.beyond Suarez Torres xabi who else was top quality all through his time there.even Reina was a poor man’s lehman.
Trump’s been feeding the nation half truths and outright lies in his daily covid-19 briefings and yet majority of Americans now approve his handling of the crisis.
I give up.
Never blamed Cesc for leaving to play with the most talented group of players of the generation, some of which he knew from the academy.
Xavi , Iniesta , Messi……..enough said.
It’s not like Wenger plucked him out of some obscurity and against all odds made him into a superstar.
Fabregas was destined for greatness, Wenger just accelerated the process by playing him much earlier than he would’ve at Barca.
Some blame Wenger for not taking him back. I don’t.
The way he left Arsenal, there was no going back.
Nico was destined for greatness but look how it turned out.having the right people matters
Who’s Nico?
I’d guess at Anelka. Eventually had a decent career, but he could have had it so much better. His talent certainly deserved it.
Marcos
Just like with Fergie and his ability to develop youth, in order to say someone is really good at doing something they should be able to consistently replicate whatever they did. My theory has always been that Arsene and David Dein did a great job of scouting and finding a players who were on the verge of breaking out such as Henry and he put them together and they made a magical team. The rest of the world caught up to Arsene in terms of scouting and identifying players early in this century. If you look at your list of players that you say Arsene “made” they almost all came to the club around the turn of this century but he was never able to come close to replicating what he did with that group. Arsene’s ability to build his own superstars faded quickly when the rest of the world caught up with him in terms of identifying players.
You forget that clubs with more money could pay more for those potentials.so how would arsene keep up since arsenal couldn’t spend such
Arsene found the players but because of financial doping they jumped ship.
Sagna.. jumped
Clichy..jumped
Adybayor..jumped
Hleb. jumped
van Persie..jumped
Song..jumped
Nasri..jumped.
Rosicky.. unfortuanate injury
Diaby..unfortunate injury
Eduardo..unfortunate injury.
Ramsey, Cazorla had a couple of bad injuries later too.
Could any other manager lose those players and keep us in the top 4? Fergie and Pep have never had those problems or the idiot at Spurs.
A few things:
Sagna and Clichy were pushed and Alex Song was fired for his terrible work ethic.