How does one number the dead?

We can do so by sheer data: 100,000 dead and counting, no end in sight.

We can do so by stories: the families torn apart, the lives cut short in full bloom, the lives ended too soon before an honored old age.

We can do so in a cry for justice: Who led us to this pass? Why weren't steps taken to mitigate the charnel house? Who cost us so many lives?

They're dead. One hundred thousand lights have been extinguished.

This pandemic was always going to exact too high a cost. But the cost could have been ameliorated. The cost could have been less. 

We have only to look at places like South Korea and Hong Kong, which have suffered almost no fatalities due to the plague. 

Then we look at our country. At the dithering. At the lies. At the outright malfeasance.

Governors did what they could. But even in our federal republic, the central government has an outsized role, rightly, in coordinating responses to such a pandemic. And this government was nowhere to be found.

While governors in New York and California were shutting down their states, the federal executive kept putting out rosy predictions. "Fifteen dead, and soon none." "This will be over by Memorial Day."

It's now three days after Memorial Day, and the butcher's bill grows by the minute.

It's not a surprise that when a psychopath is in supposed charge of the government, he thinks firstly, secondly, and only of himself, and how this crisis reflects on him.

He looks at his re-election prospects, and does everything to enhance them, even if by doing so he actually worsens them and condemns thousands to death and millions to illness.

He cares only for his own fetid needs, not the needs of the hundreds of millions who have been entrusted, foolishly, to his care. He doesn't even care about those who vote for him, those states he needs to win to have any chance of staying in power and out of prison. He can think only in the moment, only in what will work now. He has no ability to think long term, because his psychosis and his dementia have rendered his mind as Swiss cheese. 

He has dealt a blow—possibly fatal—to the idea of a responsible and responsive federal government, one which can be counted on to be fair and give aid with no malice. He has made it clear that he wants to punish his enemies, those who don't kowtow to him.

We are ensnared by a kleptocracy. Perhaps not as bad as that which ensnares Russia, this man's spiritual model, but unknown in this Republic's history.

How does one number the dead? One at a time, honoring each light snuffed out, and by vowing to seek justice, not in the next life, but in this one, so that the dead have not died in vain.