In case you don’t yet know the score, my fellow Americans, our nation is in the process of committing suicide. A mass suicide originated by a deadly virus, which would be bad enough in itself, if not aided and abetted by evil, lying, crooked, delusional, self-interested politicians. Republican politicians! From our literally COVID-infected president and his stone-faced toady vice-president on down. It’s no longer any secret that the red states are the first in line for the Grim Reaper’s scythe.

A few of them may escape the worst of it, including my new home state of Kansas where our heroic Democratic governor has managed to fight off some of the worst of the onslaughts by the state’s know-nothing yahoos, at least for the time being. Yahoos in Kansas? You better believe it! The great, and now widely revered, “Sage of Emporia” editor William Allen White called some of his fellow Kansans worse than that. “Morons” was the word he often used. Said morons included the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates in one election who were both proud members of the Ku Klux Klan; and a quack doctor who cured “erectile disfunction” by surgically implanting goat glands, who became so angered at having his 50,000-watt radio station shut down and his medical license revoked that he ran for governor.

Kansas may dodge the worst of the COVID-19 bullet, or not. But Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, both the Dakota’s, Montana, Georgia and other red states are surely gonna’ go down. All those states are dominated by politicians who revere, or fear the wrath of, the man who stood trembling…from either anger, fear, or the effect of drug cocktails, on the Truman Balcony of the White House clumsily ripping off his mask, balling it up, and stuffing it into his coat pocket as his idea of a heroic gesture…a purely political gesture. And following up with a series of thumbs-ups, and that strangely effeminate finger wriggling gesture he does, and sloppily childish salutes to no one in particular, or perhaps to himself, that would never pass military muster.

All of which brings me to Wisconsin, the ultimate COVID-19 basket case. You may recall that I’ve been here once before in my “America the Suicidal”. It was that state’s electoral dysfunction that brought me here then. The state had yet to distinguish itself in its pathetic handing of the virus then. It had plenty of red-state competition then. Now it has broken from the disease-ridden pack. Number one across the board in all aspects of medical and political pathology. And for the same reasons that blighted and crippled its electoral system. A Democratic governor fighting a losing battle against the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and courts. Republican-controlled for all the reasons we have become so familiar with. Ludicrous gerrymandering, “keep out the vote” campaigns aimed at minorities and city folk. And a standing army of lawyers on call to fight off any attempts to keep the vile, insipid, nightmare of a system that they have so carefully rigged from being undone. And the cost of this whole stinking operation is being underwritten by the Koch Brothers.

But why take my word for it. Andrew Romano has already said more than I can in his recent article “Wisconsin is battling America’s worst coronavirus outbreak, and the state’s broken politics are partly to blame,” on Yahoo. The title’s way longer than I would like to see. I’d prefer something more like William Allen White’s “What’s the matter with Kansas?” If he were still alive today, I’m sure that the “Sage of Emporia” would have plenty to say about Wisconsin and its resident “morons.” And that “partly to blame” bit? Neither he nor I would stand for that kind of punch-pulling. But Romano has his facts straight. So, I’ll end this editorial short and give you time to read his excellent and informative piece.