Americans are on their own during the pandemic

A woman wearing face mask is seen shopping at a supermarket in Foster City, the United States, April 22, 2020. /Xinhua

Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. He has been featured on Press TV, Russia Today and Radio Sputnik.The article reflects the author's opinions, not necessarily the views ofCGTN.

As America officially passed one million confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, Americans are now left totally on their own.

The message could not be more clear from the Trump administration after a corporate-chauvinist press conference on Monday. Mitch McConnell's Senate and Nancy Pelosi's House of Representatives are also playing their role, leaving Americans hung out to dry once again.

In the most fitting example of the administration's utter contempt for average people, vice president and Coronavirus task force head Mike Pence visited Minnesota's Mayo Clinic on Tuesday while not wearing a mask.

As MSNBC Senior National Correspondent and anchor Chris Jansing noted: "Mike Pence heads the task force that recommends all Americans wear masks. The Mayo Clinic says they informed him of their mandatory mask requirement. He didn't wear one while people around him did," she tweeted.

Let's remember that wearing a mask is mostly to keep others safe from a potential infection carried by the wearer. The idea behind wearing masks is to assume that anyone could be contagious, and thus everyone collectively protects each other by wearing the masks. Why would Mike Pence do something so blatantly selfish?

"Pence is a law-abiding and rule-obeying type of person. His out-of-character refusal to wear a mask is explained by this reason only: He thought Trump wouldn't like it," commented Iraq War architect and neoconservative Bill Kristol.

The anti-people, anti-solidarity spirit of the Republican Party has always been alive, but until now it was kept under layers of platitude and spin. With Trump, there doesn't need to be any political genuflection to the people and attempting to do so is seen as weak.

Therefore, those around him must also embrace this ruthlessness in order to stay in their position.

"Let them eat cake,"

as Marie-Antoinette would have said has now become "Let them eat Clorox."

But, will there be any Storming of the Bastille to stop Trump? Not if Congress has anything to say about it.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks during an announcement of the Trump Administration's plan to establish the U.S. Space Force by year 2020 at the Pentagon, Virginia, the United States, August 9, 2018. /Xinhua

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump's primary political opponent in the House, twisted herself into a human pretzel on Sunday by telling CNN's Jake Tapper to "calm down" and "judge it for what it does and don't criticize it for what it doesn't because we have a plan," referring to weak legislation her chamber has put forward for workers.

After three and a half attempts, they have accomplished very little in terms of relief for workers and are poised to do little more on the fourth. In fact, as bills come up on the first of the month for working families, the Democrat controlled House of Representatives will not adjourn in Washington on May 4 and will instead extend their recess, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday.

"The house doctor, when I talked to him yesterday, was concerned because the numbers in the District of Columbia are going up," the Maryland Democrat said. "They're not flat, and they're not going down.”

Meanwhile, essential workers maintaining America's critical supply lines are risking their lives day-in and day-out, a point even made by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday.

It's unclear what medical advice Mitch's chamber got that could have been different from the House, but he and his GOP partisans are prepared to continue funnel-confirming judicial and executive nominations on their normal schedule to tighten the right's grip on power.

They will also continue forward to dominate discussions for the next phase of stimulus and relief, discussing McConnell's corporate liability bill as the redline for negotiations to bailout states bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 response.

Democrats have said they aren't interested in tying anything to local and state government support, but they have once again given McConnell all bargaining power in the negotiations and will likely fold at the eleventh hour.

Lives will be ruined by either of McConnell's forced outcomes: essentially forcing workers to work under unsafe conditions with no recourse, or allowing states and their safety nets to go belly up.

This is a bleak outlook for workers, but some are beginning to organize themselves as Democrats in Congress prove useless. For example, workers from Amazon, Walmart, and FedEx are planning a mass walkout for Friday, May 1. Tenants who have had no rent relief or moratorium during stay-at-home orders are organizing rent strikes on the same day.

"People aren't striking because they don't feel like paying rent. They're striking [because] they CAN'T pay rent," New York congresswoman and "Squad" member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said to The Hill.

The congresswoman is unfortunately right. The first of the month was already a difficult time for many American families that get by paycheck-to-paycheck once living under Trump's "greatest economy in the world."

Now it will be only worse as they stand alone to face a pandemic, and an ensuing economic meltdown, with virtually no support from anyone in federal office.

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