or: Thou shalt not Covid thy neighbour
By Ranting Panda, 17 May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed just how poor Donald Trump's leadership skills are and how vulnerable the general population is to his madness. The COVID-19 pandemic has so far killed more than 100,000 people in the United States and Trump is yet to display any real compassion. He has been more concerned with spinning the numbers to make it look like he is a war-time president who has kicked the virus's sorry ass. More snowflake than man, Trump is prone to puerile Twitter tantrums when someone dares to challenge his incompetence. Sadly, his hyperbole and hubris have contributed to the massive numbers of casualties experienced in the United States.
Republicans screamed blue murder during the Obama presidency, when four Americans were killed in a terrorist attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. Yet, many of these same Republicans now deny Trump has any involvement in the 100,000 COVID-19 deaths, while blaming Obama for the horrendous death toll, even though he hasn't been president for three years. They are too ignorant, too partisan and too gullible to accept that their president is a shit leader who is directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. But why be non-partisan, when Trump mocked former President, George W. Bush, for daring to suggest that Americans need to ditch partisanship and work together during this crisis (Starks 2020). GWB was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but is a genius compared to the childish and petulant Trump. And just like a petulant little boy, Trump has refused to unveil a portrait of the previous president, Barack Obama. This breaks a 40 year tradition where the new president would unveil a portrait of the previous president (Haltiwanger 2020). Why? Because Obama was far more popular, intelligent and articulate than Trump will ever be, so Trump makes unfounded accusations of an unspecified crime ... just like a little kid envious of a classmate getting better marks.
Before he was elected, Trump said that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for him. Well, here we are ... and it's not just one death, but more than 100,000 ... and his supporters still defend him. It's one of the few things that Trump told the truth about. Despite claiming to be patriots, it is clear that his followers have no concern for their fellow Americans, and even less concern for anyone who is not American.
Trump's incompetence and arrogance has resulted in a death toll on a genocidal scale. There is a call for Trump to be tried for crimes against humanity over his handling of the pandemic (Da Silva 2020). Throughout the early stages of the crisis, Trump took little action and instead was more snake oil salesman than president, when he peddled a 'miracle treatment', the anti-malarial drug, hydroxychloroquine. Trump fiddled as thousands of Americans died.
The hypocrisy of Trump's supporter base is they claim that politicians should take responsibility for their actions (except Trump), that politicians should tell the truth (except Trump), that politicians should not be corrupt (except Trump), that presidents should be impeached (except Trump) and that even given all of Trump's moral failures ... abortion! Trump banned abortion, which therefore justifies his corruption, moral turpitude, lies, and ineptitude. It is tragically ironic that his supporters still claim to be pro-life, when they clearly don't give a stuff about the 100,000 innocent victims of Trump's incompetence.
Trump claims that Obama left no plans for dealing with such a pandemic. Yet, Obama left a quaint document entitled, 'Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents' (Wilson 2020). You can see what the problem with this document is, can't you? It uses big words ... far too big for Trump's grade 4 vocabulary (Burleigh 2018).
Trump has shown exceptionally poor leadership. He has no emotional intelligence. Instead of caring about people, he is more concerned with firing people who he disagrees with. He has shown incredibly juvenile pettiness at seeking revenge on people he doesn't like. He is corrupt and deceitful. His lack of leadership has cost thousands of lives. He can't argue that this was unexpected, as his January and February 2020 intelligence briefings repeatedly warned of the threat of a virus (Miller & Nakashima 2020). Trump's reaction? Tell the public that it isn't a threat, while failing to prepare for the possibility of a pandemic. Trump's actions since he became president in 2017, have exacerbated the impact of COVID-19 in the United States, and potentially globally. Even though Obama left a guide for dealing with such an issue, Trump failed to make any preparations.
Throughout February 2020, Trump failed to take any significant action to limit the spread of the virus. Instead, he went golfing, he continued his juvenile hate tweeting, and firing people who disagreed with him or on whom he was seeking revenge. For the first six crucial weeks after he was notified of the pandemic, he did nothing. This was the time for him to knuckle down and work with health professionals, state governors, to rally the troops; but he did nothing other than procrastinate and deny (Pilkington & McCarthy 2020).
Republican Steve Schmidt compared Trump's press conferences to those of the Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, otherwise known as 'Baghdad Bob' or 'Comical Ali', who became somewhat of a minor celebrity for the ridiculous claims he would make in press conferences during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. For instance, Trump's denial of the virus's impact is on par with Baghdad Bob, who would often deny the US invasion was occurring, even as US tanks could be seen in the background (Deprang 2013).
Schmidt told MSNBC's Ari Melber that COVID-19 the biggest crisis the world has faced and goes on to describe Trump's response to it as 'the most inept response by the Executive, by the President, I think with regard to any crisis in American history, but certainly any crisis in our lifetimes. And we look at a president who is so clearly in over his head and out of his depth, who has been dishonest, who's been imprecise, who's been inaccurate, and who's deadly indecision will be paid for with the lives of tens of thousands of Americans as this virus escalated to a place where it never need have gone. And that is all because of the wasted month of February where the president was hate-Tweeting, firing people that he was angry with over impeachment, going on campaign rallies and golfing, and now the country is paying the price for that. We should be careful to understand that when the same guy says, 'well, it'll be back in September, but we'll make it go away real quick', is the same guy when there were 15 cases in the country said soon it would be gone to zero and it would disappear like magic. The lack of credibility in these evening news events, is epic and unlike anything we have ever seen. It's a Baghdad Bob show every night of the week. Day after day, the airing of the grievances, the airing of his anger issues, the attacks on the governors we see every night; all the qualities you never, ever want to see in a leader in a crisis where lives are at stake' (Schmidt 2020).
To reinforce Schmidt's caustically correct analysis, Trump tweets about his popularity while more than 100,000 are dead from his dereliction of duty.
Trump accuses his critics of being unhinged and corrupt, yet it is him who is clearly unhinged and blatantly corrupt. Again, with more than 100,000 dead from coronavirus, he claims that he will take down Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google because the 'radical left' are in control of those platforms. (The 'radical left' are clearly very tolerant as they must be providing the platform for his deranged tweets).
As the pandemic was taking hundreds of thousands of lives across the globe, and many thousands of lives in the US, Trump denied it was a problem. He suggested just getting a flu shot to treat coronavirus. Incredibly, he even suggested that perhaps people could ingest bleach and irradiate their bodies with UV light, because bleach and sunlight kill viruses (BBC 2020). Following this particularly doltish comment, the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to people not to ingest disinfectant (Christensen 2020). Not surprisingly, there was a spike in people ingesting disinfectant because of Trump's statement (Sanders & Sommerfeldt 2020).
Drink bleach he says ... more like drink the kool-aid ... and his followers are gullible enough to do it.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as the old adage goes, and nowhere is it more evident than the oafish Trump family. If you thought Donald Trump had an intellect deficiency, then I give you his son ... Eric. Eric Trump believes that coronavirus is a hoax perpetuated by the Democratic Party and it will all go away after the US election on 3 November 2020 (Hawkins 2020). One really has to wonder about the level of stupid in the feral first family. As Forest Gump said, 'Stupid is as stupid does' ... And Trump does a lot of stupid!
Trump has normalised ignorance, manifested by a contempt for education and science. He has ushered in a new Dark Ages, in which the religious right-wing are no better than the superstitious tribes of centuries past. It is ironic that we live in an age with instantaneous access to more information than any society before us and yet ignorance is fashionable, even patriotic. These 'patriotic' followers are whipped into a frenzy through mindless groupthink based around nationalism and religion. It demonises those who are 'different'. It glorifies stupidity over science. It places the bible as the highest law in the land, yet many of Trump's Christian followers completely ignore the very words of the bible ... those things about treating others as you would like to be treated (they call that 'Political Correctness gone mad'), the bible says to share wealth by taking from those who have much and giving to those as they have need (they call this the 'socialist agenda'), the bible says to care for the refugee (they demonise the refugees as terrorists, criminals, rapists, and screech for their imprisonment, torture and banishment).
These same Christians will bang on about how the Book of Revelation warns that the anti-Christ will deceive God's chosen ... and bam! Right in front of our eyes we see them being deceived by a selfish, narcissistic, hate-monger that preys on the vulnerable and boasts incessantly of his own vainglory; clearly anti-christian in his behaviour but supported by Christians the world over. They're not the chosen, they're the deceived.
Just to show how demented some of his followers are, televangelist Pat Robertson claims that COVID-19 is sent by God to punish the world for marriage equality (Quinlan 2020). Yep. The same God who so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to die in our place for our transgressions, is so filthy about people in love getting married that he has unleashed a pestilence to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Wow!
Forget the faux Christianity of Robertson, let's go to a real Christian. German theologian and anti-fascist, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, penned a letter entitled, 'After ten years'. In it he gives a blunt assessment of groupthink and stupidity that is as appropriate for Nazi Germany, as it is for Trump's America. It isn't just the level of stupid in Trump or his family, or his administration, but also in those who treat Trump as though he is their saviour. How stupid does a person have to be to follow a cretin like Trump! Bonhoeffer's words are incredibly poignant in this post-intellectual world where ignorance and idiocy are glorified:
'Facts ... are pushed aside as inconsequential' ... remember, when Trump was caught out lying & his press secretary dismissed the facts and tried to spin the lies as 'alternative facts' ... the gullible swallowed this, hook, line and sinker. It was like Bonhoeffer was thinking of Trump when he wrote this: 'In all this the stupid person ... being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack'. I can feel another Trump Twitter-storm coming!
Trump dismisses findings of scientists as 'not being balanced' ... think about that ... take all the time you need. Based on Trump's logic, if you're going to teach that the world is round, then you should also teach that it is flat. Whether it be COVID-19, climate change, clean energy, or vaccinations, Trump's anti-intellectual followers have the gall to tell people to do their own research. Of course, research is good ... if it is grounded in actual scientific findings, but their idea of research is to find another anti-intellectual with a dodgy Youtube channel and a moronic conspiracy theory. So let me put it this another way ... all the research conducted by scientific bodies such as the CDC, World Health Organization, NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, can be disproven with a simple Google search conducted by an intrepid half-wit who has been guzzling Trump's kool-aid? I think I'll stick to the quantified, peer-reviewed scientific research, thanks very much. Trump's anti-intellectual idiocy has now extended to him withdrawing funding from the World Health Organization that would have been used to help develop a vaccine against COVID-19 (Woodward 2020). This in itself, is clear evidence of Trump's disdain for science and disregard for human life. His policies are genocidal, but at least his ego gets stroked by showing 'he's the boss'.
How many more lives will this feckless cretin kill because of his incompetence, arrogance, ignorance & corruption. The Trump name will forever be synonymous with moronic behaviour, ineptitude & snout-in-the-trough corruption. Trump didn't drain the swamp, he is the swamp. He rules through nepotism and corruption, firing those who disagree with him and promoting his incompetent family into positions previously reserved people who actually knew what they were doing (Abramson 2018). In the middle of the crisis, rather than showing empathy for the victims of COVID-19, he takes time out to unleash on people who tried to impeach him, even stating, 'The top of the FBI was scum ... human scum' (Connolly 2020). How truly fucked in the head do you have to be to act like this in the worst crisis the world has seen in generations.
Rather than address the horrendous death toll, Trump incites his followers to civil disobedience. While other countries are locking down and socially distancing to prevent the spread of the disease, Trump's followers have marched in large groups to protest the lockdown, putting themselves and others at risk. In a time when we are being warned of the importance of social distance ... to not Covid our neighbour ... these mental giants are getting up close and personal, Covidding their neighbours, putting everyone at risk.
Trump even praised these protesters, describing them as 'good people', when they abused a reporter, accusing him of being an 'enemy of the people' (Lim 2020). This should be a concern to anyone who believes in democracy and free speech. Trump has constantly accused the media of being fake news if they dare to criticise him or his supporters. Trump's presidency has been likened to Hitler's Germany in the early 1930s, when Germans were turned against each other through 'us versus them' hate-speech. By turning Americans against each, Trump isn't a patriot, he is a traitor. Presidential historian, Jon Meacham, describes Trump as the 'most dangerously ignorant president in history' (Colarossi 2020).
Trump is a wealthy man with the temperament of a five year old child. This is evidenced in his many tweets, where he will often claim to be the 'best in the world, EVER'! He is sexist, racist and bigoted, boasts of sexually assaulting women, demonises refugees, disparages people from other cultures, dog-whistles to white supremacists, is a pathological liar, a bully and a narcissist with an exceptionally fragile ego who can't handle criticism and is always tearing other people down to cover up for his insecurities and incompetence. He is driven by greed rather than a desire to help others, he always has a scapegoat for his shortfalls, he blames others for his misfortunes and mistakes, he hides behind the bible or the flag to justify his bigotry and ignorance, he deals in absolutism and can't grasp nuance or relativism.
So, what sort of people support a person like this?
People just like him.
These people will continue drinking the Trump kool-aid, blaming everybody else for tens of thousands of American deaths ... while Trump treats them like the fools they are, and tragically Americans continue to die because of his benightedness, empowered by the gullible sheep who follow him.
References
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Barnett, VJ 2017, After Ten Years: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and our times, Fortress Press, Minneapolis MN.
BBC 2020, 'Coronavirus: Outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment', BBC News, 24 April, viewed 15 May 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177.
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Updated 31 May 2020
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