Deception, Stupidity, or Worse.....

We are dealing with a pandemic that has no cure, no treatment other than palliative treatment, and no vaccine.  Common sense tells all rational people that the only way to try to control it is to stay away from each other, constantly wash our hands, and take all physical precautions that minimize the risk of contact and transmission.  That is simply common sense!

And yet our reality is filled with people who are ignorant of the simple science involved here and are egged on by a cynical national government that is willing to sacrifice lives; personified by a President who openly encourages people to ‘open everything up’ in clear opposition to guidelines he himself presented to us just a few weeks ago for controlling the  pandemic.….a President who has marginalized the CDC, OSHA, law enforcement and the regulations that offered us clean water and air. 

Covid-19 is an airborne virus.  Masks make sense for whatever protection they afford.  And what does our President do?—He tells all of us that he doesn’t want to wear one; he doesn’t need it.  If you or I told someone that, we might affect 2-6 people who listen to us.  When he does it, he affects millions of people with bad advice.  Just another effort to marginalize scientific reason.....

Now he wants to use his ‘authority’ to open up all the churches of America.  If you look at the stats, most infectious hotspots started with congregant gatherings—in churches and other places of worship.  The numbers don’t lie.  Common sense would tell most rational people that encouraging this kind of behavior is counter intuitive and dangerous.   Makes no matter; for Trump it is all about misleading in the service of his own selfish gains—in this case mollifying his Evangelical supporters.  The thousands that will die as a result are not important.

Studies are confirming the facts that hydroxychloroquine is a dangerous therapy for this disease and there is not even anecdotal evidence that it has any prophylactic value at all.  And yet with no scientific basis at all, Trump has been recommending people take it.  Why?  The most logical and cynical reason is that “the use of the drug has become a benchmark in the political culture wars, with Trump allies echoing his calls for the drug as a sign of their confidence in his instincts and as a way of promoting what they see as an optimistic view of the pandemic. The president is probably also promoting the drug because it offers a big political upside — getting to say he was right and the experts were wrong — with a small downside.”, says the New York Times.  Forget that he has no experience as a researcher or any kind of authority to make these recommendations.

So why is he doing all this?  First of all, telling lies is like breathing for him.  His life is a lie.  He has no moral compass at all, so if lying furthers whatever his objectives are, then fine.  We have also affirmed that he is consummately stupid.  He doesn’t read and makes all decisions from his ‘gut’.  Facts and truth are fungible for Trump.  That is not to say that he is not brilliantly manipulating!  Look at the legions of his supporters who reject fact and truth to follow his cultish direction.  As to his motivation for all this counter-intuitive behavior, it should come as no surprise that it is in the service of his own re-election and self-aggrandizement.

Face it—we have the most horrible government we could have at one of the most perilous time we have had in the history of the Republic.  We must all rely on ourselves to weather this nightmare.

I was sitting at the breakfast table with my 30 year-old daughter this morning talking about the possibility of seeing Trump win the election in November.  She said simply that she would move out of the country.  I looked at her and said, “But sweetheart, you are the only hope for this country…you and your generation are the only ones who can save it.”  She looked at me and said, “But Dad, why would I try to save something that won’t offer me healthcare, that pays lip service to democracy, that does everything possible to prevent me from voting; that with his re-election raises the possibility of martial law, corruption of the courts, and disintegration of the foundations of the democracy?”

I couldn’t really answer her…..