A Journal of the Plague Year, Part the Eighteenth - The Madman Ranting on the Street Corner

Well, we have reached the part of der Sturmtrumper’s presidency where the deranged madman starts shouting at everyone and everything in a desperate attempt to deflect attention from his crimes.  This is often the best part of a work of fiction.  In the real world, not so much.

It’s not going to get any better.

In January and February, while American intelligence was screaming about the onrushing plague and Actual Leaders in other countries were working hard to prepare their nations to survive the onrushing crisis, der Sturmtrumper instead spent his time dodging and weaving, calling COVID19 a “Democratic hoax,” and generally pissing away the vital time this country needed to get ready for the deadliest pandemic in a century in the fond hopes that he could gaslight it just like he did with his well-deserved impeachment and come out the other side with his base still slavishly devoted to him.

It didn’t work, strangely enough.  Turns out you can’t gaslight a virus.  Who knew?

The plague is here, it has killed more than 30,000 Americans as I write this, and der Sturmtrumper has done everything in his power to rile up the stupid so they’ll do precisely what is necessary to keep the body count rising. 

Der Sturmtrumper and his supporters have blood on their hands.

Oh, there was nothing they could have done to keep it out of the US.  It was coming here no matter what they did.  And people would have died regardless.  This much is true.

But their callous and corrupt response to the situation is entirely on them.  Thousands of Americans have already died who might otherwise have lived if we had elected an actual human being to lead the country in 2016 instead of a sociopathic grifter incapable of any normal emotion or rational thought.  None of this would have happened if Hillary had won, or Bernie, or indeed ANY of the hundred or so Republican candidates who were in the race besides the guy who did win.  It's not a partisan issue, really.  If literally anyone else had won in 2016 this country would be safer, more prosperous, and less of a morgue.  It is Trump and his minions who have made this crisis immeasurably worse through their deliberate cruelty and blistering incompetence.  Thousands are dead who did not have to die and thousands more will die for as long as der Sturmtrumper continues to focus on his grasp on power instead of actually leading the nation through a crisis and for as long as his supporters see no problem with this.

Think: has Donald Trump ever once in 2020 offered any words of sympathy for the dead or their families?  Ever?  Once?

That’s a basic requirement of leadership, by the way, to empathize and sympathize with those you lead.

The answer is no, by the way.  Not once.  Not ever.  Instead he has continued to call people names, deflect attention, deny responsibility, and generally behave in ways that would embarrass a sleep-deprived toddler and are destructively unacceptable from someone who is supposed to be an adult and the leader of one of the most powerful nations on earth.

Has he done anything constructive about this plague?

Hardly.  Pretty much everything he’s done, in fact, has been designed to make things worse.  At that level he’s achieved his goals, I suppose.

Has he worked tirelessly to make sure that the only person who benefits from this is himself, even at the cost of your blood?

Obviously.

In the grand tradition of would-be tyrants throughout history, rather than work for the good of the people he governs he has instead seized the moment to destroy any restraints on his power and has actively worked to ensure the deaths of countless more people.

He has declared he won’t fund the World Health Organization, the international body that is working to keep this from becoming a second Spanish Flu – you know, the plague that killed more people than all of World War I?  That one? 

He has threatened Congress with adjournment so he can shove more unqualified nominees into office without check and further destabilize the United States – crippling our response, paralyzing our actions, lining his pockets.  I’m not saying he’s a foreign agent out to destroy this nation.  I’m just saying that if he were one I don’t know what he’d do differently from what he has already done.

He has vowed to destroy the Post Office – even to the point of vetoing critical relief legislation if Congress dares to fund one of the few government bodies explicitly mentioned in the Constitution itself.  In an era of pandemic where package deliveries are critical, of course he plans to destroy the Post Office.  We can’t have people voting by mail now, can we?  Could lead to free and fair elections and that’s just not acceptable to der Sturmtrumper or his supporters.

He has called on his supporters to undermine basic health and safety rules – an irresponsible and politically motivated assault on the safety of the United States that would be shocking if it came from a responsible leader but which is simply par for the course for this sociopath.  And his supporters have responded in kind, because apparently they’re happy to die for his re-election prospects.  Honestly, if they wish to auto-Darwinate that's on them but they need to do so in a way that doesn't threaten the rest of us.

He is consolidating power and will likely have to be removed from office by force after he loses in November, if he bothers to have elections at all.  If you have ever wondered how Fascism came to power in Germany nearly a century ago, if you have ever wondered what you would do if you found yourself in that time and place, now you know.  It’s happening here now, and you’re doing it now.

So long as Donald Trump and his supporters hold power the survival of the American republic is in doubt, both individually and collectively.

The choice is yours, America.

Think fast, because you don’t have much time left to decide.