The COVID 19 death toll in the United States has surpassed 200,000 and the number of cases is rising in a number of states. Some model predictions are estimating that 400,000 Americans will have lost their lives as a result of the pandemic by the end of the year. That is equivalent to 40% of the population of the entire state of Montana – wiped out. Dead. Gone forever. Those numbers should cause everyone’s jaw to drop.
In normal times, one would expect that trying to get this virus under control and saving American lives would be the President’s top priority. However, these are not normal times so rather than using his position to try to help the situation, he is consumed by his reelection campaign and is continuing to hold in-person rallies in complete contradiction to his own CDC’s guidelines. By conducting these rallies, he is not only putting his supporters lives at risk but other people as well. The people who attend these rallies, disperse and continue to interact with their communities. No doubt some of the ‘non-combatants’ in the community will be infected by rally attenders. I guess Trump and his supporters will just view them as collateral damage.
Trump is doing everything in his power to change the news cycle so that it will not focus on the staggering number of people dying in this pandemic. There is no doubt that Trump knew how dangerous this virus was based upon his own words as recorded by Bob Woodward, whose book I am reading now. And based upon those words, it is very apparent that he totally screwed up and continues to screw up the response to this pandemic. And as a result, people died and continue to die needlessly. But, in typical Trump fashion, rather than deal with the root problem, he tries change to news cycle!
Imagine if Trump had been president when the attack on Pearl Harbor happened. He’d probably try to convince everyone in Hawaii to go have a luau and convince them that ‘this will go away.’ And even when he knew an attack was imminent on the West Coast, he wouldn’t prepare for it because he didn’t want to ‘panic’ people.
Part of the news cycle that Trump is trying to use to get attention off the pandemic is the unfortunate death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the opportunity to nominate another Supreme Court Justice. This event will show the hypocrisy of Trump and his Republican acolytes in spades.
When Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in February 2016, Trump was a candidate for the Republican president nomination and he encouraged Mitch McConnell to ‘Delay, Delay, Delay’ taking a vote on Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland until after the election. It was February and the election wasn’t until November!! Mitch McConnell, as we all know, refused to bring Garland’s nomination to the Senate floor for vote.
All of the Republicans lined up, saluted smartly and each made some rationalizing statement as to why this was reasonable. The most repeated argument was that the American people should have a voice in who the nominee should be and they would be able to express that preference through whoever they elected as President. What a change four years and drinking a few gallons of ‘Trump-ade’ can make.
Now Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and a whole host of other Republicans are trying to convince everyone that the situation now is different and they have some obligation to force through this nomination with only about 6 weeks left until the election. And even if Joe Biden wins, there is no doubt that they will rationalize why it is appropriate that they force through this nomination during the lame duck session between the election and when the next president is inaugurated in January.
The Republican Party (as it exists now) has done nothing over the last four years to hold Trump accountable for anything. Not only have they not held Trump accountable they have engaged in all kinds of efforts to suppress voters, mislead voters, block efforts for mail-in balloting, engaged in gerrymandering that has resulted in litigation and adverse court rulings, and anonymously funded campaigns to get third party candidates on the ballots with the express purpose of splitting the Democratic vote. [The Republican Party here in Montana spent $100,000 anonymously to try to get a Green Party candidate on the ballot – and the Green Party didn’t even know about it!!]
For a party that once espoused things like ‘Family Values’, they have set the current bar pretty low. I think the new and more appropriate motto for the Republican Party should be:
“Abandon all principles in pursuit of victory”
Trump’s “alternate facts’ have turned all his followers in a false “alternate reality’. They believe everything without verification of what Trump and his followers say without practicing intersubjective testability.