Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Trump's Hoax Gets Real

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Way, way back in the political dark ages - at a rally in Charleston, South Carolina on February 28th of this year - Donald John Trump entertained his supporters by assuring them that all of this coronavirus talk was nothing more than the Democratic Party's new "hoax,' one like the previous impeachment "hoax" whose intent was to bring down his administration.

That was so very long ago - nearly three weeks.  It was just a "hoax," nothing more.  Keep booking those cruises and attending rock concerts and political rallies!

In the interim between then and now, as the number of cases and deaths in the United States began climbing, and as more Americans began to worry that the situation might be more dire than Trump had admitted, various administration stooges and flacks (people like Kellyanne Conway and Larry Kudlow) rushed forward to assure the press and the public that the situation was being "contained."

And now, still not three weeks out from the evening that Trump entertained his flying monkeys with ribald quips about a hoax, Americans have finally begun to realize the extent of the very real danger that they are facing.   In fact, the situation has spun so far out of control in a very few days that Trump has even taken to talking seriously about the situation.  He now says that he has realized for quite sometime that we were probably facing an actual pandemic.

(And even though there is a taped interview from 2018 circulating in which Trump discusses his reasons for shutting down the White House pandemic office, he now credits others in his administration for that political miscalculation - and adamantly states that he bears no responsibility at all in the rise and spread of the deadly coronavirus in the United States.)

Now, still less than three weeks after Trump called the entire matter a hoax, we are firmly steeped in a health crisis that has left much of America's population hiding in their homes and waiting for some sort of responsible guidance from their beleaguered government.  The stock market has plunged by nearly a third in that same very brief period of time (the DOW is down over 1,200 points already this morning), and certain sectors of the economy - like restaurants, lounges, theaters, cruise ships, and airlines - have slowed markedly and laid off thousands of employees.  Shortages of many items - like toilet paper and hand sanitizer - have resulted in black market operations and near-panic situations.

Now, fewer than three weeks out from Trump's "hoax" remarks in South Carolina, the country is in crisis mode, facing a downward spiral in confidence regarding its ability to survive the impending health and economic hardships that seem to be steadily advancing across the dystopian landscape.  Every day the news gets worse, and every day Americans are left with the sense that they are saddled with a leader who rejects all responsibility and has no notion at all of how to lead us out of this snowballing catastrophe.

Now that all of that is upon us, some are beginning to come to the realization that perhaps we have been the victims of a hoax after all, a cruel hoax by the name of Donald John Trump.    A leader would have heeded warnings about a coming pandemic that have been circulating for more than three years - and he would have maintained and enhanced the office designed to deal with the crisis rather than close it out of an act of spite toward his predecessor.  A leader would have been stockpiling medical supplies and equipment to meet an impending crisis rather than spending obscene amounts of time trying to dismantle public healthcare in his country.

A true leader would have met this medical crisis head-on, with sleeves rolled up and exhibiting a fierce determination to rise to the challenge and defeat the foe.

That's the way a leader would have acted.

Donald Trump played golf and blamed everyone else for his failures.

1 comment:

Xobekim said...

The #TrumpVirus blossomed in America because Trump's basic instincts are to profiteer and do so illegally when possible. The World Health Organization (WHO) had a test that worked, despite the lies of Trump Task Force Member Dr. Deborah Brix. She later, off camera said she meant a faulty Chinese test to add more fuel to Trump's insidiously racist denouncements of the Chinese.

We could have had the WHO test for free. BUT NO! The Trump-Kushner Criminal Enterprise had to find a way to turn a buck putting profits over lives. Testing was unnecessarily delayed.

Also delayed in the face of mounting evidence from Italy and Spain was any attempt to mobilize a national response to the incoming disaster that will kill Americans, many Americans. No prioritization to get medical supplies prepositioned. No attempt to curb travel, no attempt to warn the American people of the gravity of the disease.

It was all a hoax.

Now, in my community - a large suburban network of towns and cities to the immediate west of Kansas City, Missouri - it is too late for testing. TOO LATE FOR TESTING! That's because testing in the initial phase of a pandemic is surveillance. The data is used to shut down the hot spots and isolate the infected. Trump has allowed the infection to spread. It could be worse, it is worse in Kansas City, Missouri where there has been virtually no testing and the disease, the #TrumpVirus is spreading.

There will be a surge, a tsunami like wave of incoming patients, as there was in Italy, and there will be no hospital beds, no ventilators, not even when the federal government kicks in a few limited resources here and there. Doctors will triage and those already compromised, already degraded by age, already vulnerable will be given palliative care, maybe.

The great irony is that the lowly educated, the ditto heads, the MAGAts who poison their minds daily on hate talk radio and FOXNews are going to take the hardest hit. Only this week did their media of choice decide to tell them the truth. This is not a hoax. They best get their funeral plans in order.

I've never seen the dearly beloved entombed in toilet paper before. Seems that is all these poor followers of Trump have in abundance.