Well now.
What’s my reaction to Trump getting the ‘rona after telling us all it was the Democrats’ new hoax?
I would first recommend reading David Frum’s column, reproduced from The Atlantic: “What Did You Expect?” That says it as well as anybody could.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/what-did-you-expect/ar-BB19Edcu?ocid=ientp
But in the meantime, it’s good to recall something Mitch McConnell always loves to tell Democrats: “Elections have consequences.”
Indeed they do. For while Clinton Democrats will to their dying days damn Jill Stein and Gary Johnson to the sewer system under the 10th Circle of Hell for “stealing” votes from Queen Hillary the Inevitable, Stein and Johnson both ran against Romney and Obama in 2012 with no bearing on the outcome, and the real problem with 2016 was the substantially greater percentage who DID vote for Donald Trump, because they had no faith in Hillary Clinton and business-as-usual and were in fact so nihilistic that rather than vote Green or Libertarian they voted for a guy who makes Mr. Haney from Green Acres look as honest as George Washington.
Everybody else knew that Trump was just doing what he does best – marketing himself with unbelievable bullshit – which is why nobody took him seriously until it was too late, including Donald Trump, who according to Michael Wolff at least was absolutely horrified on Election Night when he found out he won.
Because rather than getting to live off of right-wing grievance media for the next four years and play shoulda-coulda-woulda, Trump was actually obliged to govern. Moreover, all the Republicans who controlled Congress were obliged to repeal and replace Obamacare and do all those things they said they couldn’t do because of Barack Obama’s veto.
So (since Trump had no idea how to fulfill his pie-in-the-sky populist promises and needed to keep old-time Republican loyalty) Trump abandoned everything he said about healthcare and infrastructure and raising taxes on the rich and went along with what Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell wanted him to. This led to the Ryan Congress’ tax cut bill that Trump signed, and the unpopularity of a tax cut should have signaled that the Republican Party was becoming less popular in general. Seeing the writing on the wall, House Speaker Paul Ryan refused to run for re-election even though he could have easily kept his seat, knowing he wouldn’t keep his Speaker’s post- and not desiring to be around Trump any longer. And while Republicans did keep the Senate in 2018, they also lost the House, and that soon meant that all those scummy deals that Trump made with shady banks to avoid personal bankruptcy prior to 2016 were under investigation by Democrats, along with the possibility that Vladimir Putin put his thumb on the scales to influence our elections (a rumor which, IF true, is probably looking less and less like a good idea every day), not to mention Trump’s arm-twisting of the Ukrainian president to create dirt on Joe Biden, which is what actually got him impeached.
But because the low-tax, pro-business policy of the Republicans superficially bolstered the economy, Trump retained a core of popularity with both his base and people who didn’t really like him but liked the results they were getting. So Trump, being as deep as a layer of water spilled on the countertop, assumed that all he needed to do to stay in power (and stay out of jail) was to keep the good news going and do everything he could to keep anyone from hearing any bad news. In this he was simply emulating an actual one-party dictator: Xi Jinping, who by the time impeachment was winding down at the top of the year was facing reports of a coronavirus out of Wuhan that was rapidly spreading. And at the time, Xi was doing everything he could with his one party socialist state to keep the news from getting out, and then once the disease spread to Iran and elsewhere, to keep people from knowing how bad it really was. But since at the time, Donald Trump was also pursuing a big trade deal with China, he was at pains to help Xi in this effort, even going so far as to tweet on January 24:
A line which may stand as Donald Trump’s political epitaph, and perhaps his actual one.
It could have been different. The governor of New York, like the leaders in Italy, Britain and other places, at refused to acknowledge the true depth of the threat, and this led to massive casualties. But the leaders in Europe learned from this and radically changed their policies on social gatherings to suppress the spread of the virus and flatten the curve. They did something similar in New York. But we could not, and cannot, do that as a national policy in America, because Trump was fixated on not taking the virus seriously, because making people aware of how serious it was would cause “a panic”, and that would cause the economy to crater – never mind the fact that the economy already was cratering because private businesses and various governors were taking the virus seriously and cutting back their activities, which we now have to do for the foreseeable future because unlike the Europeans, we have never had a plan to reduce the spread so that we can resume some level of normalcy.
And as part of his continuing campaign to present himself as the invincible Sun King, Trump continued to hold indoor events with huge crowds, even after Tulsa, where masks were offered but subtly discouraged, even as Trump himself made sure to be on podiums where his exposure to the masses was minimized. His staffers, and Secret Service detail, weren’t so lucky. This may be why Hope Hicks ended up getting the virus. Which allegedly is how Trump got it. But according to Chris Wallace, Trump was not independently tested in Cleveland prior to Tuesday’s presidential debate, and we might not even know now that he was sick if Bloomberg hadn’t reported the news about Hicks. After all, Thursday October 1 (between the debate and the breaking news) Trump was at a fundraiser at his Bedminister, New Jersey golf resort where he was in casual contact with at least 30 donors, without masks. The campaign apparently knew about Hicks at the time but hadn’t released her condition. And while both Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Britain’s Boris Johnson survived their own cases, the Trump Organization is being cagey about exactly what the president’s symptoms are. One ominous sign: He isn’t tweeting all that much.
If only Trump had never run. And if that’s the thought going through his mind right now, I don’t think it would be the first time.
As I said about Freddie Mercury, I have no problem saying that he and other gay men died as a direct result of their lifestyle when the AIDS crisis first happened, just as us fat folks have to be careful with Type II diabetes and smokers are almost sure to get lung cancer.
Coronavirus is something I would not wish on my worst enemy. Which right now happens to be Trump. But whatever you think of him, the President being laid low is a very serious event. It’s especially serious to his party with about four weeks left to campaign. So because everything is so serious, Republicans are expecting us all not to joke, or gloat, at a time like this.
But as most professional Christians would tell us, gay men could not defy reality forever without either succumbing to the plague or changing their lifestyle, and so we have here. This is not callousness against the unfortunate. There’s a difference between having compassion for one in needless suffering from a random event and walking into the lion pen at a zoo with a raw steak on your head and expecting a healthy result.
I have often told friends that the phrase “The Republican Party” is how Americans pronounce “Schadenfreude.” But there isn’t even much point in feeling Schadenfreude here. It’s like when Stephen Colbert said, “some people are saying this is an October Surprise. It seems more like an October ‘well… yeah.”
We do not need to cast curses on Trump and his cult or say they “deserved” this. As a once-wise man said, “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.” This is cause and effect.
Cause and effect is not the same thing as karma. “Karma” is a nebulous concept from Eastern religion that holds that two apparently random events are connected by spiritual intent. It’s like when Penn Jillette defined the concept of luck as “taking probability personally.”
If ‘karma’ was a thing, or casting bad vibes at a person actually worked, or the Old Testament God was real, some people would be piles of ash now. You’re not going to get anywhere sticking pins in Donald Trump dolls because you hate him so much. I mean, if witchcraft was real, we could prove it. If witches really did cast a curse on Donald Trump, then his entire life would spiral out of control all of a sudden, he’d get sleepy and confused, and his dick would be like a mosquito.
I have mentioned before that I am, or at least was, a big fan of Ayn Rand. And just as the same Trumpublicans who delight in liberal tears are fluttering their fans at liberals daring to say bad things about our Bestest Most Americanest President Ever now that he’s really suffering, those same liberals who pride themselves on their compassion loathe Rand because of her deliberate lack of compassion in her non-fiction and fiction works.
A big example of this is in the center of Rand’s epic Atlas Shrugged, where the railroad company Taggart Transcontinential had advertised the run of a fancy new diesel-powered train through the Rockies, only to have the train break down. There were no other diesel engines available, and the only other rail transport was an old-timey coal burner. This method was not recommended because the tunnel through the mountains was sufficiently long that a coal-burning train would not be able to get through because the tunnel was not set up to ventilate the smoke. Nevertheless, a connected politician demanded that railroad employees set up a coal train to go through the tunnel so he could get to his destination without having to wait. The result, as predicted, was that the engine went midway through the tunnel and ended up choking to death on its own fumes. As did the politician and all the other passengers. At which point an Army munitions train, going in without knowledge of the makeshift schedule because the diesel train would have normally cleared the route by then, ran into the passenger train and the fumes ignited the munitions and blew everything up.
And over the course of this scene, Rand goes over various individual cases of deaths: “It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.
“The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury, that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that everything is achieved collectively, and that it’s masses that count, not men. … The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, ‘I don’t care, it’s only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children.’
… The man in Bedroom A, Car No.14, was a professor of philosophy who taught that there is no mind – how do you know that the tunnel is dangerous? – no reality – how can you prove that the tunnel exists? – no logic – why do you claim that trains cannot move without motive power? – no principles – why should you be bound by the laws of cause and effect? – no rights – why shouldn’t you attach men to their jobs by force? – no morality – what’s moral about running a railroad? – no absolutes – what difference does it make to you whether you live or die anyway?. He taught that we know nothing – why oppose the orders of your superiors? – that we can never be certain of anything – how do you know you’re right? – that we must act on the expediency of the moment – you don’t want to risk your job do you?”
One moral difference that does exist between reality and Rand’s fiction is that she established that everyone in the passenger train was on some level complicit in their fate because the system they endorsed led to that result. This is another reason liberals hate Rand, the suggestion that those who suffer deserve it because of their politics. In reality, the Republicans have made lots of innocent people suffer before them, largely because of their politics and the idea that some people didn’t matter. Like the mother in Bedroom D, Car 10, they didn’t care, cause only the bad people got hurt. And then they did too. Rand’s targets were the left wing collectivists and anti-capitalists, which is why she is so hated by the “compassionate” people, but the principle is the same. Compassion, however virtuous, is not the issue. If one really wants to reduce suffering, one must act on its causes.
The ‘Taggart Tunnel’ was not an example of karma. It was the author’s attempt to demonstrate an ultimate chain of cause and effect. The Atlas Shrugged train disaster is taken by Rand’s critics as a prime example of how preachy and didactic she was, especially since the this-is-the-house-that-Jack-built chain of events were engineered by the author just to demonstrate a certain point. But what we have in reality is a scenario that Rand would have rejected as too obvious and didactic.
According to one report, for every 1000 people in their mid-70s or older who get the coronavirus, 116 will die. Trump is 74.
In the days immediately preceding the Tuesday debate, Trump hosted a Rose Garden party to present Amy Comey Barrett, his choice for the new Supreme Court Justice, who has survived her own case of coronavirus earlier this year. Most of the people at the outdoor event were not wearing masks. After the speeches, there was a lot of casual contact amongst the audience. By Saturday evening, more than a dozen people connected to the White House were reporting positive cases, including Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, Utah Senator Mike Lee, who attended the Barrett event, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, and publicist Kellyanne Conway.
The fact that Senators are affected may ultimately ruin the majority that Trump and Mitch McConnell need to push this nomination through the Senate. It would be Rand Paul all over again, only exponentially more so.
In the short term, Trump is literally killing, or at least maiming, the Republican Party. And as I’ve said, that will create the very result they most claim to fear. Not only are we going to be stuffed to the gills with “socialism” (because we’re going to need A LOT of government spending, and tax hikes, to cover the costs of a preventable illness that Trump let spread, and to stimulate an economy that he decimated) but we on the Right are going to be undermined in our attempts to stop the Left from nanny-stating all aspects of life “for your own good.” Because it’s pretty damn clear that there really are people who not only don’t care about their own good but are actively working towards their own evil. (The fact that they spread misery and death to so many other people in the process is just a bonus.)
And in the meantime- there’s Donald Trump. A man who has probably never heard of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her five stages of coming to terms with loss. And while Trump is very good at the denial and anger part (it’s got him to where he is now) and has spent most of his life trying to avoid depression, let alone acceptance of that which he cannot change, I’m sure Mr. Art Of The Deal is very much engaged in the bargaining stage right now:
“Hey, ah, God? Yeh, it’s me, Donald. So all these preachers around me are telling me I should talk to you. You know how they are. I don’t know how you can stand ’em myself. I only put up with them cause they get me votes. All they says is like ‘love no man or money more than Jesus.’ ‘Anything is possible if you believe on Jesus’ name.’ It’s Jesus this, Jesus that. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Jesus! I mean really, who died and made HIM God?”
“But they’re right about one thing. There’s no way I could have gotten to this point without you. Remember that Access Hollywood tape? Remember me begging for Russian help with Hillary’s emails? And I WON anyway? Remember all those times that people thought I should resign or I’d be impeached, and then I was impeached, and nothing happened! I KNEW you were looking out for me! Everything that’s happened so far must be an act of God! I knew you wouldn’t have let things get to this point if I wasn’t part of your plan! So I can’t die now!
“…what do you mean, ‘I don’t need you anymore…’?
“Nobody says that to Donald Trump! I say that to my wives!!!
“Who do you think you ARE! You know who I am, buddy? Who’s your fucking manager??
“Whaddya mean, I’m subject to the same diseases as anybody else? Whaddya mean I’m not immortal? Who SAYS??
“I’m DONALD TRUMP!!! My entire life has taught me that I don’t have to obey the same rules as other human beings! I’M NOT A HUMAN BEING!!!!
“Wh- you- you better be nice to me, God! You better be NICE to me! This is very unfair! I know where you buried the bodies!! Michael Cohen told me stories about Jerry Falwell Jr. that would curdle your balls! Bill Barr’s a Catholic, he can investigate your Pope! You know what pervy shit he can find out there!
“Look at all these Justices I got ya! You don’t think that counts for something?? I can get ya more! LOTS more! Just let me live!!
“Goddamn it, God, YOU OWE ME, MOTHERFUCKERRRRR”