Opinion: Donald Trump, Sit Down and Shut Up

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When buying food is like going to the jungle and dinner becomes the thing you managed to grab before anyone else does, you know that things have changed. When you go from store to store desperately seeking toilet paper, you know this isn’t “normal” and no, it is not fine.

Trump’s happy talk doesn’t match the reality of states appealing to people handy with sewing machines to make masks for health care providers.

People are dying, the health system is on the verge of collapse, and people are hunkering down. Do we even dare to imagine what’s happening with homeless people now? No, it’s not just a slumber party. If you’re an American citizen, life sucks, but at the risk of sounding inappropriately optimistic, your worries end there.

If you’re an immigrant, you’re still expected to show up for deportation hearings and get deported, as if there wasn’t a pandemic and the world hadn’t stood still. If you’re an immigrant, you wonder whether getting that Corona virus check will result in your future deportation because of some more draconian version of the Miller/Trump “public charge” rule.

I’m one of the lucky ones and I know it. Still, I’m feeling the trappings of civilized living collapsing around me. I’m reminiscing about the times I had the luxury of wondering why people would just throw good government away to elect someone like a Donald Trump.

The fact is, Donald Trump is making all of this a lot worse than it has to be. And I’m not sure how much of it is sadism on his part and how much is pure idiocy.
But I do know one thing. Donald Trump isn’t worth listening to. Responsible media has to stop reporting on him and covering his propaganda conferences.
Things are not fine, regardless of his words. We know that from what he is not doing.

We knew about the corona virus for months, but Trump denied it, then played it down, then delayed action. He squandered time that could save hundreds of thousands of American lives.

Trump’s Centers for Disease Control chose to develop their own COVID-19 tests, disparaging the WHO tests because they were not up to standard. The America First test kit was a failure, so yet more delays came at a time when testing is crucial for containing the virus.

Oh, and Jared Kushner’s brother has interest in the company that Donny was hoping would have a monopoly on deciding who gets tested.

In real terms, meanwhile, the priority for too long was people with the right relationship to the Trumps. Trump claims anyone who wants to get tested can. However, that was not true for people with disconcerting symptoms but without the “right connections.”

By the time we got around to testing widely, it was already too late to prevent what happens in a national crisis. The order of day-to-day life began fraying at the edges. Price-gougers were hoarding hand sanitizers usually priced at maybe $2.99 and jacking the price up. One such team of brothers was put out of business, but who knows how many more are out there.

At the earliest signs of break-down, we should have started getting ready, building more facilities, increasing our inventories of personal protection equipment and other supplies. Instead, hospitals are on the verge of having to play God about who lives and who dies – the absolute nightmare scenario.

But, Trump worried about how the number of cases would make him look, and Melania, one of his most influential advisers, was busy with her tennis pavilion. I can almost imagine her saying to Trump “let them eat Corona”.

We worry about friends who have symptoms but can’t be tested. We worry about people who are vulnerable because of age, because they are immune-compromised or have complicated health situations.

Our imaginations venture to areas that seem surreal – like what if Trump is out to let people in blue states die, while he helps the people in red states just so he can win an election? Then reality sets in, the reality that reminds us viruses don’t care about politics, or about walls, borders, race, age, gender, or whether you think the virus is real.

Our reality is like every dystopian novel wrapped into one. And just when you return to reality from the surreal, Donald Trump appears on TV with his happy talk appealing to the ignorant segment of the electorate.

Every time I see Trump speaking, I think of a professor who suggested limiting voting to political scientists. But he pointed out as well that that would merely exchange one arbitrarily-chosen elite for another.

Right now, I’d settle for media that only allow people who tell the truth to frequent our airwaves.

While we wander further into this nightmare, we need accurate awareness more than ever. We need access to credible, valid facts conveyed by people we trust.

Time for Trump to sit down and shut up.