The two current attacks on humankind have similar causes: greed and stupidity. Though one is a force of nature, it was a result of the human pillaging of our planet, the ravaging of a natural habitat for personal profit, reserving paltry resources to study the consequences of disturbing creatures of that habitat. The resulting pandemic finds us with no resistance and the dire need to ultimately find a cure, namely a vaccine.
The other plague has no easy cure. It is human made. It arises from all the weaknesses of human kind, including greed, apathy, ignorance, stupidity and bad choices. We have a narcissistic moron for a leader, whose power and lawlessness are mostly unchecked, and all these named weaknesses won’t allow us to terminate this human plague. His name is Donald Trump
The party which enables this plague is also of our making: we unwisely voted in sort of a majority that Republicans manufactured. We have a titular, archaic democracy, one we have allowed elected leaders to manipulate, neglect and partially negate. And Mitch McConnell, noted misanthrope of the decade, is packing our courts with radicals who exclusively do corporate bidding, that will affect us for our lifetimes and that of our children and grandchildren.
Most voters, if they really thought about it, don’t like what Republicans do to them and don’t do for them, so Republicans have to lie, divide, cheat, and keep those who don’t like them from voting. Republicans got things so rigged, with the help of extremely gerrymandered districts, the archaic electoral college, and voter suppression, that it still takes about a 57% majority vote in gerrymandered states to get a legislative majority.
Add to that, the toxic presence of Fox News organizations, the equivocating corporate news, Russian election interference, and corporate money pushing corporate-kindly Republican candidates. With this you have a corrupt Mitch leading a majority of demagogic Senators trying to kill health care, cutting off food stamps, neglecting infrastructure, and continuing to wage cultural wars.
If we have given permission to this neglect, to this misinformation, to the extent that we continue to vote for Republicans, we might ask why. Is the misinformation accepted wholesale as truth, no matter how preposterous, because we are somehow programmed to accept it? Have we lost our ability to reason because a dark, primal force prompts us to hate or to fear what some skilled con man convinces us is true, something backed up by a for-profit news organization like Fox News?
Almost daily, Trump uses his platform as a battering ram to propagandize his base, always drawing attention to himself. With little accountability, negative attention serves him. For example, Trump dismissively asked a reporter if he was being “politically correct” by wearing a mask and when he retorted “no,” Trump brutishly told him to speak up, that he couldn’t hear him through the mask. Of course, with Trump’s presence, we have gotten used to this lack of civility, this brutish behavior.
The non-mask-wearing Trump, contrary to his own CDC guidelines which he suppresses, is making it a cultural and political flashpoint, so much so that un-masked Trump supporters resisting stay-at-home orders openly intimidate mask-wearing reporters as being anti-Trump, harshly yelling in reporters’ faces.
Being rude and boisterous still fits the Trump mantra and his rowdier followers tend to follow suit. Trump racism and divisiveness even play out in our cities.
Meanwhile Joe Biden calls Trump an “absolute fool” for mocking the use of masks. Does wearing a mask project strength or weakness,” a reporter asked. Wisely, Biden responded, “No, it projects leadership.”
Such leadership by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in past administration a primary global authority, is being suppressed by Donald Trump, illustrating his priority to get people back to work, albeit with little emphasis on personal safety. His motivation and energy is there because it ties to his re-election. His ignorant buffoonery is focused on pandemic news sessions.
Doctor Atal Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and a writer for The New Yorker speaks about what the hospital, the practices followed at BWH, can teach us about safe working tips during a pandemic, many of the points made by the CDC which are summarily suppressed by Donald Trump.
Much thought, research, and energy, including consultation with the CDC, went into BWH’s program for some 50,000 active employees. It included four basic principles which had to be promulgated for critical care in the face of the pandemic: 1) hygiene, 2) distancing, 3) use of masks, and 4) symptoms testing. It definitely helped to protect the workers covering all functions in the hospital system.
Mind you; this is a life or death situation, so the procedures are painstakingly updated almost daily. Washing hands, disinfecting suspect surface areas, discarding protective coverings periodically – nothing is taken for granted. Even large congregations are avoided, using Zoom for meetings with staff and curtailing the length of get-togethers.
But the national leadership is so perverse, so foolhardy that disunity fragments the effort to draw us all into a concerted effort, something desperately needed to fight a pandemic. More than ever the common good is the focus that self-serving politicians strangle. The brutish behavior, the separatist culture of a Trump and the Republican Party is like a cancer that snuffs out common sentiment.
The Me-first mantra of a Trump and the selfish agenda-based policy of Republicans has not been lessened one iota by the death and sufferings of our pandemic-ravaged population in a severely depressed economy. In fact, the brutishness and the racism of Trump serves to be a default boilerplate for too many, including the most abusive officers on police forces.
Has the human condition made us such purveyors of inhuman treatment possible? While it is undeniable that humans are capable of great acts of kindness and love, we also have an unspeakable history of brutality, one riddled with torture, murder and war. When such carnage occurs, we can be victims, enablers, perpetrators, or even a combination of the three.
The whole Trump family (father, sons, daughters & in-laws) provide us daily with a smug harshness, deceit, and outright corruption that goes mostly unanswered, uncensored and certainly unpunished. Justness, kindness, and common-good behavior is exemplified by few in public life, at least in Republicans.
Media certainly seems to give more coverage and attention to the corruptions of the Trump crime family and the antics of an ever-devilish Mitch McConnell than it does to most other coverage. Outrageous behavior, a jaw-dropping misanthropy seems to sell more media attention than scientific achievements and certainly good behavior.
We might ask, “Why wouldn’t many have me-first attitudes.” That is what is rewarded in our culture. It benefits a corporate culture that wants you to buy their products, at all costs, democracy be damned. That’s why Trump is the corporate candidate they finance.
Common good is so passé.
