As the world struggles to contain a deadly airborne disease, governments, international health organizations, and the media are now wrestling with a new question:
Did the World Health Organization’s subservience to China prevent a malignant narcissist from making an informed decision? Or, did the world’s premier global health organization do its job?
The eye-bleedingly frustrating pattern is starting to play out as expected. There is zero evidence of any of Trump’s claims. The facts of the situation turn out to be much more damning than most of us thought. Trump’s response is to viciously attack everyone that brings this objective truth to light, to the detriment of the country.
This is how dictators function. This is how cults are formed and this is how democracies die. Absent a boogie-man, a cult leader invents one. Those of us committed to the truth furiously aim to protect the attacked institution. Cult followers need only the insistence of their leader as proof. They see the fervent response of the defenders as evidence of their own righteousness. Facts be damned, and the pursuit of truth is viewed as an attack. A neutral entity is turned into a test of allegiance, and neutrality is lost. Cult leader’s followers become more hardened and impenetrable. Opposition hardens.
This is why demagogues are dangerous.
Donald Trump has committed so many bizarre atrocities that it is hard to keep track. As a sampling, he attacked John McCain after he died and then he fought his own administration to prevent our nation from honoring him. He viciously continues to attack the press as the “Enemy of the United States”, effectively proclaiming the First Amendment of the Constitution as anti-American. He has attacked the parents of American soldiers killed in service to our nation. He repeatedly praises Nazis, Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong Il, and Vladimir Putin. He has stripped infants and kindergarteners and school children from their mothers and fathers, terrifying a generation of people for no reason other than they have no power. But nothing has absolutely infuriated me to the white-hot edge of sanity than his attack on the World Health Organization. In a pandemic.
The power grab he is going for is nothing short of monstrous. There is a pandemic changing the world as we know it and we have no idea what it looks like on the other side. A deadly virus has forced the country closed. Donald Trump, after failing to maintain the systems that our government put in place for this exact problem, is now acting like the disease is just a choice.
The United States is trying to rescue an economy through an emergency spending of $2,000,000,000,000 and we have no idea if it will work. Jobless claims are an order of magnitude higher than they were just a couple of weeks ago and unemployment percentages are approaching the Great Depression. The $349 Billion SBA paycheck protection loan program ran out of money in days. The United States reports COVID-19 infection numbers that are 3 1/2 times higher than the next highest country, and that’s with the President of the United States blatantly refusing to create a testing plan. “Now they scream ‘Testing, Testing, Testing,’ again playing a very dangerous political game. States, not the Federal Government, should be doing the Testing.”
Fantastic. Now his followers have a new foe. The “they” who play a very dangerous political game. On this point, I agree. However, the difference between the President’s position and mine is that I can name the “they”.
He is averse to a national plan for a national problem, even though national organizations used to be supported and national programs used to be maintained by every one of our past Presidents, all of which actually liked this country. And the reason he does not try to protect our nation is either that he does not want to do his job, or he is incapable. Neither are acceptable.
This incompetent fuck is blind to the fact that a national testing plan is the only chance of getting the economy back running before a vaccine is available. And now we’re stuck with a president that has a history peddling anti-vaccine talking points.
In the middle of that atmosphere, against the advice of the medical professionals in his own administration that are trying to advise him of the best course of action for the country, Donald Trump has decided to turn the World Health Organization into a boogie-man as a test of loyalty. It is the largest test of loyalty he has pressed for.
If Donald Trump gets away with attacking the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic, there is literally no floor to the depth of his depravity. He is betraying the country, betraying our foundations, and now betraying his most loyal supporters by enlisting them to endanger their lives by demanding that they “LIBERATE.”
In the same breath that his administration made the absurd claim that his fomenting domestic rebellion is “not fomenting domestic rebellion”, the White House made sure to clarify that governors are “more concerned about controlling the populations than protecting them.”
All Americans should be terrified.