It wasn’t long after the news that the pussy-grabber-in-chief had tested positive for COVID-19 that I saw the messages praying for his swift recovery, et cetera. All of which that passed through my social media streams I carefully avoiding replying to, lest I say something wrong. I did retweet a person wishing that the almighty show trump exactly the same compassion and grace that Trump has ever expended to others. I made a similar comment myself as a follow-up. But at no point did I say I was glad he was sick or express any hope for a bad outcome.
And honestly, I haven’t seen much of that at all. I’ve seen a lot of people talking about why they are having trouble mustering any sympathy. And I’ve been one of the people explaining why I have virtually no sympathy in this case. I’ve even seen people explain how much they don’t want him to die precisely because they want him to live long enough to face criminal prosecution for at least some of his crimes.
But this has not stopped his supporters from wailing and screaming at all of us “evil libs” for not showing the compassion and respect they think he observes.
Here’s why I’m barely restraining myself for tracking them down to laugh in their faces: just last week they were cheering and metaphorically dancing in the streets over the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That’s only one of the reasons, though. Just to list a few more:
- President Super-spreader put thousands of children in cages at the border, and has let diseases run rampant through the camps,
- his minions are asking the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare even while he himself is getting treated in a government hospital, every penny of his care paid for by the U.S. taxpayer,
- the Russian president put out and has paid several bounties to terrorists for killing U.S. soldiers, and Prez Super-spreader has refused to even broach the topic, let alone express any sympathy to the families of assassinated soldiers,
- when, at a white supremacist rally, one of the Prez’s supporters drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors and killed a young woman, the Prez was too busy trying to say that there were many fine people among those white supremacists to ever express sympathy to the family of the slain woman,
- also while arguing with reporters about those same rallies, he kept using the word “us” while referring to the white supremacists,
- over 214,000 Americans have died in this pandemic, most of those deaths could have been prevented if the Prez hadn’t decided that the disease was only killing people in Blue States so it didn’t matter,
- over 214,000 Americans have died, and just two weeks ago the Prez was saying that the disease hurts virtually nobody.
- he knew he was positive for the virus before the Presidential Debate, but he didn’t warn anyone who was at the debate, he attended a fundraiser and a rally afterward during which he refused to wear a mask, and even when his symptoms became bad enough to scare him, it never occurred to him to call his opponent in that debate and inform him (you know, the thing that any decent human being would do),
- et cetera
- et cetera
- et cetera
I could keep going and going.
The simple fact is that the man responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and counting (and that’s only Americans who have died of the pandemic, he’s responsible for a lot more) does not deserve one fucking iota of pity for getting a disease which he allowed to run rampant across the country. A disease he pretended didn’t matter. A disease he claimed could be cured if people drank bleach. A disease he insisted would magically disappear any second now.
And I’m not the only one who feels that way: The ‘Fuck Your Feelings’ Crowd Wants a Pity Party for Trump.
The other thing that’s driving me to distraction on this is the reaction of the professional pundit class. As soon as they learned about Prez Super-spreader’s diagnosis, suddenly all of the non-Fox news outlets had dire warnings about a constitutional crisis if the Prez is incapacitated—because there are a bunch of gaps in the process laid out in the 25th amendment for dealing with the incapacity of a president. One of the biggies being that there is no process for what could happen if the Veep gets seriously ill, too.
And I’ve listened to one podcast where some experts are dismayed that all the non-trump-cultists aren’t reacting to their dire warnings of a constitutional crisis.
You know why? Because we’ve been in the middle of a constitutional crisis for nearly four years now. We, the ordinary people on progressive side of the political spectrum have been screaming at the news media, our congressional representatives, and anyone else we thought might help—some for only the last few months, some of us for years.
Day one he refused to obey the Emoluments Clause of the constitution as well as the The Federal Anti-Nepotism Statute. He repeatedly suggested that he should be able to serve an extra long term because people were supposedly mean to him the first couple of years in office. He then switched to suggested that the coming election results can’t be trusted. He has repeatedly claimed that he would not be bound to accept a loss at the ballot box if he decided the process wasn’t fair. He has repeatedly (and in official communications) threatened to illegally send troops into cities and states where he believed officials and citizens oppose his policies. He has illegally sent troops into at least one such city. He was repeatedly refused to say that there would be a peaceful transition if he loses the election.
All of those were constitutional crises that should have been engendering dire headlines long, long ago.
The only people who care about his blatant violation of the very foundations of our form of government at all have been worrying about this for years while the pundits have been acting as if it’s all some kind of game or horse race.
I’m glad something finally got their attention, but I have lost all respect for those that took this long to start pulling their heads out of whoever’s orifice they’ve been stuck inside.
Catch up, guys. The rest of us have been dreading and bracing for the chaos.
Your restraint in the face of such perverse provocation is commended
The humorous revisionist history of Trump vs. Virus is what gets me: his supporters all claiming how he warned about its seriousness (“we have maybe 15 cases”, “it will all be over by Easter”) to how he immediately stopped travel from China (never did, in fact), to how he personally invented the vaccine that saved everyone.
When you’re dealing with Trump supporters, you are dealing with people who are demonstrably insane. Just like him.