One of my favorite novels is Stephen King’s The Stand. But that doesn’t mean I want to live it.
Yes, as we all know, the coronavirus is here to decimate our population, destroy our civilization, and in an absolute worst-case scenario, cause our millionaires to lose some money in the stock market.
Experts are still trying to figure out if this is the second coming of the Spanish Flu (which killed 5% of the world) or if it’s the most overhyped near-calamity since the Y2K bug.
But in any case, we shouldn’t worry. Because our mega-super genius of a president has a master plan to —
Ha, no.
As we all know, the odds of Trump handling this crisis well are about the same odds as your pet schnauzer winning the Kentucky Derby.
Even his hardcore supporters know that the guy can’t handle this. They elected the man to shake things up, or burn down the system, or undertake some other metaphor that conjures up images of devastation. Trump voters never dreamed that their beloved doddering reality-show host would actually have to deal with a national emergency. He was just supposed to ban the Muslims and deport the Latinos, not come up with a comprehensive approach to fighting a global pandemic. Oh, the injustice of it all.
Early indicators are that the most racist chief executive in history is not up to the task. After all, we’ve already endured disastrous news conferences where Trump has claimed that we will develop a vaccine for the coronavirus quickly, “when in fact there is little chance that will happen.” Hell, the president doesn’t even appear to know how vaccines work, and he’s implied that stricken people should just go into work and spread the disease among their co-workers.
So our prevention efforts are off to a good start.
Now, it’s not just that Trump distrusts science, “always believes he knows more than the experts about any given subject,” and “has increasingly surrounded himself with a team of acolytes who will not challenge him.”
No, there is also the fact that it is difficult “for the public to believe a president who has made more than 16,000 false or misleading claims in his first three years in office.”
Put it all together, and there is a slight chance that the virus may yet accomplish what impeachment, the Mueller Report, and myriad scandals, fuck-ups, and immoral actions have not, which is to “throw a spotlight on the Trump administration’s criminal negligence,” massive corruption, and idiotic incompetence.
Hey, even Wall Street analysts are saying that a botched response to the virus “may increase the likelihood of Democratic victory in the 2020 election.”
But I will go even further. I will state the following:
This is the election. This microscopic bug — right here. This will likely decide who the next president is. We are in its hands.
You see, if coronavirus unleashes a wave of illness across America — and in a truly horrific scenario, kills thousands — it will be impossible for even Trump and his squad of conspiratorial lunatics to claim that it is fake news. If the stock market plummets, and the economy shudders, many Americans will finally declare that they have had enough of Trumpian chaos.
Conversely, if the virus burns itself out and doesn’t sicken too many Americans, and the economic turmoil is relatively slight, well then, team Trump will claim that the president vanquished the bug and singlehandedly saved the nation (even if, as is virtually 100 percent certain in this scenario, the administration just got lucky despite its inevitable bungling).
Everything that has come before this has just been set-up, politically speaking. This virus now controls our fate.
You can ponder the insanity of that all you want.
Just don’t forget to wash your hands.
