Life in the Time of Coronavirus: Another Message to My Conservative Friends

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Illustration Credit: Pixabay
Another message to my conservative friends in South Florida and elsewhere, especially those who are die-hard loyalists of Donald Trump:

Dear Friends,

Do you remember those long-ago (or seemingly so) days in 2015 and early 2016, during the Republican Presidential primary season, when it looked like Donald Trump might, just might, become the presumptive nominee of your party?

We warned you then: "He's not fit for the Presidency. He is a con man. A bigot. A notorious liar and braggart. He has no experience in government. He is abrasive and spiteful. A Trump Presidency will be disastrous."

You dismissed us. You laughed at us. You bought your red MAGA caps (made in China, by the way) and called us "snowflakes." "Communists." "Libtards." You mocked us for wanting to avoid putting a rude, crude, and inept "businessman" in the White House. You had the gall to post photos of Melania Trump and opine that she is the most beautiful and classiest First Lady EVER, while looking the other way when we pointed out that she had posed for soft-core porn photos in Europe. You even went (and still go) as far as saying that Democrats want to destroy America and turn the nation into another Cuba or Venezuela. In short, you act on your emotions and faith in your world-view rather than base your political beliefs on hard facts and logic.

I do not blame Donald Trump for the existence of the virus or its initial outbreak.  (There are some Chinese conspiracy theorists that are saying that we created COVID-19 and unleashed it on them, which is bullshit.) I also don't blame him for the global spread of the virus, although I do think that he acted too slowly in the first weeks or so of the initial outbreak.

What do I blame Donald Trump for? Many things, actually, starting with his idiotic decision to allow former National Security Adviser John Bolton to close the National Security Council's pandemic office in 2018. This, plus his ill-advised attempts to minimize the impact of COVID-19, his changing positions on the pandemic, and (worse yet) his insane claim that the media and the Democrats were making a mountain out of a molehill in order to ruin his chances of re-election. He waffled in his public statements because he didn't want "bad news' to upset the stock market and thus sink "his" great economy.

And yes, I blame many of you who voted for this inept President just because you hate liberalism and the Democratic Party so much that you conflate both with Communism (or Socialism in the Marxist sense).

Yup. We told you so.

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