Catholic and Enjoying It!
As the whole world saw last Thursday, the World Leader of the Cult of the Untutored Genius favored us all with some recommendations from his gut regarding COVID treatments, while a real doctor had to just sit there and take it:
Dr Birx is all of us right now pic.twitter.com/EGSUOGlY6l
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) April 24, 2020
There are several things notable about this amazing performance. The most obvious, and the one immediately picked up on by public health authorities like poor Dr. Birx and countless others, is the syntactic linguini by which, after babbling about using UV radiation through the skin (a good way to get skin cancer) and somehow getting it into the body Trump wound up suggesting to the world that
“I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.”
The problem, of course, is that when Joe Schmoe hears the words “disinfectant” and, “injection” he thinks this:
And since there are millions of Joe Schmoes out there who believe every word this ignorant dolt says (and immediately acted on it), the public health officials in charge of trying to protect Trump’s base from him had to immediately spring into action to remind people that
“Injecting bleach or disinfectant at the dose required to neutralise viruses in the circulating blood would likely result in significant, irreversible harm and probably a very unpleasant death,” says Rob Chilcott, professor of toxicology at the University of Hertfordshire.”
Similarly, multiple disinfectant manufacturers had to immediately issue press releases desperately warning consumers in Trump’s base in language like:
“As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),”
I will not belabor this first and most obvious point. Suffice it to say, “Trump is a moron for suggesting that injecting disinfectants is a treatment for COVID. Don’t do that” and let’s move on.
What interests me, in light of our previous discussion of “Gnostics, QANON, COVID Liberty Protests, and the Myth of the Untutored Genius” is the dynamic at work in that video. Trump, like every lazy rich kid who never bothered to learn anything, deeply believes in the Myth of the Untutored Genius. He wants very much to lie to himself that he has a “natural ability” for science that exempts him from having to study, learn, think, have any idea what he is talking about while conferring on him the natural right to speak to experts as a fellow expert. So he very clearly is desperate to be viewed as a peer and a colleague of the real doctors in that room as he casually babble, heedless of the audience of millions he commands. He throws out these stupid brain farts as though he is a fellow medical expert in a consultation with people who all know what they are talking about. Birx has to endure this jackass’ braying because his power insulates him from her being able to scream, “YOU ARE AN ASS!” He lies that she agrees with him, forcing her to tell the White House to issue an extraordinary statement that No She Does Not.
And then the medical community has to scramble to make sure that the people who see him as the infallible oracle of truth and real doctors as the evil Deep State Medical Establishment do not act on his brain farts and start self-medicating with Lysol.
Meanwhile, the Right Wing Lie Machine and the Cult on social media then set to work defending him. The defenses tend to fall into multiple, mutually contradictory lies that the Cult manages to believe all at once. (In what follows, every quote I give is a real one from a Trump defender on social media.)
There is the “Trump did not say what you just clearly heard him say with your own two ears. FAKE NEWS!” defense:
CLAIM: President Donald Trump suggested injecting people with disinfectant to cure coronavirus.
VERDICT: False. Trump was speaking generally about new information about sunlight, heat, and disinfectant killing the virus
To be fair, Breitbart, which reflexively published the above lie and then got caught with its pants down when Trump then lied that he was being “sarcastic” (whatever that means) then published a retraction. But countless others repeated the lie anyway:
“Why put this stupid shit on here. Taking his words out of context. Fake news”
***
“Maybe you guys should watch the whole interview totally taken out of context”
***
“You are more of the problem than the Liberal media and Fake news.”
There is the “Trump Speaks the Language of the Hidden Gnosis” defense, in which the words he actually used are redefined to mean something totally different:
“He was doing a triple axle blindfolded in word gymnastics during that segment and what he said and meant were not the same.”
***
“Sure, Trump said ‘disinfectant.’ But he really meant ‘antiviral.'”
***
“He didn’t really mean inject disinfectants. He meant science should find something that is safe to inject that works **like** a disinfectant. But he was brainstorming and got his words jumbled. You know what he really meant!”
***
***
“We all know what he meant. He’s not talking about bleach. He means vitamins, antibiotics, stuff like that. Why you alway’s gotta be twisting his words???”
***
“He was talking about killing the virus indoors with Artificial Sunlight and disinfectant”
There is the “Trump’s grasp of medicine is far beyond that of mere laity” defense:
“But maybe this could work. We use poisons all the time to kill sickness. What do you think chemo is? Why are you anti-science?”
***
“He was referring to the future of medicine.
We inject lots of poison in our bodies for treatments. Or use friggin radiation to kill cells.”
***
“He’s alluding to the fact that since there are things that naturally kill the virus on the outside, then there must be something that can do the same thing on the inside.”
There are the “He’s just asking questions!” and the “We will bury you!/Might makes right!” defenses”:
There are the “Urging ignorant people to kill themselves self-medicating is a small price to pay for the spiteful joy of upsetting liberals” defenses:
“Just trolling the #FakeNewsMedia and they took the bait hook line and sinker playing them like a fiddle! #EnemyOfThePeople #CNN #MAGA #KAG4VR #Trump #realamerica”
There is the “I Googled something for five seconds once and I can confirm that Trump has a natural instinct for science equal to years of actual education” defense:
***
” He has the right idea just like we do to cancer cells, the media just has to make it look bad. He thinks out loud. We destroy and disinfect illnesses in so many ways. O2 chambers, high vitamin c infusions which worked all over the world. I am not king everything but this i get!”
There is the “Critics of injecting disinfectant are death-hungry liberal killjoys who fear a cure will make Trump look like the genius he is” defense:
“You liberals are just so mad that there might be something that works!”
There is the “I will die for spite!” defense:
“ I rather inject myself with any chemical than vote for Sleepy Joe!! #TRUMP2020 #PROVERBS 23:9!!”
There is the “I can’t hear myself describing Trump’s base perfectly” defense:
“You have to be a gigantic psychopath or criminally stupid to listen to this video of Trump talking about experimental use of ultraviolet light therapy and somehow think he’s encouraging people to inject Clorox or Tide Pods. Gotta be nuts to make that leap.”
There is the “People are Mean H8ers for expecting him to make sense and he did not say what you heard him say” defense:
“He didn’t suggest that anyone inject themselves with disinfectant, but that was an odd thing to say. I think he meant disinfecting the body in some way and he miscommunicated that idea.”
***
There is the “Trump is a genius playing 10-Dimensional Chess whose mental plane of existence far surpasses that of mortals” defense:
“Trump’s wonderful because he knows how to think outside the box.”
There is the “He was just joking” defense:
“If you inject it because of a off the wall joke the president said I call that natural selection.”
***
“Oh ok i wouldnt think so but everybody keeps trying to say that…..and even if he did im sure it was kidding anyway”
There is the “He never specifically said what kind of disinfectant people should inject, so that makes it all fine” defense:
“In any case he never said inject Lysol or drink bleach. It was a question to the doctors about somehow disinfecting the body from the inside either with intense light or some other way because the virus is devastating when it gets to the lungs.”
There is the “What really matters is not people injecting themselves with poison but your mean tone in objecting to that!” defense:
“What would be nice to see is for comments about elected officials and all those in authority over us to be gracious, loving and Biblical.
I’m pretty sure calling Trump and all his supporters stupid doesn’t meet that criteria.”
There is the “The real sin here is our failure to understand Trump’s style” defense:
“Do we and the media have a responsibility to adjust our hearing and reporting in consideration of his different style?”
What unites all these defenses is gnosticism.
The Cult above is united by one conviction: the deep belief that a man barren of intellect, with less than no knowledge of what he is talking about, bloated with exactly the sort of dangerous, rumor-filled, garble-witted pseudo-intuition that is worse than blank unawareness, has just as much right–indeed more right–than the stoopid “so-called experts” to barf out his idiotic suggestions and prescriptions and ipsi dixits that will help hurt and kill innocents all over the world when they are acted upon.
The Cult does this, I repeat, because they, like he, desperately believe the Myth of the Untutored Genius and they wish they were him. They live in the American dream world in which each person is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, as well as the Gnostic dream and in which they possess the Hidden Knowledge kept from the Smart with their fancy educations.
The thing is, this imbecile gets to say and do whatever his gut tells him because he is cocooned by money and power from ever facing consequences for his reckless stupidity.
The trouble is, his Cult of defenders are not, for the most part, cocooned by money and power. To be sure, a few are. Hannity, Ingraham, Limbaugh and a few others in the Right Wing Lie Machine are cocooned for the moment (though FOX is now nervously starting to realize that they may be facing a tsunami of wrongful death lawsuits from the brainwashed audience members who listened to the lies about COVID and were injured and killed as a result).
But the ordinary MAGA cultist is not cocooned at all. When they act on his stupid pronouncements, they suffer for it. Inject disinfectant and you die. Join the mob of fools at the anti-lockdown rally and you run a very high chance of contracting the disease. Cheer him at a Nuremburg rally in February when he calls the Pandemic a hoax and a month later your IRA is in ruins and you are out of work and he is stealing your tax money to give it to his cronies.
And he could not care less.
The solution to this is not more belief in the Secret Knowledge and the Hidden History of Our Time. It is exactly that kind of stupid gnosticism that got the Cult where it is. Doubling down and repeating will not fix it.
Repenting is what will fix it. In this case, if you are a Cultist like those above, bent on defending him to the end, that means facing the fact that your Special Intuition and your gut and your common sense and your supposed insight and your Google search do not trump the hard work of going to school, doing the work, and learning what you are talking about.
It means facing the fact that you have been more ready to spend hours, days, and years defending an ignorant moron than to dismissing his dangerous prattle and listen to competent doctors.
And it means facing the fact that the reason you have done that for four years is that you cannot bear to humble yourself before the plain truth that you were wrong to support him and have been wrong to defend him 24/7/365 since then.
You don’t have to die for this imbecile and you don’t have to offer others as human sacrifices to his towering narcissistic stupidity. If you are a member of his Cult, walk away. Be free. Stop defending stupid lies. Listen to competent medical experts, not an ignorant lying moron who does not care if you live or die or the ignorant lying morons who will literally tell any lie to defend him.
As a Catholic Christian, I would add that Jesus, not Trump, is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Deprogram from the Cult of Trump getting acquainted (or re-acquainted) with Jesus. Trump is nearly his polar opposite.
Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? ¶ What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will live in them and move among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
¶ Therefore come out from them,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean;
then I will welcome you,
¶ And I will be a father to you,
and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God. (2 Co 6:14–7:1).
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