Trump and Cuomo place a profoundly different value on human life.

How much is a human life worth?

Pro life people have often been accused of believing that life begins at conception and ends at birth. That’s not true.

The pro life people I know have fought for the sanctity of human life under the law with heroic persistence. They have endured decades of defeat and kept on believing and working to save lives.

They are also some of the most loving, forgiving and generous people it has ever been my privilege to know. I am grateful beyond words to them for their forgiveness and love.

At the same time, I have always known that many political “pro life” people were phonies. They would kill grandma if it made money for them and kept them in power.

There was a time when the grandma illustration was just illustrative hyperbole. But in the past few weeks, it has become political reality. We live in a society where even people who make their living yakking about how pro life they are don’t mind singling out groups of people to kill if money is on the line.

This shouldn’t surprise anybody. People who would put little children in cages on our borders are perfectly capable of killing innocent Americans for profit. You can’t be a person of compassion and love and do either one of these things.

Donald Trump has been repeatedly touted as the “most pro life” president ever. But he’s the guy who put the little children in cages. And he’s the president who has mismanaged this pandemic. In fact, if  he had done his job the way Obama did his when Ebola nearly broke loose in 2014-15, this pandemic might never have happened. He’s also the president who doesn’t mind killing grandma.

His negligence, incompetence and mental health problems have resulted in the loss of over 100,000 American lives that we know of. That number is continuing to climb. Since testing has been so lacking, I’m pretty sure the actual number is much higher.

You can’t want to practice eugenics on an entire population, to be willing to kill the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, and claim that you are pro life. Being pro life means that you can’t kill people.

The basic right to life applies to all people, at every age, no matter their pre-existing condition. An elderly woman with dementia has the same right to life as an elderly president of the United States with factitious disorder. A little girl with asthma has the same right to life as Mitch McConnell or any of the billionaire members of Club for Growth. You don’t let people die because they’re old. You don’t let them die because they have asthma or high blood pressure, live in nursing homes or can’t afford medical care.

How much is a human life worth? New York Gov Andrew Cuomo asked this question. His answer was that a human life is priceless. Ironically, painfully, this is the same Gov Cuomo who is pro abortion.

At the same time, our president, who has been against abortion, has answered the question of how much a human life is worth by talking about the DOW.

What we have here are two elected officials, neither one of whom is pro life.

Personally, I’m not going to lie for either one of them. I won’t obfuscate the complexity of their decisions. They are what they are.

My strongest advice to everyone reading this is to not lie to yourselves about these guys, either. Take reality on reality’s terms. Trump is an incompetent amoral disaster whose incompetence has resulted in the deaths of a lot of Americans.

If he’s re-elected, he’s going to kill a lot more people. He’s not going to make America great again. He’s going to destroy our democracy and end us as a world power.

I back Gov Cuomo in his concern for the lives that the right wing is so eager to sacrifice for their money. I oppose legal abortion and hope that Roe is overturned by our five “pro life” justices on the Supreme Court. I’m perfectly willing to back those positions with my time and my treasure.

What I won’t do is lie about the realities we face. Not to myself. Not to you. Not to anybody.