Nero Fiddled, Trump Tweeted; Death And Destruction Follow Both

We could have, and should have, slowed the murderous progression of this virus from the very beginning, but we watched as Trump tweeted and the world burned.

Nero Fiddled and Trump Tweeted It’s all ver the news on this day, Sept 9, 2020. Snippets of a book written by investigator Bob Woodward, taken from taped interviews that President Trump granted him in 2020, have leaked everywhere.

The big one: Mr. Trump knew from the very beginning how very, very dangerous the virus that causes Covid-19 is but intentionally chose to minimize it. In effect, by that decision, Mr. Trump became a mass murderer.

We will never, ever know how many lives might have been saved by early, effective, and coordinated action by the US government.

We could have, and should have, slowed the murderous progression of this virus from the very beginning. The US has the smarts, the capabilities, and the resources to have set the standard for world leadership here.

But Trump Tweeted

But we watched as Trump tweeted and the world burned.

From the very beginning of the Trump regime (and I don’t use that word lightly), I’ve said that his election exposed the dirty underbelly of US society for the world to see. We saw how a name-calling, racist, pu***-grabbing, immoral, multi-bankrupt, immature child of wealth could ascend to the most powerful position in the world, aided and abetted by so-called religious people who somehow bought into the notion that this was the person chosen by God to lead this country.

Now, with massive unemployment in the US, with growing poverty and economic destruction worldwide, and a real hunger crisis looming, it could very well be that the far-right Christian cult is going to see what they’ve been wanting for a long time: the destruction of the world so their version of Jesus, i.e., the Jesus that will put their privileged (male) asses firmly on their golden thrones so they can rule over everyone else.

My rage boileth over

I am so angry right now. I’m angry at religious thought that takes a book (The Book of Revelation) written to describe the horror of Roman rule and instead writes the United States and the 21st century (and the last five centuries before as prediction after prediction after prediction of this mythical Second Coming is boringly proved wrong each time) as the proposed star of the drama.

I’m furious at these same religious leaders who relentlessly stand silent in the face of unreal injustice so they can keep lining their gluttonous pockets with money from the desperate gullible ones. And that these so-called religious leaders effectively installed a murderer in the highest position possible.

Of course, in my more cynical moments, I think, “Well, those who died were mostly old and people of color, so why would these religious leaders care? They don’t put that much money in the offering plates.”

I’m also raging against an educational system so bad that way, way too many of our poorer, and especially the poorer minority kids, have no chance of a decent start in life, never learn to read well, to use their good brains to think carefully about the world they are in and how to make it better.

I wonder: Will the US ever wake up to the horrors of the systematic racism that has contaminated the very soul of our society? Can a country like ours, built on slavery and the refusal to honor and respect the humanity of people with darker skins, ever rid our DNA of that soured and sordid legacy?

I sputter trying to find adequate words of disgust at the Chinese leadership (note: NOT the Chinese people) that worked so hard on the COVID-19 coverup, managed to contain it in their country by an absolutely draconian lock-down (something no other country without tight central control and an extremely compliant populace could ever do) and now is moving quickly to take advantage of a world that is crippled by illness and economic chaos. Please, everyone, take the time to read the diary that famed and brave Chinese writer wrote during the lockdown in Wuhan. Here’s a brief summary of Fang Fang’s story.

And I ponder: What will the world look like on the other side of this pandemic that is not only killing many but also effectively ruining the world’s economy . . . except, again, for China, where the numbers show few dead, few ill, little spread, and the economy coming back to full swing?

Right there, you have my first prediction of the aftermath of these multiple crises: We are going to be VERY ANGRY about what happened with the pandemic. Very, very angry.

Between Trump’s lying tweets, the corruption and leadership of the Chinese politicians, and the incompetence of the US public health response, hampered at every turn by the President of the United States, we are now losing massive amounts of accumulated wisdom, along with the spiritual centering that our older population offers to their families and to our society at large.

Along with them, many of our most talented health care workers have paid the price of their work with record deaths compounded with mental and spiritual despair.

Furthermore, as our society collectively keeps its thumb pressing down on our Black Americans, particularly the men, we toss enough human talent, ingenuity, and goodness to have completely turned the world around.

My future hopes

I hope that in the future, we will be smart enough to:

Never again trust the health and well-being of our people to a nation whose leaders refuse the work of the free press and routinely lie and cover-up in the most egregious of ways about a disease that is doing its best to kill massive numbers of people, ruin the health of many more and destroy the world’s economy. And I also hope that good investigators find out exactly how much money Chinese billionaires will make of the recovering US stock market. And how much of that got funneled into the Trump family pockets.

Never again trust to national leadership those who refuse to listen to scientific experts and thus threaten their entire societies with their ignorance. I am speaking directly of Jail Bolsarnio (Brazil), Boris Johnson (Great Britain), and, The Great Tweeter himself, Donald Trump. Their collective ignorance, combined with the ignominy of the Chinese dictatorship, has cause damage so massive that its totals will never be fully known.

Never again take our health for granted and be casual about the basics of good hygiene, i.e., watching our weight, distancing when necessary, careful handwashing, and reasonable fears of infectious viruses.

Time to get smart. Time to shed all light possible on the hidden truths here. Time to take back this nation in the name of truth and health. And tell the so-called “religious leaders” who equate Mr. Trump with the Messiah to take a flying leap into the abyss they seek to prepare for others.