Donald Trump wants you to clap, vote and die
I’m not addressing this to the diehard MAGA-hat wearing bigots out there. You’re dead to reason anyway. If Jesus came back and made you choose between him and Trump you’d pick Trump. That’s Donald Trump, by the way, the same guy who was your idea of a punchline to a joke just five years ago. That’s how deep and far back your “faith” goes.
No, I’m talking to those out there who see nothing to choose between Trump and Joe Biden. I’m talking to the self-proclaimed “progressives” who lack the courage to admit when they’re wrong. I’m talking to the Bernie burn-outs who are bitter they didn’t get their way and want to punish the world for it. Well, the last train to Sanityville is pulling out of the station, and you just might want to be on it this time.
One of the most horrific tragedies ever to befall the American people is about to happen in the next month or two, and Donald Trump is going to be exclusively responsible for it. It’s not being reported by the press very much because, frankly, the ladies and gentlemen of the press can’t believe it themselves, even though it’s as obvious as the mask-covered noses in front of their faces. America is about to see a spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths so massive it will make the last one seem tame by comparison.
If you think otherwise then ask yourself this. How did America go from a starting point of practically no cases and fewer deaths to over two million cases and over 116,000 deaths in three months? Answer, by ignoring the doleful proclamations of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control, that’s how. And now, with Donald Trump’s invaluable impetus, America is about to do it again, only this time from a starting point of two million cases. America is reopening at the very peak of the pandemic.
Oh, and by the way, two million confirmed cases probably means something more like six to twenty million actual cases. That is, there are probably, at the very least, four million extra asymptomatic COVID-19 cases than we officially know about, cases walking around out there ready to unwittingly infect everyone they meet. And, in a staggering lack of caution, America in particular and the world in general is about to walk into the greatest human calamity since World War II.
Do Trump and his people know about this? You bet they do. That’s why they are rushing headlong with frantic desperation and working night and day to protect their most precious resource: their money. In a cynical prelude to his next desperately anticipated Nuremberg-style rally, Donald Trump’s lawyers will be making every attendee sign this liability disclaimer:
By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury.
That is the price Donald Trump wants his people to pay for the sake of his ego, and no price is too high. Oh, and by the way, since this rally is going to be in Oklahoma, the state Trump carried by thirty-five points over Hillary Clinton in 2016, a state where Trump is holding a whopping twenty point lead over Joe Biden right now, this rally is not about reelection. This rally is about a malignantly narcissistic man’s desperate need for approval. As far as Trump is concerned, the people in the rally can clap, vote and die. Donald Trump’s ego has gone three months without its favorite food, it’s famished and it doesn’t give a crap if you die feeding it.
But it gets better. Like I said, Trump doesn’t need to impress Oklahoma. He’s already got a lock on its measly 7 electoral votes. What Oklahoma has to offer Donald Trump and his bigoted acolytes is its racist symbolism and its hateful history of lynchings and murders and violent uprisings against people of color. That he’s holding his very first rally since March on “Juneteenth,” the unofficial jubilee day of the blessed end of human slavery in America, is no accident. Trump is a monster of racist dog whistles, and this is another one to his “many fine people.”
Don’t get me wrong, not everyone from Oklahoma is a bigot. I have deep roots there. My late father was born there and died a thoroughgoing liberal. But it remains a commonplace artifact of early twentieth century racial attitudes and ignorance. And it’s a measure of Trump’s contempt for their willing ignorance that he would cynically risk the lives of Oklahomans and the lives of their families so he can get some ego jollies.
The nationwide pandemic has also already been fueled by nationwide protests against the murder of George Floyd, and for that I also blame Trump. An actual statesman would have stepped forward and made demonstrations in those numbers unnecessary, and would have taken measures to guarantee that the demonstrations that did occur were peaceful and safe for the participants. Trump did none of that. Trump cowered in his bunker and tweeted angry and hateful divisiveness, intentionally fanning the flames of racial division.
If the angry, anti-Biden coalition of “progressives” out there remain unconvinced, then I submit it is because they are immune to any new information. It will be my pleasure to watch them fade into the impotent rubbish heap of history. We will carry the future with us, and we will begin by ensuring that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. becomes the 46th President of the United States. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.