Unmasking Donald Trump
The funeral for the archaic notion of how “Real Men” ought to behave is well overdue. Consciously or not, when the child-raping mass murderer Donald Trump refused to wear a mask at the Ford plant in Ypsilanti, he was giving oxygen to that justly moribund idea. He was Standing Tall against tyranny. He was asserting his Independent American Spirit. He was showing the world how a man faces a puny virus. Besides, the mask might have smeared his makeup.
All kidding aside, I take it personally. When anyone in power, no matter how illegitimate that power may be, makes a mockery of a protocol designed to protect me and my family from miserable illness and possible death, I resent it very much and so should you. Trump’s example influences aspiring “Real Men” the same way Hemingway’s drinking influenced aspiring writers. Both are useless and both achieve the opposite of the desired result.
We don’t need bad examples just now, we need science. We need men and women who practice and respect science, not this “petulant child,” as Michigan state attorney general, Dana Nessel, labelled Trump. Trump’s response to Nessel’s rebuke was predictably, petulantly childish, right one schedule, when he tweeted:
The Wacky Do Nothing Attorney General of Michigan, Dana Nessel, is viciously threatening Ford Motor Company for the fact that I inspected a Ventilator plant without a mask. Not their fault, & I did put on a mask. No wonder many auto companies left Michigan, until I came along!
The “vicious threat” is called enforcing the law. A. G. Nessel sent Ford a letter threatening legal action against “any company or any facility that allows him [anyone not wearing a mask] inside those facilities and puts our workers at risk.”
It turns out to be true that Trump did briefly wear a mask while inside the plant during the private part of his tour, which had the same predictable usefulness as briefly wearing a condom. He removed it before facing the cameras because, he claimed, he “didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.” The important part, of course, was that when he was wearing the mask it “looked very nice.”
Trump was required by law to wear the mask everywhere inside the building and throughout the tour. But because Trump has equal parts contempt for the law and contempt for science he viewed that requirement as optional.
I am on twitter for the sake of my work for Palmer Report (@RAHarrington). It has been an education and I wish I’d joined sooner. But it hasn’t all been enlightening fun and games. It is also my distinct displeasure to follow Donald Trump. But it is my concomitant pleasure to follow Joe Biden. For those who claim that Donald Trump and Joe Biden are “just the same” I adduce this recent tweet from our future president:
I promise you this: A Biden Administration will listen to scientists and heed their advice — not silence them.
Vice President Biden was an integral part of the Obama administration and, as such, he did just that, he listened to scientists and heeded their advice. So we already know he’s telling the truth and we don’t have to wonder. His proven respect for science will make the difference between lives lost and lives saved. Such is the power of science, and such is the efficacy of the person in power who recognizes and uses that power.
There are a million reasons why Donald Trump must go in November and be replaced by Joe Biden, and this is just another of them. 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.