Pandemic Roulette
The party of Gollums. Or are they golems?
Let’s just argue, for hypothetical purposes, that the sole reason to select one candidate over the other, or one party over the other, was their response, attitude and behavior in regards to the global pandemic. With all else being equal, how do the two parties and the two candidates compare?
One candidate - after being advised by national security experts of the viruses lethality - chose to laugh it off, shrug it off, call it a hoax, claim it would disappear once the days grew warmer.
The boot lickers in his party followed suit.
One candidate - after learning from national security experts that the virus was very contagious by air - refused to wear a face covering or encourage anyone else to wear a face covering.
The brown nosers in his party shoved their noses closer.
One candidate whose administration had already dismantled the previous administration’s pandemic response team and ignored the ‘playbook’ left behind by the previous administration chose to throw together a ‘task force’ of blithering covidiots headed up by career science deniers.
The head nodders in his party vigorously began nodding their heads.
One candidate’s ineffective coronavirus task force thought it would be a great idea if the states were forced to go their own way to find the medical supplies they needed or were allowed to bid against one another for supplies that should have been stockpiled for just this sort of ‘rainy day’ - not sold to foreign governments.
The sad sacks of humanity in his party who traded their souls for lucre rubbed their hands together greedily.
One candidate, even though he clearly understood the ramifications for doing so, got impatient with the medical community’s guidelines and suggestions and implorations and began demanding - despite all the risks - that the country “open up, open wide”. He cheered on domestic terrorists to “take back their states” in brief exclamatory tweets that were in all caps.
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
The cock suckers in his party were a little uncomfortable with egging on insurrection but - what the hell - they’d come this far!
One candidate used the highest office in the land and the loudest bully pulpit in the country to hawk cures and medicines that had not been fully tested. Cures and medicines needed for other purposes. Cures and medicines he and his blood sucking offspring probably owned stock in.
The golems, or are they gollums?, in his party slavered obsequiously and rubbed their knuckles in delight believing they, too, might be able to enrich themselves. Who cares what they cost might be to entranced followers?
One candidate, despite having - supposedly - contracted the virus, despite spreading the virus amongst his staff, despite learning of other outbreaks attributed to his desires to be worshipped, continued to eschew an unmanly look of wearing a mask and insisted on holding raucous, jam-packed rallies where most of his faithful, but fearful, constituents were maskless.
The party faithful were stupefied at how much he enjoyed pissing into the hurricane but they would send encouraging words from the comfort and safety of their Grade A designed zoom rooms.
What about the other candidate you ask? How did he handle the pandemic? What did he do? Well - firstly and most importantly - he wasn’t in charge! He was not the ‘leader of the free world’. He was not - officially - the head of his own party!
We don’t know for sure what he would have done but he would not have denied recommendations from the experts, he would not have spewed contradictory information daily and he would not have appointed an unelected relative to steer the greatest crisis to hit this country in a century.
Here’s a video by Robert Reich that says what I just said but a lot more eloquently and with less sarcasm or truculence. In case you are not familiar with Robert Reich, here is a succinct description:
Robert Bernard Reich is an American economic advisor, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. He was Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997. He was a member of President Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.
That’s it for me today. Happy Halloween! Don’t forget to turn your clocks back. (I saw someone wrote that the first candidate to say they will end Daylight Savings Time would automatically win the vote. It may not have been a joke.)
The end is nigh.
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Sarah Cooper - with Helen Mirren! - strikes again! It’s called How to Billy Bush.
Sorry for all of the Twitter content and videos but some of these are must watches. Like this one from Rachel Maddow in regards to the second wave of the pandemic that is currently crashing the Midwest hard, but everywhere, really.
Thanks for reading and following! - JLM