07-14-2021, 09:35 PM
(07-14-2021, 05:09 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The part I don't get is that Trump originally devised his no response reaction to Covid to keep the economy going. Any attempt to save lives in the early days would hurt the economy and thus Trump's chances for reelection. These days, vaccination helps the economy, but the red culture still suggests taking no precautions.
But I guess putting politics ahead of lives is Trump's way.
I was going to compare him to segregationist pols of the 1960's, but those indirectly caused few deaths. Some of those pols came to recognize how harmful segregation was and recanted, like the late Alabama Governor George C. Wallace. who eventually recanted his racist past on the grounds that (1) segregationist policies were wrong, and (2) they really did no good even for the white people that they supposedly favored.
I don't see Donald Trump ever deprecating his economic corruption, his sadism, his lechery, or his bigotry. He may have to account before God (if there is One), but it is far safer, by just about every religious tradition, to confess and repudiate grave sins while alive than when some Entity decides whether one goes to Heaven or Hell. I can easily imagine Donald Trump ending up in a very bad Afterlife unless he should get some very cheap grace.
Keeping the economy going? What a sick joke! he could have pushed a relief package that rescued small businesses that had to close due to COVID-19. (My solution: we would all get relief checks from which we could designate a part going to favorite closed businesses like restaurants, stores, golf courses, bars, and movie theaters -- before we could get any other aid). Trump could have pushed a nationwide shutdown analogous to those in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky so that one would not simply go to Iowa, Tennessee, or Missouri (maybe Arkansas, which at its northeastern-most point, isn't that far from Cairo), where of course 'Rona awaited one.
Dead people do not generate profits except for undertakers, and for undertakers only when the Dearly Departed is solvent before dying or making arrangements.
People who got sick from COVID-19 ended up with high-cost medical treatment (often at taxpayer expense) and often an expensive funeral. Supposedly the Post Office was going to supply everyone with a mask... and had Trump thought of it, maybe everyone could get some postage stamps paid for out of the budget. probably with messages that tell people how to be safe. "Stay home... wear a mask if you must leave home... etc.)
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.