Coronavirus

There were 3 reasons to vote for Donald Trump for President of the United States.

1) You hated Hillary Clinton and couldn't stand the thought of four years of her as President. I actually struggled with this one myself but as the saying goes I held my breath and voted for the lesser of two evils.

2) You were ignorant of what Trump is now and always has been about. Trump is for Trump. Any means of boosting his ego and his bank account are eagerly sought after, whether they have anything to do with truth, honesty, or integrity or not. Trump is a habitual liar and always has been. Not only that, but he is devoid of integrity, basic honesty, or any other values that might interfere with his first and only love, promoting Trump. I can actually understand those who voted for Trump because they hated Clinton. I don't understand anyone who didn't take the time to do even a modicum of research to realize how debased and stupid Trump is and always has been. The number of people he has cheated, stolen from, and abused in every way in his long climb to notoriety is mind boggling. If you didn't or haven't taken the time to figure this out it is only because you are incredibly lazy or don't want to. I have as little respect for one as the other.

3) You are among the owner class that cares for nothing as much as how much money you can make. This applies to those who ignore Trump's basic dishonesty and trampling of ethics because they are personally enriched by his schemes AND those who think they might be in the future. In either case, it doesn't say much for who you are as a person if you fall into this category.

Regardless of who we are to blame for Trump being in the position he is in, we are now stuck with it for at least another year. Even though everyone knows he has continually broken laws, defied the Constitution and personally enriched his family and business partners while in office. Despite all this Republicans united to maintain their power base instead of protecting the Constitution and voted not to throw him out of office despite the fact that most or all of them realized he was guilty as charged; both in the case of trying to bribe an ally into investigating a political adversary and in the 2016 election investigation when he repeatedly and blatantly interfered in a justice department investigation into him and his cronies. Despite the fact that many of his closest confidantes are now in prison, Republican's still insist that Trump himself is innocent of doing anything but aggravating Democrats.

We have made our bed and now we must lie in it. We have slept with dogs and woken up with fleas. Now it's time to pay the piper, and pay the piper we will. The long term effects of what he has done to the economy will no doubt come home to roost soon but that is not what I am talking about at the moment. The Corona Virus that will no doubt soon infect large portions of the population will be Trump's hopefully final parting gift before leaving the stage. I am not going to claim that Trump somehow is responsible for the virus OR even try to claim that he could have stopped it. What I will say is that his incompetent approach to handling any and every crisis is critically at odds with what is needed now and we will pay for that with thousands of deaths in this country that didn't have to occur if we had a real leader in the White House who understood what is going on. All Trump can see is that it is hurting his chances for re-election and worse yet, hitting him where he can't stand to be hit; squarely in his massive and overblown ego.

Deny, deny, deny and deny louder are his first and automatic responses to any suggestion that his judgment might be faulty. We are in stage three of that at the moment. I am sure we would see several more stages if he had his way and was able to cover up what is actually going on but this one is beyond his control. In other words, he can't bully, intimidate, lie, and bullshit his way out of this one even though he is trying. Eventually, the numbers themselves will tend to show how ineffective blustering is when faced with a real problem. I sincerely hope all the experts are wrong. I do not want to see a pandemic that kills and sickens thousands and thousands of people decimate the population and wipe out large numbers of older Americans but it may be too late already. In any case, his continuing denials and refusal to put even basic pandemic safeguards in place are making it worse than it should be.

Republicans and Conservative Republican's specifically have been saying for years that the government should be responsible for protecting it's citizens to the exclusion of every other responsibility. This mentality has seen the cutting of public health initiatives for many, many years. Trump himself has steadily dismantled this system from his first day in office simultaneously while he added trillions of dollars to building American military might. If some of them would read the Constitution they profess to uphold they would recognize that a military defense is only ONE of the basic goals of the document. I'll save you the trouble of reading it by quoting from the Preamble below (highlights are my own).

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

As you can see, a common defense is only one of the basic reasons for creating the Constitution, no matter how many Republicans deny it. Without getting too far into the other goals of the people who wrote that document I think you can easily see that "promoting the general Welfare" is also an important part of why it was written. De-funding federal programs long put in place to protect us against the reality of pandemics is no less important when it comes to protecting Americans. As we may soon find out the hard way, it's a duty that the government itself is uniquely qualified and able to do.

Here is the gist of what Conservatives fail to recognize about Government. Promoting the general welfare involves a lot of things that aren't profitable. That is why we have government agencies that are created with that purpose in mind instead of private entities that are only interested in profits. They are not the same thing for the simple reason that they have completely different goals. Trump's recent defense of his policies by pointing out that it's not "good business" to keep a lot of doctors on staff to prevent outbreaks like this points out the basic fallacy of electing business people to run governments to begin with. It's not good business because it cuts into profits but it IS good government because it has saved a LOT of people's lives in the past and will no doubt save a lot of people's lives this time around because Trump and his ilk had not managed to completely destroy the CDC yet. Business and government are not the same thing. They never have been because they have vastly different duties and goals.

Trump has proven a lying, narcissistic, egomaniac with little regard for anything but his own ego can indeed be a successful businessman. We can argue all day over whether such unethical behavior SHOULD be something anyone recognizes as good business but he is living proof that a man can enrich himself without principles of any kind. Unfortunately. eventually he will also prove that these qualities are notoriously unsuited for running a government. Please think about that the next time you go vote. Either that or grit your teeth silently and hope you don't get the Coronavirus. The fact of the matter is that if you voted for Trump you have exponentially increased your chances of doing so.