If my parents die of Covid-19, it IS Trump's fault
April 13, 2020
My 77-year-old mom is one of Trump’s biggest fans. Like, she has a schoolgirl crush on him, giddily referring to him as “my Donald!” (Picture Estelle Costanza, but more prone to believe wackadoo conspiracy theories.) I partially attribute this weird crush to the fact that they have similar personality disorders, and she feels protective of anyone most other people recognize as crazy.
Social distancing shouldn’t be a problem for my parents. My mother and my 82-year-old father live in a house in a suburban shore-adjacent neighborhood in the southern part of New Jersey, which hasn’t (yet) seen the Covid-19 devastation experienced by the New York City-adjacent part of the state. Two of my parents’ adult daughters (including myself) live nearby and would be happy to grocery shop and run errands for them. But my mother, being influenced by Trump and the Fox Ministry of Propaganda, has until very recently flatly rejected all common-sense suggestions to stay home.
For the past month and a half, she continued to alleviate her boredom by lollygagging around Walmart and the supermarket, not paying any attention to social distancing. She was appalled when Governor Murphy closed down the bars and restaurants, considering it a ridiculous overreaction. When Trump finally changed his tone to a more “somber” one at the very end of March, she finally got scared. “I don’t want to die!” she exclaimed. I’m relieved she’s finally taking Covid-19 seriously, but I’m still afraid for her. The people who will die from this in the next few weeks are the same ones who were absent-mindedly perusing the aisles at Walmart two weeks ago. Like she was.
Trump never could have stopped the virus from coming to the USA, but he could’ve put his status as a cult leader to good use and urged his followers to take the virus seriously from the beginning. His legions of fans enthusiastically guzzle down whatever masticated word salad he vomits up, so they would’ve listened to him if he urged social distancing. But for the crucial first month or so when the virus was taking hold here in the U.S., he did just the opposite.
In late February and early March, news reports from around the world showed the extreme measures China was taking to curtail the disease. World news then covered the tragic life-and-death decisions healthcare workers had to make in over-burdened ICUs in Italy. Meanwhile, the news from Trump’s interviews and rallies captured him shrugging off the virus, calling it a “hoax,” saying it would soon be down to zero, or it would magically disappear in April. The bizarre juxtaposition of actual world news and Trump’s wishful thinking was eerily reminiscent of “Baghdad Bob,” Saddam Hussein’s minister of propaganda, assuring Iraqis that Americans weren’t a threat while the blasts from American tanks could clearly be heard in the background.
By actively downplaying the danger of Covid-19, Trump put his rural and suburban followers in almost as much danger as his blue-state, city-dwelling detractors. Despite the fact that Trump’s “success” stems from a lifetime of lining his own pockets by swindling smaller businesses and working-class people via bankruptcies, lawsuits and scams, his fans still assume that he values them. He’s their outspoken champion of white Euro-“Christian” privilege, after all. They relate to him because he “owned the libs” who have tried to shove things like diversity, equality and inclusion down their throats for decades. Despite all evidence from their eyes and ears, they still choose to believe that he’s sane even as he incoherently blathers on and on like a more pompous, vindictive version of dementia-addled Abe Simpson. And he repaid their devotion by casually putting their lives at risk to inflate the stock market.
Recently the story of Karen from Texas went viral. Karen was an outspoken Trump supporter who embodied all the self-righteous middle-aged white lady entitlement that gave birth to the “Karen” meme.* This Trump-loving Karen used her online Facebook platform to rail against the coronavirus “hoax:” “If you think for one second this ‘pandemic’ is not media driven, and controlled by the radical people in powerful places…well…go back to sleep under the rock you crawled out from.” In what many would attribute to karma, shortly after that post, she contracted Covid-19 and died.
Unfortunately but predictably, the story of MAGA Karen from Texas is the object of online snark and schadenfreude. A lot of that is based on how polarized we’ve all become, but some of it is justified. After all, in this 21st Century version of Jonestown, no one drinks the Kool-Aid alone. Karen from Texas willingly swallowed the anti-science wishful thinking that her cult leader fed her, and in doing so, she endangered her family, medical staff, and members of her community. But I don’t feel schadenfreude. As much as Karen from Texas and I would’ve disagreed politically, I imagine that she had some good characteristics and had family and friends who loved her. I think it’s really sad that her belief in Trump and right-wing media was the Kool-Aid that killed her.
The saddest thing is that Trump—her hero—could’ve saved her, but instead decided that the stock market was more important than her life. Imagine if he had told his followers that it was their patriotic duty to wave their fascist Trump flags from inside the safety of their own homes? Imagine if he had told them that they could demonstrate their loyalty to him by staying alive to vote for him in November? That would’ve been the simplest, easiest way he could’ve leveraged his reality TV pop star status to reduce the spread of the disease in the U.S.
The people who have giddily celebrated the brain-addled racist as if he’s a superstar should feel betrayed—people like my mom, and Karen from Texas. They are the ones who adoringly camped out to see him like star-struck teenage fangirls. They waved his flags. They cheered for him. They trolled for him. Yet he considers them just as expendable as I am. To him, they’re just votes, or cheering rally seat-fillers, or potential customers for made-in-China Ivanka-branded coffins. And as he mulls re-opening the country while actively trying to REDUCE the availability of testing, he continues to ask his adoring fans to sacrifice their lives to inflate the stock market and his own insatiable ego. Their deaths ARE his fault.
*Note, this blog is written under an alias—my real first name is actually Karen.
