The Corona Virus

Of course, I am worried about Covid-19, the culprit in the pandemic. I am over 60 years of age and aside from real physical ailments like lower back pain I suffer from a hypochondria. One would think that as a hypochondriac a new virus would inspire me, but really, at my back I always hear time’s winged chariot . . . so at my side today rests a thermometer and a hand sanitizer. As usual, my temperature remains at 97.9 degrees but who knows . . . it might rise to 98 degrees. 

     The impact of the virus is staggering: newspapers report the consequences to the airlines, the sports arenas, the conferences, Disneyland and Broadway, etc., and I worry about the economic impact these cancellations will have on the entire population that actually serves and services those venues The hardships will run very deep and no one will not experience suffering from the economic fall- out of the pandemic.  The entire global economy is interconnected and what troubles one sector ripples through to many other segments and levels. The shelves at the supermarket today were becoming bare, and hand sanitizers are as precious today as diamonds. And equally as rare: some stores are backordered until next week. My local pharmacies laughed when I asked if they had any in stock.

     But thankfully the Fox News idiots have declared the whole virus scare a hoax and that in fact there is no worry. One absurd woman on Fox news actually claimed without shame remarkably, that the clamor regarding the corona virus only served as a second attempt to impeach Trump and was all a hoax. If only it were so! Of course, news of the big deception is not much comfort to those who have already died from the virus or to the 100,000 people (a number that hourly rises) who are infected with the virus. HOW DAMN STUPID DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO BE BEFORE OTHER PEOPLE STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. HOW IGNORANT DO PEOPLE HAVE TO BE TO CONTINUE TO ACCEPT THESE ABSURD STORIES?  Colin Burrow in the London Review of Books perceptively argues that liars succeed by addressing the beliefs of those to whom they lie. The Trump base actually want to believe that all of Trump’s problems stem from (at the minimum) an animus against him. His base stands with him and the ideologies he espouses: xenophobia, misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, and virulent nationalism. His base, Republicans and neo-Fascists mostly, cannot acknowledge that the man suffers from a disquieting narcissistic behavioral disorder that borders on the paranoid. Or that his knowledge of affairs that concern the nation as a whole is very, very limited and organized by his own narcissistic beliefs. He knows everything and cannot err about anything, he claims. 

     His lies speak from an anti-intellectualism that avers that no one can tell anyone anything because everyone is already an authority on everything. This sounds remarkably like the Puritan belief that the individual needs no priest to mediate a connection with God; each individual has the capacity to enter into a personal relationship with the Redeemer. I think we’ve learned a bit about redeemers of late. 

     But this analysis gives too much credit to Trump, I think, however, because for at least the three plus years of his presidency he has not ever acknowledged that he might ever have erred, he admits to no doubt about anything he thinks or does, requires absolutely no assistance in his decision making, and knows more than any expert about everything. The Puritans at least admitted to wrongdoing and sin, but Trump remains without sin and without fault. This stance is already sinful! He is dangerous and the response he has organized to the pandemic is emblematic of his incompetence and defining characterological narcissism. And his minions have proven themselves cowardly and immoral.