It’s been two years since I last posted here, but the current epidemic—no, not the Covid19 one, the utter idiocy one—compelled me to dust it off.

What idiocy? Oh, I’m glad you asked! The idiocy of someone replying to a friend’s Facebook post (an idiocy that is epidemic among certain folks). Said idiocy resulted in a reply that I had (yes had) to make. Now, my reply took some effort and thought to write. So, taking my cue from someone else earlier today, I decided it shouldn’t languish in someone’s comments. Now, I swear, I really have been trying not to engage friends of friends on Facebook—people that I don’t even know, particularly Trump supporting ones—because, well, arguing with them is like playing chess with a pigeon: no matter how good you are, the bird is always going to shit on the board, and strut around like it won anyway.

 

However, said friend messaged me, and asked me to please reply to this woman, who I’ll call Patsy (no, that’s not her real name).

Now, for my reply to make sense, I have to give you some background on what led to it. It began yesterday when my friend shared one of my posts comparing the U.S. government’s Covid19 response to South Korea’s. There was polite, intelligent discussion and debate about what the statistics really mean, if the comparisons were fair, etc., and it was respectful, even where people may have disagreed.

In reply to a Nice Gentleman on the thread, Patsy jumped in saying that when Trump closed off travel with China as an early response to the epidemic, he was called a racist, and that he was damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t. I replied to Patsy that Trump is usually called a racist because he is, in fact, a racist, and that calling Covid19 the “Chinese Virus” is, actually, racist. I also said that while I hadn’t heard anyone say the China travel ban was racist, someone very well may have done so. At that, Patsy then dared me to name one racist thing Trump has said or done, adding “I’m waiting.”

Well, poor Patsy had to wait a long time because I was off Facebook for most of the day. Although she had also added another reply to the effect that I was wrong? And that both Biden and CNN said “it?” 

I’m still not sure if she meant that Biden and CNN had called Trump a racist for shutting down travel with China, or that they too had used the term “Chinese Virus,” but I digress, and frankly who the fuck really cares? Now, during my hours long absence from Facebook yesterday, Nice Gentleman tried to engage Patsy calmly, and with facts, but she went all in on defense of Trump, saying we don’t know all the facts, to stop armchair quarterbacking, and—I swear this is a quote—“I’ve heard from the experts say [sic] he’s doing a great job. That includes Democrats.” Patsy then added that as far as Trump being a racist, she’s “never seen any facts that indicate that.” 

Please to be picking your jaws up off the floor right now, it gets better.

Also, methinks Patsy needs to stop listening to Trump speak, because I’m pretty sure pirates have parrots that don’t mimic them quite as well.

Patsy then posted a meme which said: “getting perspective,” that the current survival rate in the U.S. was 98.54%, and that we should be promoting that, and not fear. I guess because we’re supposed to find the fucking silver lining in only a couple hundred thousand people dying, if we’re lucky, or some such shit. My friend, still trying to get Patsy to pivot, replied with a tale of a coworker’s cousin that had passed that day from Covid19, and how this epidemic was going to get much worse before it gets better. Patsy replied that she wasn’t trying to minimize the epidemic, but that it’s not productive to point fingers, because Trump is being advised by experts, and how now is a time we should all come together, Republicans and Democrats. Yes, she really, really said it. 

Of course, after that lovely kumbaya moment, Patsy pounced on Nice Gentleman for providing facts and links about Trump’s racism (in particular about his comments on immigration and “shit hole countries”), by attacking Nice Gentleman as a “pot stirrer,” noting that many Mexican immigrants are murderers and rapists, “why should we allow more people like that i [sic] our country,” and accusing Nice Gentleman of having an agenda.

Now, if you know me at all, you see why I agreed to my friend’s request to set Patsy straight. If you don’t know me, and you don’t see why I agreed to my friend’s request, you may be a Patsy.

I told my friend I had typed up a “very, very angry reply,” and wanted her okay before I hit send. She let me know that as long as I didn’t call Patsy any names, it was fine. So, I did a bit of editing (honestly, I really hadn’t called her any bad names), then read it out loud to the husband to make sure I complied with my friend’s request, and he agreed, that no, I hadn’t actually called her any names. So, I hit send.

And Patsy’s amazing defense of her stance? Of Trump? Of his administration’s handling of this epidemic? She blocked me, and I didn’t even get a courtesy, “fuck you!”

“And so, without further gilding the lily and no more ado, I give to you,” my reply to Patsy: (see footnote below)

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a) I said I hadn’t heard that the closing down of travel from China was called racist, I never said that no one said it—in fact, I said maybe someone had said it, and b) Trump has been a racist since forever.

If you choose to ignore every single racist thing he’s said and done, there’s likely nothing I can say or show you that will change your mind. However, I cannot abide a refusal to be intellectually honest about the people we vote for, so here’s just a few things that illustrate his history of racism: he was busted decades ago for refusing to rent to black people, he incessantly attacks immigrants—specifically immigrants of color (shithole countries, Mexico, hysteria over refugees, children in cages, family separation, etc.)—Obama birtherism, the Central Park Five (even after DNA exonerated them), comments about blacks and Jews, “good people on both sides,” lies about seeing tons of Muslims celebrating on rooftops after 9/11, and on and on and on.

But I’m sure you have excuses for all these things. Or you’re convinced they’re not actually racist. Or you don’t believe that he actually did or said those things, despite legal, audio, and video evidence.

As for “politicizing” this crisis, too bad. The man dropped the god damned ball, period, and if anyone is commending what Trump is doing, it’s because they’ve learned that when people don’t kiss the ring, he withholds help. He needs his ass thoroughly kissed on a daily basis, and those people aren’t willing to risk American lives by antagonizing his ego. So when he finally, finally, does the right thing? OF COURSE they’ll say so, but listen carefully because those “experts” and “democrats” allegedly saying he’s doing a great job? They’re all saying it with a fervent “finally!” JFC, have you seen Fauci’s face during Trump’s daily ego stroking rallies?

There was a pandemic team in place, Trump “streamlined” it (except he says “it wasn’t [him],” because he never accepts responsibility, but it was his people that did it). There was a pandemic plan—his transition team was walked through the plan during the transfer from Obama to Trump—but not only has he fired most of the people who were there back then, he flat out ignored the damn plan. So spare us your apologia for this man. The first Covid19 case here was confirmed on January 21st, and U.S. intelligence agencies were warning him there was more to it before that date, but until just a week or two ago, he was still pretending it was no big deal—comparing it to the flu (even in the second week of March), claiming it was “under control,” “only 15, soon to be zero,” “like a miracle, it’ll disappear,” not restricting travel from Europe until March 11th (and then still with exemptions), claiming it wasn’t clear that it was so contagious (but Covid19’s transmissibility has been known since January), wanting to lift stay at home orders by Easter (until he was finally forced to see that millions could die), and generally failing in the extreme on every level of this response.

Even now, instead of marshalling federal resources, organization, and power, his administration has created a bidding war for resources between the states, forcing them to bid against each other for PPE and ventilators, only then FEMA comes in and outbids them, but still isn’t sending them to all the states according to immediate need (funny though, Florida—land of RonKissesTrumpAssDeSantis—has already received 200% of its requests, while NY will run out of ventilators in 6 days). Trump failed to invoke the Defense Production Act in a timely manner, and even now has only used it to demand GM do something something, but the DPA is a powerful act that should be invoked in a more useful form than angry tweets. The power of the DPA is in authorizing the feds, not only to require industry to make specific items, but to organize and marshall private industry—for the administration to connect suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors to ensure that the supplies needed are being made and sent where necessary, and to use the might and force of the U.S. government to do so. THAT is what a real leader does. Not to hold ego stroking rallies wherein he brags about being “number one on Facebook.”

The single best thing Trump has done to date is to finally, finally, listen to the experts on this matter. This belief in the b.s. of “who could have known?” or “there was no way we could know” is a form of intentional obtuseness, and gaslighting, that is unconscionable in allegedly educated, voting Americans. There was a pandemic plan and team in place, because experts have been alerting the U.S. government about the inevitability of a pandemic for years, but the team was “streamlined,” and the plans were ignored. The CDC issued an alert in January, because THEY KNEW, his administration was briefed, HE WAS BRIEFED, but Trump couldn’t be arsed to give a shit. EVERYONE with half a brain a knew this was happening. Hell, HEB, a regional supermarket chain in Texas, instituted its pandemic plan in the second week of January, because they could see the writing on the wall, and they don’t have the benefit of U.S. intelligence agencies, or infectious disease specialists.

The purpose of my original post, which [Friend] shared, was to illustrate the difference in how South Korea and the U.S. handled containment and treatment of this disease, and by every single metric in existence, this administration failed us. Utterly failed us. South Korea acted, Trump played golf (on January 18th, 19th, February 1st, 2nd, 15th, March 7th and 8th, to be exact).

My brother-in-law is an ER doctor back east, and several of my friends are doctors and nurses in hospitals here in California, Louisiana, New Jersey, and elsewhere, and their lives are now being put at risk every single time they walk into the hospital, because they have to ration their PPE. This means my sister-in-law and nephew are at risk as well. So take the Trump apologism elsewhere. You can love him all you want for whatever the hell you think is worthy about him—I’ve long since given up on convincing his supporters of what a horror show of an idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic, narcissist he is—but in this matter? His stupidity, arrogance, selfishness, and narcissism means that IF WE’RE LUCKY, IF PEOPLE BEHAVE PERFECTLY, “only” 100-240K Americans will die.

Do you even comprehend that? 100,000 to 240,000 Americans WILL DIE, and he (and apparently you) think that’s “a good job?” Are you serious?

And then you have the temerity to say Democrats and Republicans should come together? Come together? Really? Now? Now that y’all are also scared? Why is it that none of this come together talk happens until Republicans are in danger as well? Why was Puerto Rico given the shaft, while we’re supposed to “come together” every time Florida or Mississippi gets hit with a hurricane? Why is it that we’re supposed to “come together” for the shitheads in Florida who were partying on the beach—with the blessings of their Republican President and Governor, mind you—while my brother-in-law and friends are risking their health and lives to save people, regardless of party? Why? Please tell me why WE are always told to put aside politics, but you lot never do until you need us, and then it’s oh so much KUMBAYA?

Spare me.

We’ll do what’s right by everyone in this country, because that’s what we always do, whether we’re in the cross-hairs or not, but don’t pretend to suddenly give a damn about me and mine, not when you’ve been supporting a man who has spent the last few years passing laws and supporting policies to make sure that me, my friends, my family—my children—will suffer.

¹Extra cookies if you get the quote without looking it up. Also, all caps in my FB post are because FB doesn’t allow you to italicize for emphasis. I wasn’t actually shouting at her. Not really.