Wednesday,
May 27, 2020
COVID-19 and the Unmasking of Donald Trump
The pandemic proves once and for all that this president is the
enemy of the people.
Then Republican presidential
nominee Donald Trump holds a mask of himself which he picked up from supporter during
a rally in the Robarts Arena of the Sarasota Fairgrounds on November 7, 2016 in
Sarasota, Florida. (Photo illustration: Common Dreams/ Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP
via Getty Images)
I
keep fantasizing about a moment in Washington like the one at the end of The
Wizard of Oz when Dorothy accidentally throws water on the Wicked
Witch of the West. The witch melts and suddenly the evil spell she’s cast on
all her creepy guardsmen and flying monkeys is broken. They snap out of it and
come to their senses.
Obviously,
that not going to happen in DC—at least not until Election Day. Even then,
there’s a good chance that even in defeat the spell cast over an
all-too-significant percentage of the American public and its politicians won’t
be completely undone. But throwing out of office the miscreants and their
egregious, burnt orange overseer will be a fine start. Too many have suffered
death, illness or economic ruin in part because of their arrogant and selfish
rule.
Admittedly,
when it comes to this pandemic, I’m fortunate. I work from home anyway, so for
me, that part hasn’t been much different. I continue to keep my social
distance, wear a mask when I infrequently venture out, wash my hands.
For
now, thank God, I’m healthy, and I’m in one of the prosperous cosseted
neighborhoods of Manhattan—downtown’s West Village—where an estimated forty percent of the population or more has
fled to friends and relations out of town or to their own country and weekend
homes. The fatality rate here is as much as six times less than
other parts of the city. We are, in a word, privileged, and not exposed to the
conditions of poverty and overcrowding that have caused others so much needless
suffering.
Nonetheless,
friends have been deathly ill, friends of friends have died. At 7 pm, we cheer and
yell and bang pots and applaud our frontline workers but where I live, too many
of the white and entitled, especially over the holiday weekend, ignored the
warnings and got up close and personal in parks and at the local bars and
restaurants that for now serve booze—and some food—from their open storefronts.
In some places, they crowded the sidewalks and streets.
It
was worse elsewhere. Meagan Flynn at The Washington Post reported,
“At a flashy club in Houston, dozens splashed around the pool and sipped on
drinks on the patio. In rural North Carolina, thousands packed the stands shoulder to shoulder at
Ace Speedway on its opening night, where face masks were the exception. And in
Daytona Beach, Fla., even after an event called ‘Orlando Invades Daytona’ was canceled,
hundreds still danced in the street and on top of cars near the boardwalk.”
It
got so bad in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, that St. Louis County put out a
travel advisory, describing the flouting of recommendations as an
“international example of bad judgment.” County Executive Sam Page, a doctor,
said, “This reckless behavior endangers countless people and risks setting us
back substantially from the progress we have made in slowing the spread of
COVID-19.”
Meanwhile, CNN reported Tuesday morning that the number of new
cases of the virus continues to rise in 18 states “including Georgia, Arkansas,
California and Alabama.” In a couple of weeks, we should have a better
idea of how much damage was done during the three-day weekend, of whether or
not we’ve significantly been set back in the fight against this contagion. So
far, in just twelve weeks or so, more than 1,690,000 Americans have been infected
and 100,000 have died. Given the vast confusion over testing results and
reporting, it seems probable that the real numbers are much higher.
None
of us want America held back any longer by this awful disease. We all want it
returned to normal and maybe even better than it was. But as Elie Mystal at The Nation notes, “Quite
simply: It’s the people who are most vocal about wanting the country to reopen
who are making it too dangerous to reopen the country. It’s the people who are
least concerned about their own health who are putting everybody else’s health
at risk…
“We can’t manage the crisis, because too
many people have decided to be unmanageable. We are slowly beginning to
understand how to protect ourselves from the virus. But we have no clue how to
protect ourselves from the virulent people who insist on spreading the virus
because they’ve determined they can live with other people dying. A person
walking around without a mask isn’t telegraphing that they don’t care about
their own life; they’re shouting that they don’t care about yours. They’re
willing to be the one who kills you, because they don’t value anybody’s life
but their own.”
Donald
Trump is their enabler-in-chief.
A new study from the University of Hong Kong, not yet
peer reviewed, calculates that the transmission of coronavirus via respiratory
droplets or airborne particles goes down by as much as a whopping 75% when
masks are worn. But who won’t wear such protection, despite the advice of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his own surgeon general? Donald
Trump thinks the word “mask” is short for “emasculation” and mocks those who
wear them as “politically correct.”
Way
too many of the president’s supporters follow his lead. “If he’s not wearing a
mask, I’m not going to wear a mask,” a man told CNN’s Gary Tuchman. “If he’s not worried, I’m
not worried.”
Oh,
for God’s sake, worry. But in the face of those 100,000 US fatalities, Trump’s response? “When we have a lot of cases, I don’t
look at that as a bad thing,” he said. “I look at that in a certain respect as
being a good thing, because it means our testing is much better. So if we
were testing a million people instead of 14 million people, it would have far
few cases, right? So I view it as a badge of honor. Really, it’s a badge
of honor.” Really?
As
the weeks have gone by, here in my well-off neighborhood, I’ve noticed an
evolution in the facemasks worn by those who heed the warnings of public health
officials. From the familiar medical and industrial masks to jury-rigged and
handmade versions, we seem to be moving toward commercially sold masks that
feature designs, animal faces, emojis, and even promotional versions promoting
companies and products—I just saw one with the Nike swoosh.
“The
Mask Era has inspired creativity, but is shaped by deprivation,” culture reporter Maura Judkis writes. “It has united people in
the feeling of being muzzled; we have rallied to make that experience slightly
less depressing”—not only with ingenuity but also because the majority of us
know that it must be done to keep ourselves and everyone around us safe. Yet
Trump campaign manager Bard Parscale brought to a meeting prototypes for Trump-Pence 2020 facemasks. Because it’s a joke, get it? Laugh
‘til you die.
If
we’ve learned anything from our ongoing coronavirus calamity, once and for all
we’ve finally seen in its totality that this administration cannot
administrate, that from the top down its lack of leadership and compassion, its
incompetence and myopia make it unable and unfit to govern. Especially when
faced with a problem that requires knowhow, one which can’t be covered up by
lies and distractions. And at its head, an aimless, reckless wizard of self:
self-pity, self-aggrandizement, self-indulgence.
According
to White House doctors, Donald Trump is testing negative for COVID. But he’s a carrier
of a different contagion, one of deceit, sleaze and corruption that has
thoroughly infected our republic. However, for that disease, there's a vaccine
that becomes available Tuesday, November 3. Spread the cure. Vote to break the
spell.
Michael
Winship is the Schumann Senior Writing Fellow
for Common Dreams.
Previously, he was the Emmy Award-winning senior writer for Moyers
& Company and BillMoyers.com, a past senior writing fellow at the
policy and advocacy group Demos, and former president of the Writers Guild of
America East. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelWinship
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
