The other day I wrote a piece about how Donald Drumpf is like a Rorschach test, and that the Coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to change the perception of people who are Drumpf supporters and those who are not. The post also looked at the livid response of some Drumpf supporters who don’t understand why the “Fuck You” President, our Divider-in-Chief, has not garnered unqualified support during our current travails.

One reason for progressives being apoplectic is when Donald Drumpf tweets something like this (on the left), which he did the other day. In this set of tweets he was clearly concerned primarily with his television ratings, and noted gleefully that his ratings were equivalent to the season finale of “The Bachelor” or Monday Night Football.

When I first saw this I thought it was satire, something put out by The Onion or by Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker. I didn’t even bother to fact check it because it simply couldn’t be true.

But it was true.

Now, the fact alone that in the time of a national public health emergency our Divider-in-Chief is obsessing over his TV ratings doesn’t prove that he could not also be responding effectively to the pandemic. But it does show where his attention is.

In fact, of course, he has not been responding to the pandemic effectively. It’s not that everything he has done is wrong. He has, in recent days, followed the recommendations of his public health experts from time to time.

He has, for example, invoked the Defense Production Act, signed into law the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, and announced that the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development would be suspending all kinds of foreclosures and evictions until the end of April. That’s something.

At the same time, it’s pretty clear that Drumpf wasted a crucial six weeks at the beginning of the pandemic where he completely minimized the coming pandemic (when it was already clear that it was coming).

The short video below demonstrates the various ways that Drumpf minimized and outright lied about the pandemic, until he finally got religion after the stock market had lost about a third of its value.

Needless to say, if this had been how Barack Obama had handled this crisis, the Fox News cohort would have been ready to lynch him. And I’m not using those words metaphorically.

A lot of people have noted that this pandemic is totally beyond Donald Drumpf’s capacity to manage.¹ That’s not news. Drumpf was planning to “open up the country” by Easter, which is when most pandemic experts believe we will be at the apex of the crisis, assuming that we continue to engage in strict social distancing.

It’s pretty clear by now that we will not be out of the woods until 12-18 months from now, which is still the estimated time it will take to develop and distribute a vaccine.² (And sorry anti-vaxxers, but everyone is going to have to get vaccinated.) By then, the Presidential election will be over, and God only knows how that is going to go.

The next President, whomever it is, will have to deal with a shattered economy. Good luck with that. In some ways it would be just to have that person be Donald Drumpf and watch him take the country down in flames, except . . . that it would mean that the country would be in flames. (But it would serve his supporters right.)

However, we’re all in one boat, and having the boat go up in flames means that we’ll all drown. As much as I would enjoy seeing Drumpf-supporters flailing in the waters, it will be a whole lot less fun if I have to watch it while I’m flailing in the waters with them.

But please, God³, let there be a social revolution after this is all done, to re-balance a society that has clearly, clearly, become completely out of balance.

1. There are however people around Drumpf who have been behaving responsibly and guiding him from time to time.
2. There are, however, some things which may improve before a vaccine is produced, and those include (1) enhanced testing, (2) enhanced health care system capacity, and maybe (3) anti-viral medications which can help infected people stay alive.
3. And you all know how much I believe in God . . . or don’t!