COVID19 Update - Day 23 - Personal Update

Okay, it turns out that I have a personal update for today after all.

This pandemic, with its isolation, suffering and death, is bad enough.  But I'm one of the lucky ones.  I'm not sick, and to the best of my knowledge, my children, my parents, and all of my friends are healthy too.  Like most people, my biggest burden during this time is isolation and uncertainty.

And I'm more brittle now, which probably explains why I'm more bothered than usual by idiots.  This should be a time for America to come together as a country, and with even halfway competent leadership, that would likely happen.

(Side note: The pandemic was a golden opportunity for Trump to nail down re-election, and he's totally botched it.  If he just took the threat seriously, implemented the guidance provided to him by the Obama administration before he was inaugurated, let the experts actually manage the response and make the occasional TV appearance issuing bland platitudes, his approval ratings would have shot up, the U.S. would have suffered relatively fewer deaths than places like China, Italy and Spain, and the cowed media would have praised how the crisis allowed him to mature into the office.

But he's too stupid and lazy to do that, and it's now quite likely that --- provided the election is fair and votes are fairly counted --- the pandemic sealed his defeat instead.)

But because the Cult of Trump is fueled by divisiveness, they continue to be divisive.  Trumpian state governors insist on going their own way and politicizing the response, and thus the pandemic is yet another wedge dividing the country.

And as if that weren't bad enough, in itself, some people who AREN'T in the Cult of Trump, and should know better, are continuing to promote their usual idiocy as if it's just another day.

A subset of Bernie Bros (I don't know how big this subset is --- maybe a tiny segment of his supporters, maybe not) continue to trot out the fantasy that Biden would be an equally bad president as Trump --- even as Trump spends the pandemic parading sycophants in front of TV cameras, patting himself on the back for allowing 'only' 200,000 deaths and for allowing medical equipment manufacturers to gouge the states for vital medical equipment (at least, what remains after they've sold large batches of it to foreign interests).

And just now, I had an exchange on Facebook with some libertarian brat from my college, who decided that now was a good time to trot out his 'the state has no legitimacy' horseshit.

I mean, good God.  If this crisis doesn't invite theoretically thoughtful people to re-evaluate their positions, or at least have the decency to shut up until things get back to normal, then what hope is there that some of Trump's followers might finally wake up to reality?

I'm sure there were idiots during WWII as well.  But they're really getting on my last nerve right now.