Now I plead guilty to the last part of her accusation. Guilty of telling the truth. After I typed a shorter version of what I am about to type her response was silence. Probably because how much Trump was responsibile was easy to prove.
Instead of seeking calm and bipartisanship, Trump went to a “Democratic hoax.”
Instead of including the USA in the possible output of a vaccine he insisted on demanding any vaccine be all ours; no one else’s: an agreement no one in the field of developing vaccines with an ounce of a conscience could accepted.
Instead of asking people to limit contact and movement he started with it was mild and would quickly go away.
Instead of saying unless we do limit what we do, limit contact, wash hands, it was that by April it will have gone from 15-0.
Instead of working hard to encourage, to get, more ventilators, masks, hand sanitizer, etc., we were told we were panicking. Encouraging the basest of his base was doing their usual playground bully routine to humiliate those with concerns into silence. Not unusual behavior on his part, or theirs.
So is the president responsible for COVID? OF COURSE NOT. He didn’t create it. As far as we know he didn’t have the military spray the nation with it. But he absolutely IS responsible for a big part of the exponential boom in cases, why suddenly we all have to stay home, why many businesses might go out of business; especially new small businesses that have stretched finances through loans, mortgages and out of pocket funds.
So many statements that had worse than no truth to them, made people feel too secure, had them out spreading this virus. Even now you have statements like him saying we have been doing better handling COVID-19 than every other country. Not… even… close. Yet when challenged to explain such statements his response is to insult whoever dares ask him. Isn’t this more the kind of a behavior one might expect from a wannabe tyrant or king than a president?
So now we’re supposed to work together, forget all about that? Find his daily blatherings a sign of how presidential he is? Accept the utter nonsense in his stock responses; or should I type ‘lies,’ like “no one expected this,” or “no one could have known?”
There were many who tried to warn us, expected, unless care was taken, we might end up where we are now. So many of his statements inspired the basest of his base to mock and insult those with concerns, like the store down the road from me putting up a sign that the way to stop COVID is to shut off the news. A sign that still proudly flashes the same worse than mere misinformation at travelers heading up Route 12/Ashland City Highway headed out and into Nashville. And in a very short time, while Trump blathered out misdirection, while memes and signs demanded the media be silenced, the COVID map has gone from certain select parts of the country to solid red.
No, he’s not responsible for COVID-19. But he is responsible for how fast and how bad it is now. But this is nothing new, considering so many statements of his in the past. If anyone thinks we must forget all this misbehavior; especially what made this crisis worse, and simply fall in line, well, this is why God gave us middle fingers.
Vote 2020 as if your lives depend on it. For they already do.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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