Patience, Dear Readers, I’ll get to that.
I have come to the conclusion Trump wants to make this worse: any way, anyhow, by any means. Taking preordered and prepaid PPE from states: especially blue 
states, and handing it over to red states? Barr out to sue states that keep their stay at home orders? All the ‘advice’ that if taken (or right: you pick) could kill people? Only limiting his briefings when it was obvious the more rational Cuomo briefings were working and people were tuning him out. (He asked what the point was. Yeah, I know, snake oil salesmen can’t sell snake oil.) Wanting states to open back up: encouraging making it worse and a bigger second, third, etc waves? (Just in time to effect November?) Some of his favorite pundits, MAGA people, wanting to sacrifice the elderly, the vulnerable? Praising Kemp then only pulling back on that when he gets severe blowback? Blaming everyone else, including lying about how we were left in the lurch when it was his administration that fired those whose jobs were to deal with a possible pandemic?
I COULD go on, but I think you get the point.
One consistent factor about anything Trump is feeding Trump coffers. OK, in this case a second thing: whatever gives him power and influence. They are tied together by being able to keep up the scams, the conjobs. Anything to serve those causes. But he can only be allowed to do that now by limiting voting or stopping it by any means; which fit well with what Republicans have been doing since long before Trump. Expand his base? HA! Trump; purveyor of hate, had to know that would be a losing tactic from the start.
If you compare presidencies and popularity no one can logically state Trump has been gaining in popularity. If anything he has been losing it, even pissing off the increasing numbers of Never Trumpers. Ann Coulter? Really? Wow, Don, that’s a low right wing bar you managed to limbo under.
And he doesn’t care. Trump enjoys the vitriol. He feeds off it like Redjac from the original Star Trek episode Wolf in the Fold. He uses it to make himself more powerful. He uses it to serve his cause: a rigged election via a 9/11-like crisis. COVID fits the bill, played right. If he suddenly acted compassionate, caring, face the crisis honestly, stop blaming everyone else he would lose those he is counting on: the faithful. Rallying Trumpers and screwing the rest out of the vote serves his cause: at least an Electoral win.
Trump is interested in using COVID like the Hulk gone mad let loose in the politically incorrect voter shop. That’s what all these actions could do. Plus COVID has been hitting communities of color hard, especially black: cutting down on voters who generally don’t vote for him. Ordering and paying for PPE, and his federally official goons steal that? Gee wanna bet they’re handing it over to the red states? Mitch wanting to bankrupt states; you know which states: the responsible ones. Also eager to be helpful, Barr wants to sue states being more careful about opening up. You know which states: the responsible ones. The less official (MAGA) goons: his personal band of brownshirts, out marching around forcing places open as COVID passes from person to person. Their job is to be like the fleas on rats during the Black Plague times. This means those non-masking wearing mouth breathers are out there forcing themselves onto beaches, into stores, anywhere, despite stay at home order/advice, possibly infecting you and me because masks are meant to protect others: not those who wear them.
Like Redjac, Trump revels in all of this. Anything that keeps the chaos going. Anything that will limit voting or, if possible, or if not put off, cancel… I know, I know: legally not supposed to be possible. But to use an old cliché’: when do you remember Trump giving a ‘tinker’s damn’ about legality, tradition or what’s in the Constitution? You’ve heard him talk about his ultimate power over anything and everything.
This is Trump’s ‘path to victory;’ perhaps even by what not so amusingly might be called “popular” vote, with so many voters dead, or down and out. You know who WILL vote, right? Non-masking wearing mouth breathers out there forcing themselves onto beaches, into stores, anywhere despite stay at home order/advice. They are out there infecting you and me because masks are meant to protect others: not those who wear them.
Thanks to biological warfare: intentional or not, the year 2020 has literally become the fight of our lives.
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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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