Trump's Disease(s)

[hudebnik]

When I first heard that Trump had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, I had a series of reactions in rapid succession:

1. Serves him right.


2. Personally despicable as he may be, he's a human being, and I wouldn't wish this disease, or dying of it, on any human being.


3. It's always bad for the country when a President dies, or is incapacitated, in office.


4. But I hope he suffers just enough to gain some appreciation for other people's suffering.


5. Who am I kidding? No amount of suffering in the world would cause Donald Trump to connect his own experience with anybody else's. Other people are not real people, with thoughts and feelings and rights of their own; they're game pieces. Either they're his pieces to be moved around for his benefit, or they're enemy pieces to be destroyed. There's no realistic chance of him "learning a lesson" from this.


6. That said, if he gets through this and comes out the other end without much suffering, he will have "learned the lesson" that COVID-19 is no big deal, just as he said all along, and those who said otherwise were just trying to make him look bad for political purposes, and those who allegedly died of it were wimps and woopsies and big girls' blouses and Democrats. So I guess I am rooting, not for him to suffer, but for him to be visibly weakened in a way nobody can disguise.


7. Except it's generally not good for the country for the President to be "visibly weakened".


8. Unless that means he's subject to checks and balances from the other two branches, in which case it is a good thing.


9. I'm so confused....

Comments

[ilaine]

Yes I’ve been going around in the same circle, with the added note that if he beats it he is a ‘winner’ and everyone who dies of it is a ‘loser’. Just contemplating the situation is spiritually toxic.

[hudebnik]

Yup. His statement on leaving the hospital on what he had learned was "Don't let it dominate you. Don't be afraid of it." Which is arguably a good way to go into a business negotiation, but a disease is not a business negotiation. Mother Nature is not susceptible to bullying, threats, intimidation, or bribery. Mother Nature does not negotiate. If you disagree with Mother Nature, she's right and you're wrong. Positive thinking may help your response to the disease, but it won't affect the other team.

And of course, as you suggest, it's victim-blaming. If Trump, with the benefit of the best medical care your tax dollars can buy and access to any experimental treatment he wants, recovers from the disease, it demonstrates his strength and manliness, while the 210,000 people who have already died, and a million who are still suffering serious after-effects, must have been weak and lacking in moral courage.

[cellio]

And, of course, if everybody had the resources of Walter Reed available, the trajectory would have been different.

I went through much the same cycle, with one more step: please please please don't let him die before the election, because some of those Republicans who won't support Trump might vote for Pence, and Pence is scary too. Just, you know, normal-scary, not Trump-lunacy-scary.