What is justice for people like this?
One former White House official said Trump’s reelection campaign advisors are terrified that the coronavirus outbreak, which so far has hit largely Democratic coastal cities hardest, will soon scythe across the rural areas that remain deeply loyal to Trump.
The advisors have warned Trump that the political consequences at the ballot box in November will be even worse if he is seen as too lax.
“Pay attention. You’re going to lose the election,” the former official said, summarizing the intervention.
I get that political advisers have to be concerned about election outcomes, but the way they do their calculation is that Trump can weather images of body bags being piled on refrigerator trucks just so long as the dead people are presumably Democrats.
Just so long as those “deeply loyal to Trump” aren’t dropping like flies, then there’s really no political problem at all.
I don’t think this is sound political advice, but that’s not what outrages me. It’s the cynicism of it that makes me want to go to war with these people. If they insist that it’s only “my people” who are dying and that “their people” are hardly scathed, then I know all I need to know about them.
This isn’t a political dispute anymore. It’s life and death.
These are the same people who were convinced for several months that coronavirus was a hoax.
So, presumably, they have been gathering in large groups, not practicing social distancing, and in general behaving like the entitled assholes they are, spreading a potentially deadly disease. They have now become not just disagreeable people, they have become disease vectors, and an actual danger to public health. These people are the ones who will—in Tennessee and many other southern states—overwhelm metropolitan hospital systems because they have been busily closing their own.
It’s hard to miss the fact that the GOP doesn’t care about THEIR health either, except to the extent that dead people can’t vote.
I guess we’ll see how that works out for them. I, for one, am more concerned with my own dislocation and employment worries to care very much what happens to people who’ve wished me (and people like me) dead for years. I am utterly unconcerned, outside of their ability to continue spreading the virus.
Maybe that makes me a bad person, or just as bad as them. I’ll own it.
If I haven’t made myself clear, my response to “Trump’s voters may die” is “who cares? good riddance to bad rubbish.”
It’s been life or death to varying degrees since the start of the Civil War. Only the intensity and tactics have changed.
“It’s the cynicism of it that makes me want to go to war with these people.” Well they have been at war with liberals since Newt took “politics” to the next level.
Republicans have defined and exploited a Red vs. Blue state divide to such a depth that I question if there even is an ‘America’ any more. If the attitude you’ve described is now ascendant in the White House, then the Trump administration has driven a stake through the heart of this country.
To those advisers: Duh. That scenario is exactly what is going to happen.
Anecdotally, I dropped off food to my parents who live in a rural county that has not yet been hard hit, about 90 minutes from my more urban county of residence. People were letting their kids play on playgrounds, nobody besides us was masked in public, and while some folks were social distancing, we still saw decent size groups.
That county sends their critically ill to my county via medevac helicopter, the merely severe by ambulance. So depending on how the county health department reports coronavirus numbers, they may not be accurately counting the number of cases, or only counting the less severe cases that did not need evacuation to a better equipped trauma center. Might be something to keep an eye on, if urban hospitals keep seeing steady high numbers of coronavirus patients for longer than the immediate area is likely to have had.
War is not the answer?
I’ve been saying for more years than I can count that the key diference between the Republican and Democratic bases has been since at least the late 70s that the right wing views the culture war as literal, and the left has never figured it out. It’s been life and death for the other side for decades, at least. Trump’s lying and the GOP hypocrisy in the face of it is just more confirmation that it’s never been about right and wrong, but who’s winning.
Well, and why should the administration worry about blue state people dying? We aren’t real Americans, we hate America, we corrupt society with our godless heathen ways, etc., etc. — so who would waste any care and compassion on subhuman enemies?