An adolescent president with a massive and fatal inferiority complex, already mentally and emotionally inadequate to lead, is faced with the worst natural disaster since the 1918 flu epidemic. His first worry is certainly not the loss of human lives, but the effect the truth of the pandemic will have on the economy, his only lifeline to reelection. He panics! As if it will replace an actual plan, a concept which his delicate psyche is totally incapable of forming, like a child he purposely withholds not only the seriousness of the coming pandemic from the American people but ignores warnings from the military, the CDC and anyone in the opposing party who mentions an impending crisis. In fact, eventually he goes as far as describing the opposing party's warnings as "a hoax." Because the CDC disagrees with him regarding the dangers ahead, he subverts them, placing the medically incompetent Department of Homeland Security in charge of the COVID-19 response. The reason is simple, DHS doesn't technically work for us, the American people, they work for the president. That's how Dick Cheney managed to hide information about Al Qaeda and the truth about weapons of mass destruction from Condalisa Rice and that's how this president could disseminate fake news about the coming pandemic.
Under pressure from Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and the press, the president is forced to choose a "point man" to lead the fight against the virus. He selects his VP, Mike Pence. At first, Pence seems to be a weak choice. Everybody knows that the job needs to go to a 3 or 4 star general with experience in all phases of this type of emergency, from treatment options to supply lines to massive responses in a short time, that is everyone but the inadequate, adolescent president. Fortunately, Pence turns out to be fairly competent in his assignment when left to his own devices. Unfortunately, after the president engages in his patented petty bickering with governors of the worst affected states and threatens to cut them off because their states voted for Hillary, Pence calls the governors and tries to work out viable compromises. The embarrassed chief executive "blames" it on his VP being a "nice guy" and eventually substitutes his worthless and incompetent son-in-law who is certainly not a "nice guy" in his stead.
As the number of cases and associated deaths mount, the president, still in his childish panic mode, who can't even control himself, continues to assure the American people that they are overreacting and that he will have the situation under control by Easter. Whether through sheer incompetence or purposely trying to keep the number of victims down, the president has made sure that testing for COVID-19 is largely unavailable. He enlists the major labs alone to perform the tests. This virtually ensures that there will be at least a 5-10 day delay in getting results. Not only is there a shortage of test kits, but the labs have insufficient personnel and lab equipment to act in a timely manner. Oh well, for this president, "business is business." What's a hundred thousand lives or two? Most of them wouldn't vote for him anyway. As the situation drastically worsens, the president, more concerned with reelection than human lives, ignores pleas from citizens, politicians of both parties, and especially governors of the hardest hit states as well as manufacturer after manufacturer to actually invoke the Defense Production Act. He talks about it, but hesitates to enforce it. Again, he needs to preserve his "image" as a savvy businessman. It's all he has left! He needs to make it look like he convinced all of these companies that have already volunteered on their own to participate. Meanwhile it is the companies that have begged him to actually enforce the Act because it is only through federal supervision that they can control the distribution of the PPE products and ventilators. Without federal orders, they cannot alter pre existing contracts with other countries who also need these products. To make matters worse, even with federal supervision, the president has government controlled PPE's and ventilators shipped to unmonitored distributors instead of directly to hospitals and other medical facilities. Many of the distributors naturally sell the equipment to the highest bidder among the states or even to foreign countries and independent hoarders.
So, where is the Republican party, the one that white washed the ill conceived Democratic impeachment debacle? For that matter, where are the impetuous fools who insisted on impeachment when censure was the only practical strategy? When will Republicans step up and remove this bozo from office? The situation is 10 times worse than his impeachment accusations. The president is clearly guilty of depraved indifference and even negligent homicide in the deaths of literally thousands of people, considering the rational response of countries like South Korea compared to this president's completely irrational and criminal response. Obviously his cabinet does not have the guts to use Amendment 25 to remove this lunatic from office and thus I believe that when this crisis subsides he will inflict even more unwarranted damage on the states that he feels did not support him. His Republican colleagues who, except for Jim Jordan and the other sociopaths in the Freedom Caucus, are not lunatics. They must be held responsible. If we end up with a Democratic executive in the White House and a Democratic congress in 2020, there must be a reckoning! This is not World War II. Our enemy in this "war" is no longer overseas. It is here, not just in our bodies, it is also those politicians who purposely failed so miserably to protect the constituents they gave their solemn oath to protect. As for the president's staunch supporters, they will look back at some point like rats on their way off the cliff and wonder how they could have followed such a demented pied piper.
As disastrous as this crisis is and as much as this is a time for national unity, right wing demented Republicans should not be permitted to make light of CDC recommendations or claim that they "didn't know" until a few days ago that asymptomatic COVID-19 patients can transmit the virus. Fox News also needs to be investigated for purposely disseminating false information. Nobody, I repeat, nobody can be that stupid and ;o network should be permitted to purposely endanger the lives of so many people. Unfortunately, President Obama chose a weak Republican enabler as his attorney general. He did absolutely nothing to clean up the slime and corruption or the violations of the Rico Act so rife in the Bush Justice Department and he failed to pardon the scores of defendants framed by Karl Rove directed puppet prosecutors. Next time, there must be a reckoning. Without it, I fear that if the people lose all faith in our Justice Department, be it Democrat or Republican, violence will certainly follow.
Allen Finkelstein, D.O., M.Ed 4/5/20
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