Chunk 13: Iceberg dead behind!
The Titanic received six warnings before it struck sea ice in the North Atlantic. When the truth finally comes out, I wonder how many warnings it will reveal the Trump Administration received about the threat of the Coronavirus?
Because Covid 19 really is shaping up to be Donald Trump’s Titanic. It has killed 170,000+ Americans, with expectations that might reach 200,000+ come election day on 3 November. It is astonishingly bad, with no let-up on the horizon; the damage is already done.
Yet Trump’s defence has been consistent: “it could have been worse, and had I not shut down travel from China sooner, it would have been”.
That’s his argument. He’s essentially the captain of the Titanic (Edward Smith) saying, “if it weren’t for me, we would’ve hit multiple icebergs, aren’t I good!?”.
It’s remarkable. He’s actually trying to spin the story worse.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this.
With people frightened everywhere, seeking either comfort or looking for someone to blame, Trump is actually seeking credit. Except there’s a fundamental problem with this strategy; with trying to take credit for what didn’t happen.
People don’t naturally think like that, do they, especially during seismic, global events?
For example, when the Black Summer bushfires destroyed 12.6 million hectares here in Australia in early 2020, no one said: “well, thank goodness it wasn’t 15 million hectares”? Or, “sure, it killed 1 billion native animals, but look on the bright side, it could’ve been 1.2 billion”?
When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, claiming 250,000 lives, the survivors didn’t walk around going, “that was close, it could’ve been a 7.1”, did they?
And in 2008, when Barack Obama inherited the start of the Great Recession from George W. Bush, his quick actions are credited with preventing it becoming another Great Depression. But, come the 2012 election, did the American people automatically give him credit? No, they complained that the recovery wasn’t happening quickly enough, forcing Obama to squeak out a win over Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.
Because when an event is so large, so significant - be it a drought, earthquake, financial collapse, cyclone, plane crash, etc. - it takes all of our human capacity just to comprehend it. To deal with it. Some good news stories will inevitably follow, but they’re always the exception to the tragedy. And we’re a long way from that on the coronavirus. Six months on, has there been even one bit of good news as yet?
As has already been said many times, the upcoming US election is a referendum on Donald Trump and, ultimately, his handling of the pandemic. Because despite all his narcissistic behaviour, it’s the one issue that eclipses all. So, as we’ve seen this week, the Democrats need to prosecute him over and over (over to you, Kamala) to hold him accountable, until the case is clear beyond all reasonable doubt.
Were it me, I’d use his own words against him:
“Mr President, you’ve repeatedly said you moved swiftly at the end of January to stop people entering from China. My question is, what did you then do throughout February? Because the simple answer is, nothing. You wasted an entire month to prepare America for the Coronavirus. And this is a leap year, so you had an extra day. An extra day to sit on your hands doing nothing while the virus spread.”
Or this:
“We have 4% of the world’s population but 22% of the world’s Coronavirus deaths. We have an economy in utter ruin. We have citizens being tear-gassed in the streets. Mr President, at the 2016 Republican Convention, you declared ‘I alone can fix it’. Well, here at the 2020 Democratic Convention, I declare that ‘You alone are responsible for it’”.
Like the RMS Titanic, that sort of talk might just doom DJ Trump.
