*Trigger warning: politics
As we spend every day listening for medical news conferences from President Trump’s “task force,” and getting instead, a daily Presidential address, I am baffled by the American people and what we are learning about ourselves, each other, and our country as a whole.
The Press Conferences have never, ever NOT begun with the President’s daily dose of:
A) self-aggrandizing;
B) Political punches to the gut at anyone from Senators actively working in Congress, to the entire Democratic Party, complete with name-calling, literal campaigning, and “prior administration” blaming; and
C) An entire slew of comments that constitute medical advice and would be considered criminally actionable if given by any other person not licensed to practice medicine (literally recommending medical advice and drugs, providing his personal opinion on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of drugs/medical equipment/treatment of patients, and committing to refusing to follow the recommendations of national and/or international health agencies, while directly influencing others to do the same by emphasizing they are “only recommendations).
This has taught me the following things, and I’m struggling with how to keep them from negatively shaping my children’s minds and futures:
1. The collective American IQ appears to be dropping at an alarming rate.
I can’t figure out whether people have always been so uninformed and impressionable, or if this is a response to these specific circumstances.
It’s as if people have abandoned all forms of common sense, science, logic, and truth. It’s as if the only way something can be true as if “the President of the United States said so.” Because he is the president, and, in his words, “The President of the United States has the power to do what the President of the United States has the power to do, and that’s very powerful.” It doesn’t matter what kind of science or logic exists, because they simply do not matter. I am really having a hard time excepting that the majority of America is really this ignorant.
2. Trump supporters follow the leader, not reality.
Trump‘s approval rating has changed 0% throughout this entire ordeal. At first I was baffled by this as well. But I’ve come to understand, with the understanding of the collective American IQ, that it actually does not matter what this president says, believes, stands for, does, lies about, or pretty much anything. He wants stated he could shoot someone on fifth Avenue and get away with it. I have come to believe he is correct.
The fact that his approval rating has not changed tells me people will follow him right into a grave before they will admit he is wrong about anything. If they ignore science, math, logic, commonsense, and people with degrees in the area they are discussing (medical degrees in most of the current cases), this only proves they are loyal to a party, or to a person, simply because he is the person who was elected by their party. They are not supporting a president because of facts, or because they have done their research and agree with him. The only way they can agree with him is if they admit they were wrong when they agreed with him before he changed his mind, and they agreed with him again. You can’t agree with the opposite things and have been right both times. I know this is confusing. It’s logic. It’s hard.
Even Republicans have come out of their party box to denounce their support of the president. At my last check, 25% of the republican party did not trust the president. Doesn’t this speak for itself?
3. “It is easier two fool somebody then it is to convince somebody they have been fooled.” -Mark Twain
I have become exhausted of trying to converse with people about any of these issues. It has become clear to me that their allegiance is simply that. There is not actually a point in explaining anything, because they are not willing to hear the truth. Only people who are willing to consider what other people have to say, and who are willing to admit they can be wrong, are worth interacting with.
I have heard people take a list of several things the president has done wrong or lied about, find one in the entire list that they think they can disprove, and if they succeed in my saying even one part of their argument may have some credibility, or I give the president credit for making one good decision, they will walk away like a peacock strutting their feathers as if they won, completely ignoring the rest of the list of things he has been proven wrong about.
I have heard somebody scold someone else on social media for calling the president a name. Referring to this person as not being patriotic, or American. I could hardly contain myself when I read this. I asked if they were talking about the person who posted the comment, or if they were referring to the president himself for name calling. Once again, I am baffled. How can somebody possibly support the president by defending him against name-calling while his limited vocabulary is made up largely of derogatory terms for entire groups of people including an entire political party, which arguably includes half of the American people he swore to represent and protect?
I think by far my favorite part of the various exercises in ignorance I have witnessed is the number of people claiming Democrats should not cash their stimulus checks because they don’t consider Donald Trump their president.
First, I question their understanding of how American government works. For example, do they believe Donald Trump is personally funding the stimulus checks? I would like to believe they have been misled because he demanded to put his name on the checks, something that was never done by any prior president, ironically, to avoid the appearance of partisan preference.
Unfortunately, I can’t go with that explanation because they were saying it prior to this decision. In a completely ironic understanding, these people fail to acknowledge that accepting this stimulus check, which was paid for by taxes paid by the very people receiving them, including people on Social Security who had to have work credits and a certain amount of income earned to receive it, is very much a move resembling socialism. Accordingly, people supporting Trump who are against socialism, should not be excepting this money, unless they are admitting socialism is acceptable and necessary for any government and its people to survive something like this.
That doesn’t seem to be happening. Instead, it appears no matter what the president says or does, his supporters simply must be too proud to admit they have been fooled. The evidence showing Trump has failed at leadership, that he is not intellectually qualified to engage in high level government, and that he does not even understand how government, the separation of powers, or the Constitution actually work, is too great. The only possible explanation is they simply do not want to accept they have been fooled.
As a result of all of this, lives have been lost and will continue to be lost, America’s reputation in the world has dropped and will continue to drop, and because ignorance is much more common in America than intelligence and education, I worry that it is very likely Trump will be reelected, because he has repeatedly shown evidence of his success, in “non-partisan” videos of people saying great things about him. All the while, pointing at the video as if to say, “See? Everybody agrees with me!” Much like a four-year-old pointing to a cow and saying, “See? It has four legs, therefore it is a dog.”
To be fair, he did say early on that one day the virus would disappear like magic. And sure enough, he recently stood in front of the American people and said the curve was flat. Once again, I think he fails to understand what a curve is. A flat line would not be a curve at all. It would also mean, in this sense, that there are no more virus infections anywhere in America. Clearly this is not the case. However, using the same evidence he has a used throughout the entire pandemic, his announcement that it is time to open up America again, is evidence that indeed, the curve is now flat, and the virus has disappeared, like magic.
I am so proud to be witnessing the first magical president of the United States of America. Never again will people get to experience this in their lives, if we are lucky. It would be pretty hard to top this. But stranger things have happened. After all, he does presently occupy the seat in the oval office. If that is not proof that Magic exists, nothing is.
I'm Still Breathing! 