To Suffer Fools
AJ Robinson

I can not tolerate fools, which means I can’t stand Donald Trump. These days, I do not lack reasons to despise him. What I find particularly personal is his handling of the coronavirus plague.

Mystified am I, deeply.

First off, I am mystified, continually, by his supporters, some of whom still treat the virus as no big deal or even an outright hoax. Over one hundred and thirty-seven thousand, maybe more, are dead and some people don’t believe it’s real?  

There are unending statements, by Trump, which defy logic. Some we’re quite familiar with by now. For example, covid-19 is a Democrat hoax. It’ll disappear once the weather gets warmer. The cases will drop to zero soon. Let’s try injecting disinfectant into people. I have no responsibility. Less testing means fewer cases It’s Obama’s fault, which is his old stand by.

Then there are his, for lack of a better term, proclamations. These are the ones that would make me laugh if they weren’t so dangerous. For example, Trump wanted the churches full on Easter. We need to re-open the country, he says, as people need to get back to work; the economy is more important than a pandemic.

He threatens to withhold money from schools if they don’t open. Mind you, we don’t hear any ideas for helping schools, teachers, students and faculty to deal with the disease. No, quite the contrary.

Trump accuses Democrats of trying to shutdown the schools merely to hurt him. Oh, there’s another of his lines: we need to learn to live with the disease and, presumably, the tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Can you imagine how Republicans would have reacted if Obama had said that about Ebola?

What is good of Trump outweighs what is good for all.

Then there’s the line that cuts deep. The elderly need to be prepared to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the economy. After all, it’s his economy and he doesn’t want anyone screwing with it.

That last one is the item that hits particularly close to home these days. As regular readers know, my mother is still in a long-term medical facility recovering from her auto accident. She’s not doing well.

It’s remarkable how well she’s healed given her age. Her bones have mended quite well. Her muscles are weak and they’re not getting any stronger.

She doesn’t like the food. The staff says she only eats about a quarter of each meal. She’s lost more than twenty-five pounds.

Mom won’t do physical therapy, as it hurts. This is par for course. No pain, no gain, as they say.

Despite all the precautions the facility has taken, there are three confirmed cases of cocus-19 in her facility. To try to fight it, the facility is now on true lockdown; patients are stuck in their rooms, with no forms of visitation, not even the window visits.

My mother has a good chance of getting cocis-19. Given her age and health, it’s doubtful she’d survive it. I think you can therefore understand my anger and hatred of The Great Orange.

His latest outrage is an attempt to discredit Dr Fauci. It’s not enough that the man can not appear on television and radio shows; he’s been doing podcasts to try to get his message out. Now the White House is looking to discredit him; Peter Navarro, a White House trade official, wrote a horrible op-ed attacking Dr Fauci.

Get this, as if this isn’t a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. White House staffers are drawing up lists of all the times Fauci was wrong about the disease. They like to tout them as his lies.

Let’s have a contest. You list all the times the dear doctor has been wrong about the virus and I’ll list ten times Trump was wrong. First one to run out of examples loses.

Trump laid bare.

Any takers? Doesn’t matter, I’ll win. First prize for the loser is a copy of Too Much and Not Enough: how my family created the world's most dangerous man, by Dr Mary Trump, niece of The Great Orange.

In her new book, Dr Mary Trump describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse in the house where Donald Trump grew up. She explains specific events and general family patterns, mostly the relations among the father, Fred, and his sons.

Fred, a high-functioning sociopath favoured aggression. Kindness or empathy showed weakness. Donald, she argues, suffered most, in that household, which created the damaged man now leading the USA from behind the Resolute Desk.

Deep down, she implies, Donald knows his flaws, but is in denial and thus problemed, clinically. He is a textbook narcissist. He likely suffers anti-social personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, a sleep disorder and a learning disability that affects his ability to absorb, keep and use information.

Dr Mary Trump argues that the simple-minded, black and white approach to life, business and governance, which her uncle takes, is because his father and family denied him the chance to develop a full range of emotions. Fred saw the world in terms of winners and losers; a loser was anyone that didn’t share his viewpoint, especially on racial matters. Thus, POTUS knows not empathy and, ostensibly with a clear conscious, can cage children, tell the elderly to sacrifice their lives for the good of America and befriend Jeffery Epstein, while bathing in emoluments.

Donald Trump knows no internal control mechanisms, almost no self-control. The only limits of his ravaging of America are external. For example, Congress to some extent; perhaps some sense of the law and, most certainly, the desire for a second term, when all external shackles will be off.

Dr Mary Trump told George Stephanopoulos, of ABC-TV News, her uncle is utterly unable to lead America. To allow him to continue to lead is wrong. She believes he should resign, now, for the good of America.