Sunday, May 9, 2021

The Covid-19 Trumpism Legacy


 In the absence of anything approaching an actual plan, all he has given the country is performative messaging. And that messaging has been a disaster. Trump is the single largest driver of coronavirus misinformation worldwide. He called it a hoax (it wasn't); he said it would magically go away (it didn't); he told people to inject bleach (don't); he mocked people for wearing masks (wear a mask); he said only older people die from the virus and children are immune (none of that is true). Even after he got Covid-19 and recovered—thanks to the socialized medicine taxpayers provided him—he refused to embrace basic science and reason; instead he ripped off his mask, parading about the White House balcony like some orange Übermensch. He ended his failed reelection campaign by barnstorming around the country holding superspreader events that are thought to have caused 30,000 infections and 700 deaths.

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Trump's anti-science sociopathy has been embraced by many other political actors. His messaging, his attitude, his culture-war-mongering have filtered down throughout our country, to our national shame.

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Even after he's removed from the White House (and he will be removed on January 20), Trump will continue to use the media—Twitter, Fox News, Newsmax—to poison the well against public health. There will be a vaccine for the coronavirus eventually, but there is no cure for what Trump has done to our society, no inoculation from the disinformation he spreads, and no way to bring back the lives he's already cost us.

Elie Mystal, "The Real Trump Surge, The Nation, Dec. 14/21, 2020

We will get past the Covid-19 pandemic probably in late 2021 and early 2022 but it will take much longer to get past the egocentric and ethnocentric gravity of the Trumpist level of consciousness. 

The best estimate is that 30% of the American population is stuck at this stage of development and it doesn't seem that many of these folks will further develop.

The 70% will have to learn ways to accommodate these folks or facilitate their development to a higher stage. There are many strategies to accomplish this. The first is to use legal and regulatory tools, but it will take a Charismatic leader to facilitate an interior growth in consciousness as well as the development of social institutions which support the effort..



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