Drafting coronavirus into the Army of the Righteous

March 20, 2020 Facebook posting from a wealthy (via marriage) Democrat:

Civil liberties, covid-19,Trump, and November election on my mind.

Her friend responds:

As much as I want this whole Covid-19 thing to be over, my biggest fear is that it will abate and the stock market/economy will rebound in time for the November election and Trump will claim credit and be re-elected.

Clicking on the friend’s page reveals a late middle-age woman with a cat, no sign of a husband, birth in Massachusetts and residence in Vermont, a recently graduated son (let’s hope she sued for child support in Massachusetts, which is much more lucrative than suing in Vermont!). Googling her name brings up a LinkedIn page that says she has worked for the state government in Vermont since 1982.

How did other friends respond to the response?

original poster: “and the 1200/ month got eligible families will help him too. Grrr.”

female-named friend #2: “it’s so orchestrated too!”

male-named friend: “I share your fear of his being reelected; however, my greatest fear is clearly the immediate problem– the COVID-19 pandemic threatens the health of all Americans, and will quickly overwhelm our health care system.”

[On that last one: Not only are viruses smarter than humans, but there is a virus more evil than Trump himself?!?!]

I’ve also seen a lot of Facebook postings from Democrats enthused about what they hope will be differential death rate; the healthy brown virtuous Bernie supporters will sail through the coronaplague, while old white Republicans will be culled from the voting herd.

The most confusing and fascinating phenomenon is the continued stream of anti-Trump abuse being posted by Facebookers who live in New York and California. Sometimes they will say that Trump is intentionally trying to harm “blue states” (they got a letter from God on the subject of Trump’s intentions so they know what motivates him?). As Commander in Chief, Trump had the discretion to send the Navy’s two hospital ships anywhere in the world. If “all lives have equal value” and we’re right about the “science” (epidemiological prophecies), the most logical places to send the ships are Brazil and Sweden. Due to their failures to lockdown, science tells us that this is where unfettered exponential growth will occur. Or maybe to India or Africa, both of which are going to be short of hospital beds.

If Trump believes, unreasonably, that American lives have more value than non-American lives, he could easily have decided to send the ships to Florida and New Orleans, i.e., a swing state and a state that voted for him.

When I point this out to the New York and California-based Trump haters, they are not motivated to reduce their level of contempt and hatred. Trump is a “fool”, a “sociopath” (but not one smart enough to send the ships to a state where people might vote for him?), etc. One popular retort is that Trump does not have the authority to tell the ships where to go. The President is only Commander in Chief during wartime and this is not a war. Therefore, it is a mid-level Navy bureaucrat (the Trump haters can’t say which one, but they are confident that Trump does not a say) who made a technocratic decision to send the ships to LA and NYC (this does not make logical sense; California is not forecast to run out of hospital or ICU beds while Louisiana will run out of both).

15 thoughts on “Drafting coronavirus into the Army of the Righteous

  1. The internet has gone from calling the virus a Chinese bioweapon to a Russian bioweapon to a stock market conspiracy to a Trump re-election conspiracy, to a hoax. It’s surprising that when the same crisis lasts more than a week, the internet focuses on a different weekly sub crisis that is completely unrelated & opposite to last week’s.

    • You need to understand the rules of coincidence theory.
      The coincidence theories postulated are always wrong.
      The official narrative is always a lie, always.
      The truth is far more evil than even the most outlandish theories.
      Maybe we will know in 50 years who was behind the great chinkiepox scare/shutdown. But it doesn’t matter who started it, the usual suspects are all lining up to take maximum advantage.
      Decide for yourself how you want to play along.

  2. I also got gleeful messages from Democrats. One said early on “If this is true, Trump is done!” It was about Trump supposedly firing the task force (he didn’t).

  3. Interesting, isn’t it that people who have never accomplished anything, whose lives are spent giving their opinions on all sorts of things way outside of their expertise, consider Trump to be “stupid” when he has figured out how to make a billion dollars, complete lots of complicated construction projects, become president of the US, become a television star, and have relations with lots of beautiful women? I sure wish i were that stupid.

    • That’s one perspective.

      Michael Lewis. author of Liar’s Poker:

      What I would do next is study the way society is now compensating for [Trump]. It really does remind me of a dysfunctional family with a psychotic, alcoholic dad, where everybody’s trying to cover for dad.

    • Trump hasn’t released any financial records, so his claim to be a billionaire could be a complete lie. His father gave about 400 million bucks in total. Of course, he’s lied about the assistance he received from his father.

      His father’s wealth did help him become a big reality TV star. Of course, Kim Kardashian could say the same thing.

      More importantly, none of this matters. He’s a standard Republican, looking out for the interests of the wealthy and screwing the working man. The racism, the vulgar demeanor and the stupid hair are just distractions.

    • I would have bet you would say “Obama always says… if you like your hospital ship, you can keep your hospital ship!”

  4. Just curious why you keep cherry picking ridiculous statements from random Liberals you happen to know. If all your Trump supporting friends are out there saying only smart things, then you definitely live in an alternate universe.

    I enjoy reading your posts about all subjects, but sometimes they might be saying more about you than you realize.

    • Mike: I live in Massachusetts and most of my friends work in government-supported enterprise, such as academics or medicine. I.e., I don’t have any Trump-supporting friends! (I have a few libertarian friends.) The sentiments in the original post above are actually fairly typical for my Facebook feed.

      Let’s look at my feed today… Some Democrats have discovered that Trump owns up to $15,000 of a mutual fund that has a 2.9% position in Sanofi, which apparently pioneered the malaria drug that Trump hopes will ameliorate coronavirus symptoms. In other words, he might own roughly $400 of Sanofi. They express the belief that this motivates his promotion of the drug, consistent with Trump’s general lying and corruption. They ignore that the drug was introduced in 1955, is now available from at least 10 different manufacturers, and that at least some of those manufacturers are giving away the product for free to build goodwill. So, via this $400 position in Sanofi (the original brand manufacturer), Trump is going to get rich off a generic drug whose current market price is $0.

  5. If “all lives have equal value” and we’re right about the “science” (epidemiological prophecies), the most logical places to send the ships are Brazil and Sweden. Due to their failures to lockdown, science tells us that this is where unfettered exponential growth will occur. Or maybe to India or Africa, both of which are going to be short of hospital beds.

    So you’re saying that Trump doesn’t think that all lives have equal value. That makes sense and these Facebook that you write about would probably agree.

  6. When this thing hit the US, I finally “deleted” my Facebook account, because I knew what was coming. In my opinion, the one common thread throughout all the reporting and discussion about the virus is that Facebook has been terribly detrimental to society during this time. The various, insane, public reactions to the pandemic have illustrated George Carlin perfectly: “You know how stupid the average person is? Well, half of them are even stupider than THAT.”

    Our post-modernist society has now cemented the notion that everyone is qualified to believe whatever they want to, and all it takes is a 10-second Google search to find a post or article to support whatever lunatic position you’d care to take. Facebook has given a relatively-equal platform to everyone to spout whatever nonsense they believe, and there is no reasoning with anyone any more. Objectivity may be the most-precious resource we have left now.

Comments are closed.