The hecatomb
We always knew the presidency of Donald Trump would culminate with a hecatomb, whether through a war with Iran or China or North Korea or something else that would produce carnage. I use the word hecatomb, which comes from Latin and is in English dictionaries but is seldom used for a couple reasons. It is the perfect word. We have exhausted the words that describe awful things, disaster, tragedy, catastrophe, debacle.
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines hecatomb as “the sacrifice or slaughter of many victims.” What better word to describe what has been happening in this country for the last three months? What better word for what will happen by design as this administration implements its non-plan for dealing with this deadly pandemic, which amounts to “open for business” and make it hard to count the casualties.
In February 26, President Trump said of the Coronavirus: “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” By May 24, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was 1,680,000
Vice President Pence predicted that the pandemic would be over by Memorial Day. COVID-19 was still spreading in 24 out of 50 states and cases and deaths were still climbing. There were 20,000 new cases on Sunday alone. By the evening of the next day, on Memorial Day, the dead were officially 99,459 and climbing, a figure that epidemiologists widely regard as a significant undercount.
If these guys were gamblers, they would have bet New York on the premise they could talk the Danes to sell them Greenland and lost.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Trump continues to insist that cases and deaths are way down, the nth lie during his presidency. To show how worried about the COVID carnage he is and how he was spending his time when Americans that died in all wars are solemnly remembered, Trump played golf.
Nero fiddled as Rome burned. To each crazed ruler his own hobby. Knowing Trump as, to our sorrow, we have come to know him, none of this surprising, however shocking it is to the moral conscience, something Trump lacks.
What is more shocking and surprising is that at this stage of the game a president whose negligence and obstinacy has enabled an epic calamity to take place on his watch—the latest and the worst of a three plus years of corruption, mendacity, abuse of power, and innumerable acts of cruelty—one recent poll found 44 percent of Americans approve of President Trump’s job performance, exactly the same as on the same date last year. Another poll shows him behind Joe Biden 51 percent to 39 percent. That is still four out of ten support Trump. In a world of reason, his support should be statistically indistinguishable from zero.
Thus, although Trump is a sociopath, a narcissist, a sadist, and that only covers part of his psychopathologies, there is a deeper problem even than having a president with such unadmirable qualities. Trump is as virulent as COVID, but that would only affect a few people if he were still the host of a reality show with a cruel premise and founded on the false notion that Trump is a master businessman. Trump was never a Buffet, a Bloomberg, a Gates, a Bezos, or a Soros. He was minor league. His celebrity as everything about him was based on a lie. As a real estate con man who seldom paid his debts and a TV show host whose mantra was “you’re fired,” he hurt, at most, hundreds of people. Now he hurts hundreds of millions.
The deep main problem is that, at a time when only those who refuse to see can fail who Trump is, more than four in ten percent Americans still support him. They back him after his thousands of lies, his countless daily cruelties, the tons of racist actions, and all that hateful rhetoric.
Who are those 44 percent? Political imbeciles? The embodiments of a malign selfishness? Racists? Some of each of the above?
It’s heretical to say this from the perspective of the reverse political correctness much of the so-called liberal media practices. The unwritten law that you can even say that the emperor has no clothes, but not that far too many Americans have no brain or decency or judgment or sense of fairness. But at this point, that is the plain truth.
The MAGA crowd is a minority, one in steady demographic decline, but a big one still. They make up for their numerical disadvantage through ferocity, meanness, and the will and ability to load the dice systematically in their favor. The Trump-GOP juggernaut cheat through racially targeted voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering. They tilt the playing field through a virtual ministry of propaganda led by Fox News and supported by other media farther out on the lunacy-paranoia political fringe. A media-mendacity complex disseminates nothing but misinformation and falsehoods so transparent that only the 44 percent who are willfully blind can fail to see it.
What can you do about this nefarious and pugnacious minority? Not much. You are not going to change most their minds. But the combined effect of the two monumental crises—the economic and the public health one—has shaken the ground under their feet. This time hard-core Trump-lovers will not be joined by the confused, the clueless, the lukewarm Trumpistas, and the Hillary haters because these people are hurting. Those inside Trump’s bunker won’t surrender but they will be overrun.
The MAGA mad-hatters have not made America great again, but they sure have made America gag again, or at least those of us who are revolted by almost everything this administration says and does, the America that values truth, justice, reason, and science, and abhors a president and a party that represents the exact opposite of such ideals.
A decent person, a responsible president, would realize that through his incompetence, delusion, and ignorance, he enabled a human disaster on the scale of COVID-19 to happen and grow on his watch. That person would resign with an apology to the country. That is not going to happen because the principle and practice of decency is as alien to Trump as the Mandarin language.
The sacrifice or slaughter of many victims, that is what Donald Trump has unleashed on the nation, a public health hecatomb that triggered an economic hecatomb. The only way we can begin to fix the damage is to hand Trump and his Republican loyalists a political hecatomb on November 3.
