Emperor Donald Trump: Fiddled (golfed) While America Burns (dies)
Legend has it that Nero, then emperor of Rome, fiddled while the city of Rome was undergoing a massive conflagration in 64 A.D, the Great Fire of Rome. There were no violins at that time but Nero is said to have been a cithara player, a stringed instrument of the day, similar to a lyre. It was a metaphor for his disinterest and lack of concern during a profound challenge to Rome’s citizenry. He was 27 years old at the time of the fire, but was already found to be a cruel, egocentric and tyrannical leader. The image represented by Nero’s behavior has come to represent the neglectful failure of leaders to do their duty in times of dire need. Sound familiar! The site of Trump on the golf course on multiple successive days in mid-November 2020 at the time of exploding cases of and hospitalizations and deaths from covid-19, his abandonment of any serious involvement in the covid-19 task force, his lack of empathy for the victims of the raging epidemic or for the healthcare workers and hospitals under stress to the breaking point and beyond, his destructive attitude about masks and distancing, his attack on governors trying to implement proven approaches to decrease spread, his whining about this slight or that, his failure of leadership and any effort to develop a plan to mitigate the epidemic, his fantasies about a hoax, then it will just disappear, and then the epidemic is turning the corner in the face of an explosive increase in new cases, his disinterest in the details of vaccine development and plans for distribution (according to the chief advisor to Operation Warp Speed interviewed on television on November 16, 2020), but his willingness to try to take credit for vaccine development, an effort in which the president has no role and, in contrast to all previous presidents, refusing to facilitate the transition for President-elect Biden and his expert covid-19 working group are all consistent with Nero’s character and behavior.
Statue of Nero
The Trump administration is headed by a charlatan. Trump is incapable of strategic thinking. He is rash and irrational and he finds sycophants to do his bidding. His decision to listen to a neuroradiologist with no background in infectious diseases, immunology or vaccinology has led to a disaster in management of the covid-19 epidemic. His withdrawal from the Iran nuclear arms accord has led to a massive increase in highly purified uranium in Iran and was followed by a failure of Trump’s oil embargo to keep Iran from selling oil products to Venezuela, China and other countries. The other member countries in the agreement have given up policing Iran’s oil shipments because of the U.S. poking them in the eye by abdication. Trumps withdrawal from the Pan-Pacific trade negotiations has resulted in China consummating a trade agreement with multiple Asian countries. His mindless romance with Kim Jung Un accomplished nothing but a few photo-ops, but weakened our alliance with South Korea. His obsequious relationship with Vladimir Putin diminished the United States and ceded our leadership in the NATO alliance and our counterforce to discredited authoritarians. His tariffs increased the cost of imported goods and damaged trade that benefitted our farmers. His weakening of NATO, the Paris climate accords, and the World Health Organization lost the U.S. standing in the international community. His reversing the move away from fossil fuels, weakening financial safeguards and weakening the endangered species act and the preservation of critical habitat has been destructive of good management, shortsighted and without a rationale. He is the opposite of a farsighted and strategic thinker; he is a mindless, feckless, small minded and very dangerous fool. He is an established and florid liar (22,247 false claims (lies) in 1316 days as measured by the Washington Post as of August 27, 2020).
How can 45 percent of Americans not see through this charlatan! Those predicting his continued relevance after he is replaced by the incoming duly elected administration may be right; but, I agree with Michelle Goldberg in her New York Times article of November 15, 2020, “The Post-Presidency of a Con Man”, that he will, inevitably, be done in by his dishonesty, his debts, his misogyny, his tax schemes and his other past and present felonious behavior. He has been the American electorate’s most colossal mistake. The Republican Party, already more reactionary, dismissive of compromise, inimical to science, populated by climate change deniers and devoid of great statesmen has lost its most diligent practitioners of the art of working for the greater good. In part, this perversion has been related to (i) allowing the invasion of evangelical religious thought where the founders did not want it to intrude, (ii) displaying an inability to adapt to the inevitable demographic shifts toward diversity (brown, black, Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern and away from Americans of European descent (so-called “white persons)”, (iii) failing to adapt to and respond appropriately to the shift from unskilled and semi-skilled jobs to skilled jobs and the knowledge economy, (iv) not responding programmatically to the profound disparities in income among Americans that have eroded the middle class, (v) not recognizing the critical need to move from fossil fuels to other energy sources, (vi) not accepting the importance of multilateralism and international cooperation, and (vii) exhibiting a selfish streak (“my way or the highway”) that is pernicious and destructive to democratic values. What former Republicans, chased out of the party in the last four years by Trump and Trumpism and the more thoughtful practitioners of democratic government, can do to restore balance or, perhaps, start another party is unclear at this writing. It will be interesting to see how disaffected Republicans, largely the thought leaders of a moderate Republican Party, will move to restore sanity and decency to their political party.
Written November 19, 2020