Laughter in Hell
By: Dave Buckner
Tags: Political Resistance, Covid 19, Call To Action, Donald Trump, Public Health Crisis

A Plea of Last Resort to Trump Supporters Everywhere

We must learn to accept the difficult truth that Hitler’s regime was the most popular government in German history; yet we know as well that few Germans after the war would confess having given any loyalty to the Nazi movement. This was not a lie in the soul of the German nation; it was a part of a collective delusion that all the fascist movements brought upon their followings. It was as if the movements themselves, as things independent of the men that embodied them, were responsible for the things that happened. - Gilbert Allardyce, 1971

Make no mistake: a day of reckoning is coming… a day when this President will have to answer for the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of American deaths that will have resulted from his mishandling of this crisis. And yet rather than preemptively recalibrate his response, President Trump callously continues to fiddle while our republic burns, choosing to emphasize the high ratings of his daily press briefings over the exponentially-increasing number of new infections and deaths that are likewise daily occurrences and grim milestones in our collective march toward catastrophe. His steadfast refusal to order a nationwide lockdown has undeniably allowed this virus to spread beyond our ability to contain it. As a result, mitigation and triage are the only options that remain open to us. Unfortunately, Trump’s reluctance to exercise the full authority granted to him under the auspices of the Defense Production Act means that the rapidly depleting stockpiles of medical equipment in hospitals all across this nation will soon be completely exhausted — some within a matter of days — making said mitigation and triage inordinately difficult today and all but impossible tomorrow. Even were the full effects of the act implemented today, the life-saving equipment would still fail to arrive in time to save thousands of patients and frontline healthcare providers whose lives could have easily been spared by more direct, decisive action. Adding insult to injury, this entirely preventable equipment shortfall will continue to be compounded by the administration’s blatantly partisan decision to privatize a portion of the federal stockpile (for subsequent sale on the open market) and to allocate the remaining resources of the federal government to states based more so on the shifting allegiances of their governors than the ever-evolving, day-to-day needs of their citizenries. All of these decisions have already and will only continue to cost lives.

Of course, the President’s decision to place his own personal and political interests above those of the nation is nothing new. One could easily make the case that every tax cut, tariff, and trade policy thus far proposed or enacted by his administration has been explicitly intended to directly benefit either the President’s businesses or his brand. Trump has even acknowledged his intention to personally profit from the recent $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, declaring in his signing statement that he and his administration will treat congressional oversight of the allocation of these funds “as hortatory but not mandatory.” Given his decades of hucksterism and self-aggrandizing showmanship, I don’t suppose any of us should be surprised.

What is surprising, however, is the fact that none of Trump’s innumerable lies, obvious failures of leadership, or admitted instances of self-dealing seems to have swayed any of you to withdraw your political support from this President. I urge you to do so now, before it’s too late — not just for the suffering souls in New York — but indeed for yourselves and those whom you love. I understand that, up until now, your desire for strong borders, prayer in schools, and a bevy of pro-life judges has provided you ample reason to overlook the obvious flaws in Trump’s character, but surely the grim prospect of hundreds of thousands of American lives lost has put your political agenda into the proper perspective. The crisis currently ravaging the city and state of New York will soon make its way to your small towns and close-knit communities. It will touch your homes, your schools, as well as your places of work and worship. The death tolls there may prove numerically lower, given your comparatively small populations, but statistically speaking, you stand to suffer far more personally than your metropolitan neighbors. For unlike those living in New York or Los Angeles, you are far more likely to know the names of almost all of the nearby victims that eventually perish in this pandemic. Equally distressing is the fact that your communities, concentrated primarily across the southern and mid-western states, are already plagued by disproportionately high unemployment, uneven access to healthcare, and poverty rates that rival or exceed even the most urban of areas. (I know. I grew up in one such community.) And so even after the threat from this particular virus has passed, the additional economic and public health burdens it levies are likely to linger far longer in your areas than anywhere else in the nation. The desperation and despair that ensue may prove every bit as contagious and difficult to eradicate as the illness itself.

If ever there was a time to put aside our cultural and political differences and unite as one people with a common purpose, it is now. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the callous, capricious, and inept indifference of this President. We must instead repurpose Donald Trump’s nationalistic “America First” policy into what it should always have been: a pluralistic rallying cry for all Americans to acknowledge our common destiny and to unlock our shared potential and responsibility in realizing it. Quite simply, there cannot be a Red State or a Blue State solution to this crisis. Whether we succeed or succumb, it will necessarily be as one nation. And as history has shown us, leaders who, in times of crisis, continue to divisively rail against the other(s) among them as the sole source of all their problems will not be treated kindly after the fact by their fellow citizens nor remembered fondly by the harsh judgment of history.

Unfortunately, the same must also be said of those who, for whatever the reason, continue to knowingly encourage or excuse such willful wickedness on the part of their leadership. Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” This man has been showing us for over forty years now… what will it take for you to believe him? Prizing politics over public safety, profiteering off of the senseless suffering of others, and all the while continuing to scapegoat the most weak and vulnerable among us — these are the undeniable and inexcusable actions of this President — and they will not serve to protect the population from the terrible tempest that’s now rapidly approaching upon the horizon. Don’t let the bile, blood, and bigotry already on his hands ultimately trickle down to yours. Neither future feigns of ignorance nor a multitude of mea culpas thereafter will manage to erase the senseless deaths of today nor the vivid and vengeful memories of those fortunate enough to survive.