Trump’s America: New American Journal graphic by Walter Simon

By Glynn Wilson –
Editor-in-Chief –

For the past seven months, responsible Americans have endured the psychologically trying times created by the rampaging coronavirus pandemic, by staying at home as much as possible, abiding by the social distancing guidelines recommended by medical experts, staying at least six feet apart from other people, wearing masks when they must go out to work or for supplies, washing their hands and using hand sanitizers, and keeping up with the scary news on social media and cable news.

Meanwhile, the leader of the so-called free world and his coterie of loyal followers have not only ignored the guidelines. They have flouted the recommended safeguards and politicized the wearing of masks, another way for Trump to divide people and conquer democracy itself.

Rather than staying at home in the White House, the president has been traveling around the country holding large campaign rallies where very few people wear masks. He makes of a point of shaking hands with local politicians and others, putting lives at risk as perhaps the top super spreader of the virus in the country and the world. A study came out this week showing that Trump has been the top spreader of misinformation about the virus. It is now clear that he and his followers are the top spreaders of the virus itself.

No doubt as a result, 208,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19. But until this week, when President Donald Trump’s top aides starting testing positive for the virus, there was no statement coming out of this White House even so much as expressing sympathy to the family members of those who have sacrificed their lives to the worst pandemic to ever hit the planet.

When the news leaked out this week that top Trump aide Hope Hicks tested positive, it was only a matter of time before it would come out that the president himself, along with the first lady, the head of the Republican Party, at least two senators, including Tom Tillis of North Carolina who sits on the Judiciary Committee, and even members of the White House press corps had also tested positive, many of them with symptoms of the disease caused by the virus.

While top Democrats and world leaders sent their thoughts and prayers to the president, there was still nothing coming from the White House but hyperbole, claiming that the president would be fine and have a speedy, full recovery. It was hard for many people to care, considering that Trump has shown no inclination to care about them for the past four years.

But with one month to go before the election on Nov. 3, the president’s health has thrown the outcome into doubt. If the president were to die it would trigger a succession crisis. Would Vice President Mike Pence become the Republican’s nominee? Or would the election have to be postponed, even though millions of people have already voted?

Even if Trump were to end up on a ventilator — and among his symptoms it was reported that he was having respiratory issues along with a fever and a cough — he would most likely be declared incapacitated, which would automatically put Pence in the unenviable position of having to become acting president under the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

And that’s if Pence doesn’t test positive himself. How can he not? He has been in repeated close contact with the president and his staff, and it is being reported that no one in the White House has been wearing a mask either in the old building on Pennsylvania Avenue or on Air Force One. Newspapers are running pictures from Trump’s campaign rallies, where people are crammed together in tight spaces and almost no one is seen wearing a mask.

We know that leadership matters, and people, like chimps, do what they see leaders do. Remember the old saying, “Monkey see, monkey do?” We are, after all, descended from apes, according to Charles Darwins’ theory of evolution and natural selection. Of course Trump and his uneducated followers don’t “believe” it, as if science cared what they believe.

Trump recently claimed “science doesn’t know.” What? Clearly Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he seems to be able to fire up his base by turning the world upside down and sideways.

Related: Dumb is the New Smart, and Smart is the New Dumb

Clearly the coronavirus doesn’t care. Mother Nature is malevolent. Homo sapiens survived because they learned to put aside their genetic selfishness and work together altruistically to learn from the laws of nature and harness the power of tools to work within those laws.

If Pence were to get sick too, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would become the first woman president, and the Democrats could celebrate that, at least temporarily. All over social media, some Democrats have showed restraint, character and class by wishing the president well. But mostly the reaction has been disbelief, and why not? Trump’s entire history is riddled with examples of a habit he has of pushing a false narrative to get what he wants: money and power. He lies repeatedly about just about everything. So why should people believe him now?

From the sampling of comments on my own Facebook news feed, many people immediately thought it was fake news, that Trump was making up his positive test results to avoid having to debate Joe Biden again and to distract attention away from his abysmal debate performance last week and reporting on his failing businesses and negative tax status.

Related: Donald Trump the Criminal Tax Cheat: Is This the Smoking Gun to Bring Trump Down Finally?

Why wouldn’t people have that reaction, considering it has become impossible to believe anything Trump says about anything?

But the next reaction down the list from many others was that Trump’s infection is more of an act of justice by Mother Nature herself, a result of Trump’s bad karma or just karma getting back at him.

Nature abhors a vaccum. And this most deadly of viruses to ever come up from the toxic ooze of sewage and animal parts in the far reaches of China, will exploit any opening to infect and kill its host. It clearly doesn’t like human beings, and wants to kill as many as possible. It’s the best system nature has devised yet to engage in population control on an over-populated, over-heated planet.

Whatever happens next, it’s likely that this is one of the final events in this chaotic and confusing time. The hurriances and wildfires will keep on coming, until everybody gets onboard with trying to slow down climate change due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels. But Trump was already trailing in the national polls in large part because of his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now that even his loyal base can’t escape seeing his vulnerability on every channel, it is hard to imagine any scenario in which he wins this election. His reelection chances are likely doomed.

So if it takes the coronavirus to save democracy and the planet where human ingenuity failed, so be it. Some of us might actually make it through this crisis if we all put aside our differences and work together. It was hard to imagine how we could have survived another four years of Trump.