The Tale of Two Viruses: Part 3

So we have entered The Twilight Zone (please pause and take a moment to hear the classic theme song.) A sense of dread hovers over us.  The communal anxiety is palpable as we take measures to try to mitigate the spread of the Coronavirus.

How has the leader of our country faring this week in his attempt to manage the existential crisis we face?

The Don took to the Oval Office to address the nation. Presidents addressing the country from the Oval Office lends an air of gravitas, which is difficult for a know-nothing, incompetent fool to pull off. Simply sticking your chin out, snarling, and keeping your head held high doesn’t get you points.

I believe the purpose was to show us that he had a plan to address the growing crisis and to quell the volatility of the financial markets. It was an abomination.

While he was giving his speech, the futures market was tanking in real time and the next day the U.S. stock market was down 10%. Guess he fucked that up! Weren’t you surprised?

When he heard the news about the futures, rumor has it that he blamed Fed Chairman Powell: “He should have been able to control this; if I was head of the Fed this would never have happened.”

He announced a travel ban to Europe stating he had been in “frequent touch with our allies,” though they had no idea he was doing this.

Here is the statement issued by two leaders of the European Union: “The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation.”

Can you imagine the chaos this surprise ban created? Leaders of Europe pouring through the list of banned countries, frantically calling each other.

European Leader: Hey, Macron, you banned.

Macron: Yeah. But what’s up with giving Boris a free pass. They have a bunch of cases there?

European Leader: Who knows, maybe it’s the orange hair connection.

Macron: The freaking baboon club.

Don, The great Banner-in-Chief.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could ban the banner? Oh, that is called impeachment and his immoral and sycophantic Republican cronies took a pass on that.

My favorite part of the speech was when he used the words “national emergency,” which the very stable genius declared to be “two very big words.” Is that two important words? Or is it big words, like in “big hands.”

Now that I think of it, it’s been a while since the national conversation revolved around talk about hands, but given the hand-job we are getting from The Don, maybe it’s time to bring hands back in to the dialogue. (Don’t you miss the good ole days of Little Marco and the “little hands? Such quaint and charming times.)

So as we all obsessively wash our hands, and dream of the day we can wash our hands of him, let’s put our hands together and pray as November can’t come soon enough.

Okay, enough riffing on hands. Let’s get back to the “two very big words”: “Emergency” does have gravitas, and “national” does as well, particularly when you consider we have a White Nationalist running our country.

But honestly, these words don’t seem so big. Now antidisestblashimenttarianism is a big word. Or how about Supercalifragilisticespialadocious. Boy could we use Mary Poppins now as she would figure a way out of the emergency we are in.

What about the word honorificabilitudinitas, which can be translated as “the state of being able to achieve honors.” Actually, it turns up in a Shakespeare play. The wordsmith at play. So I guess when it comes to The Don, we need to put an anti in front of the word and define it as the state of achieving dishonor.

And how about Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which is one of the longest words in the dictionary — and, in an ironic twist, means the fear of long words. I definitely would have guessed fear of a hippopotamus, but words can be deceiving as we know from the thousands of lies The Don has told. The longest words The Don ever uses are beautiful and tremendous; so he is definitely a primo Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.

And the winner is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano. Given the Coronavirus’s capacity to cause pneumonia, this one seems really relevant.

At a press conference, the following day, The Don managed to blame Obama again for his failure to respond with the urgency necessary. (The only thing he hasn’t blamed him for is killing Jesus!)

“I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time.”

If we were playing a game of Clue, the game would end before it started because, no matter the evidence, Obama did it!

When asked if he was responsible for disbanding the White House Pandemic team created by the Obama administration he denied responsibility.

“When you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people I could ask — perhaps my administration — but I could perhaps ask Tony (Dr. Anthony Fauci) about that because I don’t know anything about it.”

Rumor has it that The Don muttered under his breath: “Find out who did that and fire him. His aide responded: “Um, sir, Bolton did it and you already fired him.” The Don responded “I knew I hated that guy, but let’s tell people the black guy, oops, I mean Obama did it.”

Rumor also has it that Anthony Fauci turned to a colleague and said: “Him calling me Tony makes me want to wash my hands.”

Then someone asked him if he would be tested after interacting with a Brazilian official who tested positive for the virus just day after meeting with him in Florida?

Here’s how that conversation went.

“I think they shouldn’t be jumping to get the test unless it’s necessary, but I think they have to listen to their doctors,” the president said.

But when pressed again on the issue, Mr. Trump equivocated. In fact, he said, he did plan to get tested “fairly soon,” but not because of his exposure to an infected individual.

“Not for that reason,” he said, without providing another reason for the test that until now he appears to have resisted. “I think I will do it anyway. Fairly soon. We’re working out a schedule.”

Let’s pause here and conjure up the theme music for the Twilight Zone again. According to The Don’s new bestie friend Tony, anyone who has interacted with someone who tested positive should be tested and quarantined until they know the result, in order to not to spread the virus. (Even evil Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, who were exposed, self-quarantined!)

The Don, who is supposed to be leading by example is telling the country he would do this “fairly soon.” Are you apoplectic yet? And then he has to qualify that even if he is tested, he isn’t doing it because he was exposed to someone who tested positive as in “not for that reason.” It’s like he is saying “I am only doing it to get you assholes off my back. I could never get infected because I am a very stable genius and my God-like capacity makes me immune to viruses. Finally, after receiving a beautiful and tremendous amount of pressure he was tested and was negative. (Who reading this is thinking what I am thinking?) His response to this was I only got tested “because the media was going crazy.” So even when he does the thing he should have done he is so disturbed that he can’t say he did it because it was the right thing to do or that maybe that he wouldn’t want to spread it to others? Now that’s a leader for you, a man who has more empathy than anyone has ever had.

The Don’s sheer disregard for others and incompetence has made everything worse. He, his cronies and Fox News have spread falsities and are responsible for how badly this virus spreads and the devastation it brings down on our country. They all should be prosecuted for criminal negligence. We must do everything in our power to wash our hands of him.