The Solid Sense of President Trump’s Policies: Covid-19 and Racial Distress

Most people make sense most of the time. Often times, the trick is to figure out what sense they are making. The main thing President Trump can be relied on to do consistently across a wide range of topics is to foment division amongst people. When someone does one thing so consistently (and nothing else as consistently) across such a wide range of topics, I eventually run out of capacity to think it’s accidental. They must be making a sense that doesn’t normally jump to mind for most of us.

Covid-19

The situation with Covid-19 may be a textbook example of all that can – and usually may – go wrong when science and medicine are politicized and enforced. But even after that, is President Trump so inept as his Covid-19 response suggests? Considering the national disgrace of PPE management as one aspect of his wrecked and now abandoned Covid-19 response, is nearly anybody that stupid? Many well advised 10th graders could have done better. If you know a fairly sharp 9th-11th grader, if that kid was well advised, could they not do better than President Trump has done? And, I’m assuming President Trump was well advised. For another aspect let’s consider his refusal to encourage or coordinate testing and contact tracing as another key proven aspect of Covid-19 management. He uses something so basic and simple as face masks to drive wedges between us. I think he wants to breed chaos and death. Once Covid-19 could be relied on to breed its own unmanaged chaos and death, he has now moved on to agitating other trends of chaos and instability (racial distress, and now issues surrounding the return to school). He refuses to do anything to help a situation, allowing chaos to fester where it already exists, and agitating for more discord with everything he does touch. (For Covid-19, here’s one thought that might have helped without using it to split the country: inhaled steroids, routine, approved asthma treatments, applied early.)

Let’s assume the president is not the Complete Idiot his Covid-19 policies would indicate. Let’s also dare that the president’s brags about his intelligence may be the most accurate brags he makes.

The president’s Covid-19 response does make a solid sense. He needs to foster instability to grow demand for stability, his law and order campaign theme. He needs to allow the nation to destabilize any way it will, and barring that to actively destabilize it himself (incessant, inflammatory, divisive twitter rants), so he can re-stabilize it under his iron fisted rule.

This context for understanding President Trump’s management of Covid-19 begins to actually make a sense. It’s not a care-for and well-being of the nation kind of sense, but a deranged (yet very well hinged) re-election kind of sense. His Covid-19 response has less to do with the well-being of the nation and more to do with his re-election prospects — an insatiable lust for power. Hard to imagine that anyone would trash us this badly as a conscious election strategy? But, let’s see if that thought helps make a better sense of all his seeming chaotic instabilities.

If the president’s unstated goal is to sow improvised chaos, expose weaknesses in our systems, foster perceived instability, fear, and to lend a haunting sense of unraveling –If these are his unstated (but real) goals, he is doing a job that matches his claims to intelligence, extremely smart. I think I’m starting to understand the deranged senses of President Trump’s policies. I don’t think he’s this accidentally stupid. I think he is this willfully evil and power obsessed. I think he is achieving his real, unstated, political goals: destabilization of the country to accommodate re-stabilizing it under his iron-fisted strong man rule.

He has single handedly, insistently, led us head-long into the most inept, chaotic and fear inducing Covid-19 response on the planet (well, maybe excepting Brazil, where the leader is a Trump wanna-be). Sowing instability and fear to undermine confidence, and grow demand for Trump Brand Law and Trump Branded Order: militarism of the nation under his Strong Man Rule. There’s no constitutional concern with any of it. On June 1, 2020, in Lafayette Square he bent over and wiped his ass with free speech and peaceable assembly; that for a bible belting photo-op. And all this while he plays the part of supposed-to-be reassuring national cheerleader. A 20% competent response would be far more reassuring than his all completely goofy cheers combined. If anything, his twisted cheering adds to the surreal creepiness of it all. 

Law Enforcement and Racial Distress

As the elections near, he agitates and ratchets up the social chaos and fear further and further (racial tensions with law enforcement / political divides / return to school / who knows what’s next), so a half-panicked nation turns to its Strong Man Father Figure – him – for seeming safety and security. Failing success of his unstated goals by these means, I wonder what other pre-election destabilizing trickery he has up his sleeve to compound division, social unrest, and fear? He is a businessman in a unique position to grow demand for his advertised product: law and order. I suspect it all goes downhill from now, because that’s where he needs it to go to increase demand for his campaign theme, law and order. I think he agitates trouble as a key campaign strategy: divide and conquer. If we vote for that, we’ll get what we deserve: divided and conquered. That’s not what I’m shopping for. We have seen this playbook before, not all that long ago. It didn’t end well. Not for anybody. Especially not for about 6,000,000 Jews. If we’re not very careful here, this time we’ll scapegoat our Black Community.

The sense made by President Trump is hard to recognize because it not a sense we want to imagine. It’s a bad sense.

Regarding personnel chaos in the upper administration and the Top Brass of the military: to destabilize and re-stabilize, seizing outsized control of government machinery, with the military to back him up. We’ve seen these plays from other playbooks. They’re typical tactics for the transitioning Strong-Man Ruler.

Most people make sense most of the time. . .

. . .Rather, tyrants who by seeking greater domination incite discontent and rebellion in the people subject to them, are the rebels. For governance is tyrannical when ordered to the ruler’s own good to the detriment of the people.

(Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, Question 42 [On Rebellion], Article 2 [Is Rebellion Always a Mortal Sin?], Reply, Objection 3)

Let’s all take care of one another. God Bless.