Blotting the copybook
Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he once dismissed as a hoax, has been fiercely criticised at home as woefully inadequate to the point of irresponsibility.
Yet also thanks largely to Trump, a parallel disaster is unfolding across the world: the ruination of America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner.
Of course, but that long predates the pandemic. It dates from his candidacy. The fact that an ignorant malevolent clown like him could get one of the major party nominations spelled doom for America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner. (Mind you, decades of warmongering and bullying and human rights abuses didn’t help either.)
Since taking office in 2017, Trump has insulted America’s friends, undermined multilateral alliances and chosen confrontation over cooperation. Sanctions, embargoes and boycotts aimed at China, Iran and Europe have been globally divisive.
Plus…you know…all the rest of it. The children in cages, the children dying on the floors of those cages, the Nazi rallies, the lies, the corruption, the cruelty, the vulgarity, the complete tinyness of it all – it adds up.
Trump’s ineptitude and dishonesty in handling the pandemic, which has left foreign observers as well as Americans gasping in disbelief, is proving a bridge too far.
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The furious reaction in Germany after 200,000 protective masks destined for Berlin mysteriously went missing in Thailand and were allegedly redirected to the US is a case in point. There is no solid proof Trump approved the heist. But it’s the sort of thing he would do – or so people believe.
It’s the sort of thing he would do, and it’s not the sort of thing an underling would do in the absence of his orders or approval.
Trump’s surreal televised Covid-19 briefings are further undermining respect for US leadership. Trump regularly propagates false or misleading information, bets on hunches, argues with reporters and contradicts scientific and medical experts.
All that but also he just displays his hopeless incompetence, recklessness, self-adoration, bad manners – the whole cocktail of chaotic grotesque not how this is supposed to go clownishness. It’s impossible to overstate how shockingly wrong it all looks. It’s as if an angry drunk toddler on meth in a bear suit were at that podium. Yes, oddly enough, that does make us look bad.
To a watching world, the absence of a fair, affordable US healthcare system, the cut-throat contest between American states for scarce medical supplies, the disproportionate death toll among ethnic minorities, chaotic social distancing rules, and a lack of centralised coordination are reminiscent of a poor, developing country, not the most powerful, influential nation on earth.
Indeed, but this too has been true all along, or most of it has. We’re very much an anomaly among “developed” nations; some argue that we shouldn’t even be classified as a developed nation. Mass poverty and grotesque wealth for a few do not combine to make a developed nation.
I’m not sure whether we need Shakespeare, Ogden Nash, or Oscar Wilde to do it justice.
Shakespeare did actually write some characters who fit the description, now you mention it. Plus there is that notorious stage direction in The Winter’s Tale – Exit, pursued by a bear.
Oh, yes, there are probably few, if any, playwrights who aren’t envious of that stage direction. It’s a classic.
I definitely think this is a job for Shakespeare. Dogberry comes to mind.
If anyone is gasping in disbelief, they haven’t been paying attention.
Dogberry crossed with Bottom crossed with Iago.
James Herriot?
For obvious reasons, Trump runs on instinct rather than intellect. An inheritor of wealth (no log cabin to White House story there) he has learned to despise damn near everyone he encounters, and most of those he does not, because they are not and never will be in his genius class. He is also crass enough to blunder on without realising the actual impression he makes.
Comedy and tragedy both spring from the same source: the gap between expectation and outcome. On that basis, Charlie Chaplin was arguably the greatest comedian ever. He could have his audience laughing its head off one minute and crying the next.
The gap between what Trump thinks he is doing, and what he is seen to be actually doing, is widening. It is starting to threaten the geographic status of the Grand Canyon. But how long till the suckers see that, and realise they have been conned?
For anyone who has seen Upstart Crow the only choice will be Ben Elton.
@ Omar #7
“The gap between what Trump thinks he is doing, and what he is seen to be actually doing, is widening. It is starting to threaten the geographic status of the Grand Canyon. But how long till the suckers see that, and realise they have been conned?”
The suckers have swallowed hook, line, and sinker. They will never see what DJT is actually doing, and will never recognize that they have been conned.
maddog, Cognitive dissonance, and the inability to admit they might be wrong, will keep them in the true believer camp for a long time. I know these people. They are my colleagues. They are my neighbors. They are my family. They will believe Trump. If they don’t believe the virus is deadly (even with people all around them dying), they will think Trump has been brilliant in ignoring it. If they accept the deadly nature, they will believe he was the first one in the entire world to take action.
All we can hope for is that the people who voted for and support Trump only because they can’t stomach the idea of a Democratic president, or because they couldn’t stand the idea of a woman president, will see the light and turn the tide. Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of those people are in the camp of “it’s not worth the reversal of a Custer decision”. At least, until it hits someone they know and love.
Peter Stone in Washington:
Just as Roman soldiers swore an oath of loyalty to their commander, not to the Roman state. Hence the importance of the Rubicon, a little stream that formed a border no regiment of soldiers could cross, except by open treason..
Looks like Trump has crossed his; and quite a few times. Is anyone keeping count?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/12/trump-inspector-general-purge-watchdogs