Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Someone Else's Stupid Can Kill You

We know that stupid decisions by others can harm you. Drunk driving. Shooting guns in the air. Voting Republican.  But what is worrisome is how the immeasurable stupidity of Donald Trump could lead to thousands of death.

Fox sycophants like Sean Hannity are already parroting moronic claims.  Trump, for instance, suggested that people who were sick still go to work.  Someone undoubtedly explained to him - slowly, using small words and pictures - that declining economic activity would lead to a recession.  So, like George Bush urging us to respond to 9/11 by going shopping, Trump wants the register person at McDonald's to come to work with coronavirus. 

Most of us will not die from Covid-19. But the elderly, the immunocompromised and those with pulmonary conditions are at real risk. Ironically, Trump ran strongest with people over the age of 50. He now seems to be trying to actively kill them. 

If this was confined to Fox News junkies, then...OK, live by the stupid, die by the stupid.  But Trump won the over 65 crowd with 52% of the vote. That left 45% of the vote for Clinton and the remaining scattered among Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. Those people will get sick and die, too. Like in a case of anti-vax idiocy, it's not just the imbecile who refuses to get vaccinated that gets sick.

Ugh.

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