A lingering post-covid regret will have to be how we could have done so many things differently, starting with listening to actual experts. The real experts, not the former President, or pundits on Fox News or Grampa or Uncle Bill or Aunt Sue just spouting what they heard somewhere.
It’ll be the shameful stubbornness, the unwillingness to acknowledge the gravity. The unwillingness to band together and fight this thing as a nation instead of a bunch of tribes with a thousand different opinions. It will be the suspicion, the doubt, the disinformation, the sheer stupidity and ignorance, the doubling down. And worst of all, the choice by a presidential administration to treat the whole thing as if it wasn’t really happening.
Yes, we will have to move on from this, but we all need to come to terms with the fact that the President of the United States was ok with letting the wildfire rage unchecked, ok with ignoring the conflagration as it consumed everything in its path. Ok with doing nothing except letting the virus take its course. We need to try to get our heads around that, let that sink in.
Trump was so consumed by the optics and economics of it that he basically hoped it would just go away. So hundreds of thousands of people have died for no reason, thousands of families are suffering immeasurable loss, in no small part because the nation’s Chief Executive and policy wonks around him didn’t give a shit.
Have we ever seen such consequential, cold-hearted incompetence?
3 Cents' 