I keep trying to write a heartfelt letter to my Trumpie relatives.
The only way I can end it is to either be bitter and angry or lie. This is an unsent draft. Spoiler alert: it's the angry ending.
I turned 11 in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Everyone was talking about the possibility of global nuclear war. For the very first time in my life I contemplated the possibility that I and everyone I knew could be condemned, in a matter of minutes, to die a horrible death. It made a deep impression on me that has stayed with me my whole life. Now, 58 years later, we're here again.
This is different from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then, every day was normal but could have turned horrible in a moment. Now, the horribleness is here. It's like the moment the Titanic collided with the iceberg. The collision breached 5 of the ship's 16 watertight compartments and at that moment, anyone who knew the ship at all knew that it was doomed. The Titanic struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. but did not actually sink until 2:20 a.m., just 20 minutes short of 3 hours. There was a fairly long period of time when things didn't seem too bad, but they were.
This is where we are. The moment that it became known that the virus could be spread by people not showing symptoms, that was our Titanic iceberg moment. And, like the Titanic, we don't have nearly enough lifeboats.
Ultimately, it will be like the 1918 influenza epidemic. Whoever can live without modern medical care will live and most of those who can't won't. I have absolutely no idea how our society is going to hold up during this thing. It probably won't become better.
I write this with the knowledge that this could be my last communication to all of you. Things are moving with frightening speed. As I write this, the state of New York has decreed that %100 of non-essential employees must stay home and that all venues like restaurants and movie theaters must close. NY state is reporting 7,102 total positive cases of COVID-19, with about 4,000 of those cases in New York City and 1,091 in Westchester County just north of the city. There have been 26 deaths from the virus in New York. It's not so hard to imagine the Internet shutting down or me becoming critically ill so suddenly that I don't have an opportunity to write. That being said, I'd like to end this on a positive note -- but I can't.
Everybody who knows the story of the Titanic can clearly see one thing: the ship collided with the iceberg and sank because the captain insisted on cruising at normal speed through a known ice field on a dark moonless night. It was a criminally negligent and irrational act that resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people. At least the captain chose to go down with his ship.
Right now, the president of this country is a man whose whole existence as been dedicated to plowing through hazards, consequences be damned. He has left a whole series of wrecks behind, denied any responsibility, and left other people to suffer the consequences and clean up the messes. It's never been a secret that that is who he is and has always been.
I have never understood why anyone would have ever thought why putting power into this man's hands was any kind of a good idea. It is my firm belief that 3 out of the 4 people who will die in this country of coronavirus would have survived if Trump hadn't been president. There will be blood on his hands and blood on the hands of the people who were stupid, crazy, or evil enough to support him.
Fuck him and fuck the people who voted for him.
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I constantly get the old "lw bias" bullshit and "let's be civil" while they make excuses for Trump.
