Live and let die
26th May 2020 · 0 Comments
By C. C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Columnist
All 50 states reopened last week. Some did it cautiously with a list of restrictions, as did New York, Louisiana and California, while others threw caution to the wind and opened with the fewest coronavirus containment guidelines, including South Dakota, Wisconsin and Idaho.
Donald Trump Sr. started the drumbeat for reopening in March. His opinion that it (the virus) would all just disappear like a miracle was a lie, like the more than 17,000 lies he has told during his time in the Oval Office.
Trump has stood silently by for the past four months and embraced the inevitable consequences of reopening too soon. The fact that Trump only spent 4.5 minutes mentioning the people killed by COVID-19, during 47 hours of coronavirus press conferences, is indisputable proof that he has chosen the economy over the sanctity of human life.
Trump knew then that massive numbers of Americans would die. He cavalierly estimated in March that 60,000 would die, without batting an eye. After ending the virus updates, Trump announced he would begin holding economic updates. It was Trump’s signal that people must die, for the economy to be revived.
Trump sent us that subliminal message when he toured the Hanes Plant, tasked with making masks, while the song “Live and Let Die” played in the background.
During last week’s hearing with Trump administration officials, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown said the quiet part out loud when he lobbed the question: “How many workers should give their lives to increase the GDP or Dow Jones average by 1,000?”
As the month of May ebbs away, more than 94,000 have died and the U.S. has one-third of all the coronavirus cases in the world.
For his part, after suggesting that Americans inject disinfectants as a way to kill the coronavirus “internally,” (which would also kill a human being), Trump pivoted to allegedly taking and promoting an unproven drug, hydroxychloroquine, and rushing scientists to come up with a vaccine before 2020 ends. Meanwhile, he withheld a CDC report that offered detailed guidelines for the safe reopening of the country.
If we’re being cynical, doesn’t it feel like Trump wants certain Americans to die? The fact that so many essential workers are people of color – those in the meat-packing plants, bus drivers (47 have died), postal workers, EMTs, sanitation workers, grocery clerks, and others who didn’t have the luxury of sheltering at home and that the majority of those dying from COVID-19 are Blacks and Latinos, raises the specter of an interminable truth: if you’re dead, you can’t vote, you can’t protest, you can’t hold Trump and the Republicans accountable.
Surely, compassionate Americans don’t want to see the demise of 100,000+ Americans, as current projections suggest, because of Trump’s incidental genocidal lack of a federal response.
His disgraceful, despicable disdain for these essential workers and the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans may come back to haunt him.
Specifically, the mounting death toll of the elderly means the loss of a significant portion of Trump’s voting base. Additionally, those of working age who have perished means the economy will take a huge hit and the jobless rate will continue to climb and include those who contributed mightily to both the economy and the country’s GDP.
While we have become numb to the Republicans’ time honored tradition of cleaning out the treasury and robbing the poor to pay the rich, no matter the cost of American lives, Bill Clinton’s admonishment that “It’s the economy, stupid,” is bouncing off the walls of homes of ordinary citizens during this pandemic.
Instead of creating and enforcing a federal response to COVID-19, that will save American lives, properly support the unemployed, who sit at home through no fault of their own, and safely reopen the economy, Trump is using the pandemic to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
That Americans continue to die, is of no consequence to him. Trump said the most recent relief bill crafted by the House is “dead on arrival.” That bill contains help for workers, states and cities, and micro-businesses. Trump and Mitch McConnell’s refusal to pass the bill smacks of Trump’s quid pro quo modus operandi. Trump has corrupted the Republican-led Senate, such that it is no longer a separate branch of government.
The Republicans and Trump may ultimately agree to a stripped down bill that includes a massive payroll tax cut for big corporations. Reports are also that they may not pass another stimulus bill until right before the presidential election, so Trump can crow about what he has done for Americans.
Trump’s gamble is that if he can continue to brainwash his base, corrupt the electoral college (again), suppress the vote, and throw Americans some scraps from the taxpayers’ table, he will win another four years to continue to dismantle our democracy and become president for life.
While it may have been received as a joke or casual comment, Trump really wants to become a communist dictator and president for life like his friend, China’s President Xi Jinping. After Jinping was chosen to became that country’s president for life, Trump mused, “Wouldn’t it be great if I were president for life?”
Uh, no.
Trump’s inaction and insensitivity to the plight of Americans during what he calls “the plague,” is the central issue that will determine his political fate. Trump’s fiddling while America is on fire with the coronavirus is excessively immoral and evil and we the people won’t stand for it.
Martin Luther King Jr. left us many words of wisdom, including these: “Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.”
Clearly, Trump’s behavior can’t be regulated and given Trump’s appointment of more than 200 federal judges, we have serious doubts the actions of heartless people will be restrained.
So, we don’t have a choice. Trump must be ejected from the Oval Office and the Senate and House must be disinfected by scrubbing out viral Republicans if we are to keep Americans and our democracy alive.
President Barack Obama recently issued the only solution: VOTE.
This article originally published in the May 25, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
