to me, the most insane thing about the whole election is to imagine a particular counterfactual:
imagine if in february or early march someone close to trump managing to talk him into taking covid seriously. maybe joe scarborough or rush limbaugh getting him to understand on a visceral level that killing off thousands of his own voters would be a bad idea. i know it’s utterly ridiculous but i did start by saying “imagine if . . .”
the one thing which might have changed the trajectory of the entire election campaign would have been trump simulating that he gave a shit about the well-being of the american public enough to reinforce good public health practices and get his supporters on board with that. i’m not necessarily positing a great or even a good response to the pandemic but even an adequate response from the beginning which saved lives and a demand that the congress provide adequate financial support through the course of the pandemic would have made him all but unbeatable.
i doubt he even sees it in retrospect.
I agree with you completely. By showing the faintest whiff of leadership, he could have taken us all for a longer ride into hell.
I’m giving Fox about 3 days to get to “under Joe Biden, Santa will be Black and he’ll come down your chimney to steal stuff” based on their previous assertions about Santa and Jesus’s ethnic backgrounds.
But had he done that, been the kind of person who would do that, he wouldn’t be accelerating to hell right now. That kind of competence and compassion is precisely who he is incapable of being. Not that he’s unique in that, just much less self aware than other western monsters.
So, let’s review. The people who risked nothing to market the work of whistleblowers have become self-serving celebrity shitweasels, while the actual whistleblowers who had the courage to put their careers and lives on the line are either exiled or imprisoned.
That checks out. /s
It’s not even that he surrounded himself with idiots and fellow grifters. Even if a couple of them had simply positioned a halfway effective response to the pandemic as a win for him; had pointed out the benefits to him, personally, of doing it right; or even had been clever enough to figure out a grift that reduced harm; he’d be a fucking hero right now.
You’re spot on. Whatever scale there is for chaotic evil, he’s so far to the extreme end that he’s off of it.
I’m sure he had the decency to visit them in prison (and in exile) and to bring them a care package.
Nah; weasels gonna weasel.
Technically true.
Zuck’s hedging his bets best he can.
Not sure if this is the most appropriate thread, but I just had this video show up before a video on Youtube.
God damn 2020 and a huge disaster goes mostly unnoticed. Also - climate change thread.
Zeta Was Strongest Hurricane To Ever Hit New Orleans—And Could Cause An Election Day Mess
Seems as good a place as any for the outpouring of creative videos.
Could be one of those where the Trump org screwed itself in the rush to demonize and hamstring mail in voting, based on the previous history of Butler Co voting.
My favorite part of this is how he drops his voice when he says “Blacks”, like he knows he’s being racist and has to hush himself, but not actually stop saying it.
