A fashionable take among conservatives these days is to say President Joe Biden deserves the blame for not stopping the COVID-19 pandemic in its tracks. To my mind, that’s a little like squatting on the hood of your neighbor’s car, taking a beluga-worthy dump, and then shouting, “Hey, I thought you were gonna wash this thing! It’s a freakin’ eyesore!”
We shouldn’t be surprised, of course. This is what conservatives do. After Republicans handed them-President Barack Obama the economic equivalent of a perforated Ebola monkey in 2009—and then worked as hard as they possibly could to blunt his recovery—they viciously criticized him for taking too long to pull us out of the smoldering fiscal crater George W. Bush had left where the economy used to be.
Yeah, the pandemic is still going—because while President Biden is doing everything he can to put out the fire, Republicans near and far are tossing Molotov cocktails and laughing about it.
It’s common for pro-vaccine politicians to say we’re currently in a pandemic of the unvaccinated, but that’s imprecise. We’re in a pandemic of people so in thrall to Dear Leader that to even acknowledge the existence of the virus he continually downplayed seems like a betrayal.
And so you get outcomes like this:
Here’s where I’d like to thank Biden for doing all he could to save my life—by making vaccines readily available on a reasonable timetable, requiring masks on airplanes, and generally doing everything within his power to wind down this pandemic—while Republicans, once again, play the saboteur.
And here’s where I’d also like to say, “Fuck you, Donald Trump, for treating COVID-19 like the joke you are.”
Blame Biden all you want, but Trump laid the groundwork for our current mess. Through consistent messaging, focus, and bold action, Biden has managed to protect his followers. Trump, not so much. The one time he truly went out on a limb to recommend vaccinations—at an Alabama rally—he was lustily booed, and as far as I know, he hasn’t broached the subject since. Because he’s a coward who can’t stand to lose supporters as a result of so-called “political correctness.” He’s much more comfortable losing them through death, apparently.
The truth is, Donald Trump set the tone for our country’s cavalier attitude toward the virus long ago—and we’ve been digging out from that miasma of barmy bullshit ever since. The latest evidence? Even after testing positive for COVID-19 last year, he attended numerous events, including the first presidential debate, during which he stood within spittle distance of his then-77-year-old opponent.
And just as he set the tone for the country, he either implicitly or explicitly gave those in his inner circle permission to spread their freedom phlegm from sea to shining sea.
Greg Sargent in The Washington Post:
They declined. Yeah, where do you think they got that idea?
Needless to say, if more people were listening to Biden these days instead of Dotty Don, we’d be a lot closer to the end of this deadly rolling nightmare than we are. If Trump hadn’t gotten his vaccination in secret, if he’d consistently worn a mask and encouraged others to do the same, if he’d laid off the snake oil pitches, and if he promoted vaccines more urgently and vociferously (you can’t tell me Mr. “No obstruction, no collusion” doesn’t understand the importance of repetition), it’s safe to say that thousands of people who eventually succumbed to the virus would be alive today.
But he can’t do that, because he’s a chaos agent with no perceptible conscience—as recent news reports have abundantly demonstrated.
Of course, we need to ask: Was he actively trying to infect Biden, or was he simply so eager to bellow angry nonsense at him that he couldn’t bear postponing the debate?
Does it matter? Either way, he endangered dozens of people with his personal actions, and hundreds of thousands with his negligence and poisonous rhetoric.
Did it have to be like this? Well, it did after our country elected a hot diaper full of orangutan shit as president. But in general, no. This is a self-inflicted wound, and there’s only so much any Democrat can do in the face of the usual GOP sabotage.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
We shouldn’t be surprised, of course. This is what conservatives do. After Republicans handed them-President Barack Obama the economic equivalent of a perforated Ebola monkey in 2009—and then worked as hard as they possibly could to blunt his recovery—they viciously criticized him for taking too long to pull us out of the smoldering fiscal crater George W. Bush had left where the economy used to be.
Yeah, the pandemic is still going—because while President Biden is doing everything he can to put out the fire, Republicans near and far are tossing Molotov cocktails and laughing about it.
It’s common for pro-vaccine politicians to say we’re currently in a pandemic of the unvaccinated, but that’s imprecise. We’re in a pandemic of people so in thrall to Dear Leader that to even acknowledge the existence of the virus he continually downplayed seems like a betrayal.
And so you get outcomes like this:
Here’s where I’d like to thank Biden for doing all he could to save my life—by making vaccines readily available on a reasonable timetable, requiring masks on airplanes, and generally doing everything within his power to wind down this pandemic—while Republicans, once again, play the saboteur.
And here’s where I’d also like to say, “Fuck you, Donald Trump, for treating COVID-19 like the joke you are.”
Blame Biden all you want, but Trump laid the groundwork for our current mess. Through consistent messaging, focus, and bold action, Biden has managed to protect his followers. Trump, not so much. The one time he truly went out on a limb to recommend vaccinations—at an Alabama rally—he was lustily booed, and as far as I know, he hasn’t broached the subject since. Because he’s a coward who can’t stand to lose supporters as a result of so-called “political correctness.” He’s much more comfortable losing them through death, apparently.
The truth is, Donald Trump set the tone for our country’s cavalier attitude toward the virus long ago—and we’ve been digging out from that miasma of barmy bullshit ever since. The latest evidence? Even after testing positive for COVID-19 last year, he attended numerous events, including the first presidential debate, during which he stood within spittle distance of his then-77-year-old opponent.
And just as he set the tone for the country, he either implicitly or explicitly gave those in his inner circle permission to spread their freedom phlegm from sea to shining sea.
Greg Sargent in The Washington Post:
They declined. Yeah, where do you think they got that idea?
Needless to say, if more people were listening to Biden these days instead of Dotty Don, we’d be a lot closer to the end of this deadly rolling nightmare than we are. If Trump hadn’t gotten his vaccination in secret, if he’d consistently worn a mask and encouraged others to do the same, if he’d laid off the snake oil pitches, and if he promoted vaccines more urgently and vociferously (you can’t tell me Mr. “No obstruction, no collusion” doesn’t understand the importance of repetition), it’s safe to say that thousands of people who eventually succumbed to the virus would be alive today.
But he can’t do that, because he’s a chaos agent with no perceptible conscience—as recent news reports have abundantly demonstrated.
Of course, we need to ask: Was he actively trying to infect Biden, or was he simply so eager to bellow angry nonsense at him that he couldn’t bear postponing the debate?
Does it matter? Either way, he endangered dozens of people with his personal actions, and hundreds of thousands with his negligence and poisonous rhetoric.
Did it have to be like this? Well, it did after our country elected a hot diaper full of orangutan shit as president. But in general, no. This is a self-inflicted wound, and there’s only so much any Democrat can do in the face of the usual GOP sabotage.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.