At a time when unity is the only thing that can save us, all Trump knows how to do is divide

[babylonsister]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/28/1931814/-At-a-time-when-unity-is-the-only-thing-that-can-save-us-all-Trump-knows-how-to-do-is-divide

At a time when unity is the only thing that can save us, all Trump knows how to do is divide
Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Saturday March 28, 2020 · 2:00 PM EDT

snip//

Americans are hungry to hear this message and many would be eager to embrace it, even from a leader they disliked, if it bore any relationship to their experience of this moment. Unfortunately, we have a leader who is too delusional to be grounded in the realities of this disease, too sociopathic to feel the fear of the nation he leads, and too broken to know how to bring the country together around the shared goal of winning this war. He is a self-declared wartime president without the vision, the prowess, or the humanity to rally the troops to defeat our common enemy. In fact, Donald Trump is almost bizarrely—indeed grotesquely—unfit to rise to this political moment.

Trump has insisted on blaming the novel coronavirus on someone. It was the Europeans at one point, but then he settled on calling it the "Chinese coronavirus." Naturally, Trump’s framing played to the worst instincts of the xenophobic white nationalists that are among his staunchest supporters. Over the past week, Asian Americans have reported at least 650 racist acts directed at them to the new online reporting site Stop AAPI Hate. That's just within the first eight days of the site’s launch.

Even Trump himself appeared to acknowledge the problem during Thursday's White House press briefing, saying, "We have to protect our Asian Americans." But when he was asked how, all he offered was, "I don't know,” adding that Asian Americans in the country are "doing fantastically well." Trump also previously insisted that explicitly labeling the virus "Chinese" isn't racist to its core. And so, the racism Trump helped stoke against a group of American citizens will surely continue unabated.

But it's not just race where Trump has stoked division within the U.S. His aspiration that America get back to business as usual by Easter right when nearly all scientists and medical professionals are begging us stay home is pitting those that adhere to science against science deniers. In addition, Trump's elevation of the economy over the safety of Americans has created a mind-boggling rift between those who treasure the economy versus those who value the sanctity of human life, particularly the lives of older Americans in this case.

Trump's failure to lead from the top has also left state governors competing with each other for life-saving resources like medical gear for front-line health care workers and ventilators for the sickest victims of the disease. And Trump's latest proposal to reopen some parts of the country while others are still fighting this disease tooth and nail is not only idiotic and shortsighted, it also would slice and dice the country region by region. Apparently, dividing the states amongst themselves wasn't enough for Trump.

And so it goes, at a time when a call to unity could help heal our many divisions and unite Americans behind a common goal, instead Trump gives us the federal government vs. the states, state vs. state, governor vs. governor, region vs. region, science vs. non-science, economy vs. life, sick vs. well, and citizen vs. citizen. There will be more divisions to come because it's the only way Trump knows. And instead of emerging from this horror show with a national sense of pride and resolve and shared experience, our country will instead be left hanging in tatters by the most incompetent, insensitive, and unfit president in American history.

[customerserviceguy]

1. Thanks for posting that

It's what I've been saying almost since this tragic administration began.