Hey, everybody! Over on ye olde groupe blogge this week I recreated, with painstaking detail, the exact narrative voice of my good friend and writing partner Wile E. Young. You should really check it out. I promise it'll be more fun than a hundred Super Bowls.
Hey, everybody. It's been a bitch of a year in so many ways, but one of the worst for writers and readers is not getting to see each other at conventions and trade shows.
I hope to see you this weekend at another virtual event, ChessieCon, which is routinely one of my favorite events of the year. Below are my panels and some links. Hope to see you there!
Location: Virtual
Panels:
Friday 4:00 pm EST - "Turkey Awards Judging Panel"
Friday 5:30 pm EST - "How To Get Published"
Friday 8:30 pm EST - "Humor in SF/F Writing Friday"
Saturday 10:00 am EST - "Making an Unlikeable Person a Likable Character"
Saturday 13:00 pm EST - "Crowdfunding for the Beginner"
Sunday 10:00 am EST - "Non-European Mythological Creatures"
The title of this blogpost, more or less, is a question that I saw posed on Facebook today. I expect it will be posed a lot more often in the next few days. I honestly started to draft a response to the original poster, but decided against it for my own sanity. Still, it seems like a question begging for an answer, so I'll try, and if you like what I have to say, you can just link to this blogpost in the future when the question comes up.
First and foremost, I need to concede that the covid-19 pandemic is not, strictly speaking, Trump's fault. Although largely unique in modern history, it would best be understood in the context of a natural disaster, or what your insurance policy likely calls an "Act of God." I just want to preface these first few entries with that, because I don't want to be accused of saying I blamed Trump for something he had no control over.
1.) Trump Did Nothing to Prevent the Pandemic
Trump pulled epidemiologists out of China who in previous potential pandemic situations called the world's attention. His much touted China travel ban, which was pretty much the only step who took to stop the virus from reaching American shores, only applied to Chinese nationals. In a sense, the "ban" encouraged American citizens to rush home from China faster, likely exacerbating the situation, and he implemented no ban against European travel even when the virus was already spreading across Europe. Trump also disbanded the White House's pandemic unit. As I stated above, I know he did not cause the pandemic per se, and it's impossible to say what might have happened had he taken better precautions, but the current severity and scope of deaths is on his head.
2.) Trump Exacerbated the Pandemic
Trump repeatedly, knowingly lied to the American people about the dangers of covid-19 up until the day shutdowns were ordered. His news conferences after that were often littered with incorrect or out-of-date information. He asserted on numerous occasions that he was joking or being sarcastic about things like injecting yourself with bleach or taking hydroxychlroquine. Even if he was joking (I watched each of those conferences, and he absolutely was not, but just for the sake of argument) he should not have been goofing off at a national press conference. The "I was just fucking with ya" excuse may work with a frat house president, but not with our nation's head of state. He refused to wear a mask, disparaged mask wearing long after the science had coagulated, encouraged people not to comply with lockdown and stay-at-home orders, and continued to hold major superspreader events all throughout the year, all culminating in he and large swathes of his staff and family catching it. Again, the virus may have been an Act of God, but this behavior made the consequences much, much worse.
3.) Trump Exacerbated the Greatest Loss of Jobs Since the Great Depression
To reiterate for a third time, while Trump did not directly cause the pandemic, he sure whiffed on his response to it. Fourteen million people just flat out went out of work. To his credit, he shepherded one relief package through congress. Then promptly said "Fuck it, I'm campaigning for the rest of the year." Democrats in the House offered multiple relief packages and the White House, not Senate Republicans, shot them down. For political purposes, I should add, but that could be argued, I suppose. Again, the outbreak was not directly his fault, however a lot more could have been done to prevent such dire economic woes. I get the whole "the economy was doing great until the virus hit" outlook, but that kind of misses the point. When the virus did hit, why didn't the genius businessman/economist fix things?
4.) Trump Employees and Tolerates Nazis
Look, Stephen Miller is a Nazi. Not in a "oh, Kozeniewski's a leftie so he must think everybody right of Eisenhower is straight-up Hitler" kind of way. I mean he is a self-described, loud and proud white supremacist. He is also Trump's senior policy advisor. There are literal Nazis in the White House. I will avoid hyperbole, because there are several other senior staff who I think are very not good people who I would describe as Nazis in the "I'm a leftie" way, but that might technically count as hyperbolic, so I will refrain from that. But the fact remains: there are straight-up Nazis Trump appointed to positions of power in the White House. There was a Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and they killed a lady. There are protesters in the streets as I write this waving swastikas. I know that racism never really went away in America or anything, but I did not think we would be talking about actual Nazis in America in the 21st century as more than a kook outlier. If I need to explain to you why that is inherently bad, then go ahead and leave me a comment, but I will state unequivocally that if you defend Nazis, you are a bad person, morally and ethically.
5.) Trump Has Normalized Corruption
I'd prefer this blogpost to be concise, rather than a laundry list. We've all seen the laundry lists, and you can go google one if that's what you're interested in. So let's just stick to the facts, as dispassionately as I can put them. Seven of Trump's senior White House advisors have been indicted or sent to prison. Trump himself was impeached for corruption. He was not convicted, but I'm trying with everything in me to stay dispassionate, so I will not say he was acquitted for partisan reasons. Trump has been the subject of over 3,500 lawsuits in the last thirty years. Admittedly, a lion's share of those must have been before he was elected. Finally, the Mueller independent probe found multiple cases of corruption which could not be prosecuted only because Trump was a sitting president. I don't want to put words into the dude's mouth but he basically said, "Yeah, dude's a criminal, but it's up to congress to act, not the DoJ." Look, I know that just by writing this paragraph people could come at me with a thousand razors and tell me why I'm wrong about any individual case. But at the end of the day Trump has surrounded himself with criminals and has very likely been committing crimes himself, while buffeted from the consequences by dint of his unique office. That's the most dispassionate way I can put it.
So there you have it. I could go on and on. But these five points are, in a nutshell, why Trump has been so bad.
Hey, all!
Check out this post I did over on ye olde grouppe blogge answering your biggest questions of the moment, such as how to vote and who to vote for.All right, I'll give you a little preview. For the love of God, get out there and vote tomorrow if you haven't already. And, for the love of God, don't vote Republican.
