To the editor:
As all of us observe an alarming increase in the numbers of Americans dying of COVID-19, I feel compelled to think that the rancorous politicization of a mutating virus that, in reality-based fact, knows no politics or partisan ideology and adheres to no one’s faith system, is going to exceed our worst doomsday scenarios if we don’t see the diseased GOP elephant in the room.
We must face this pandemic squarely, recalibrate fixated political beliefs and ask ourselves, for example, if an infectious disease expert like Anthony Fauci, who is serving under a sixth presidential administration, does not speak beyond partisan politics. Does he not show actual concern for the health of human beings, minus whatever political, religious or any other label used to hamstring the pandemic response with?
If not, I say unequivocally that one is trapped more by myopia and delusions than by a crisis that is staring everyone down with amoral abandon. As long as people of similar mindset strut about proclaiming their rights and freedoms, they are oblivious to the harsh realities, irresponsible, cruel and mind-numbingly ignorant.
All of the above brings me back to the GOP elephant in the room, which is not diseased to the extent that it can’t be healed. There is an enlarged cancerous growth on the brain and the heart of this elephant, disabling it in many ways, though not from trumpeting loudly and randomly at the most unexpected times, and crushing every living thing in its path that enrages it for unknown reasons.
Moreover, this loud elephant scrambles anywhere it can to prey on any living creature, seemingly because it doesn’t look in any way like him. After all, this elephant is supreme and will brook no dissent unless wanting to risk being pushed further into the untamed wilderness.
Maybe this sounds like nonsense, but I think Trump is that elephant, who should never have been allowed to be the leader of the Republican herd of GOPers, as if no one else could have stepped up with far more political acumen.
But I’ll ask the reader to indulge me further with the other side of this thought experiment. Flip the party/partisan coin and imagine Trump staying Democrat, as he once was, and succeeding at winning the nomination for president in 2016, against all the odds in a field of, say, 20 candidates. Does anyone really doubt he would be talking – even during a tragic, death-dealing pandemic – the same old talk as you hear every day ad nauseum?
More than likely he would be up to 20,000 lies and counting, but these falsehoods would not be for the good of the Democratic party, No, all he pontificated about in his shallow way would be for the good of Donald J. Trump. Not pure and simple, but impure and chaotic and all personally hellbent on keeping him in power and winning. Winning for whom? If we’re that blind, our democracy risks being doomed.
Trump wins for himself only. He is a one-man wrecking crew who happens to be Republican, but his personal brand of chaos would be his modus operandi, if he were a Democratic president as well. Consider this possibility when – or if, given the ongoing manufactured crisis regarding mail-in ballots – you vote Nov. 3. Will he declare national emergency number eight to stall or halt the election?
Yes, the elephant needs to heal, but the Democrat donkey needs a brain and heart reexamination too. Our democracy requires healing all the way around, inside and out, or our democracy will become only a monstrous pretense.
Richard Joel Holmes
Hays
