There was a press conference last week. On the far left as you faced the dais sat Betsy Devos, beside her was Kellyanne Conway, to her right was Vice President Pence, and in the seat at the right end was President Trump. The Four Horsemen of the new youth apocalypse.
They sat, patriotically, in front of 15 hanging deathly still American flags. The scene reeked of political grandstanding. It was terrible to watch with its promise of impending doom. When they began to speak the promise was kept.
It was about sending children back to school, and it defied every piece of scientific evidence, medical research and hard-earned understanding of the novel coronavirus. It leaned heavily on Trump’s interpretation of reality. I had to shut it off.
This morning, on my drive to work, the song “Bat Out of Hell” by Meatloaf came on. It is a dark song filled with disturbing imagery and a sense of painful inevitability. It kind of fit my mood, so I let it play. When he came to the lyrics;
Nothing ever grows in this rotting old hole,
And everything is stunted and lost
And nothing really rocks, and nothing really rolls,
And nothing’s ever worth the cost
It struck me as a perfect description of the Trump presidency. Nothing is ever worth the price. Everything is tainted and smells of anger hate and decay. You need a shower after listening to the news.
Then I thought about Trump’s demands to send children back to school. “Thoughts and prayers,” the old Republican trope to multiple deaths in a school came to mind. Here is a man who doesn’t flinch at a thousand deaths a day, who says nonchalantly “it is what it is” as if he were explaining a double bogey on the 7th hole. Though, you just know he would be more indignant about that.
He truly seems to have embraced Stalin’s “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”
Still, somehow, he thinks we should listen to him about what is safe for our children. He seems to be encased in a sheath of stubborn denial. A cocoon that defies reason and science, rejects bad news and reality, it wraps him in comfort, denial and illusion. It makes a thousand deaths a day just a meaningless number, a symbol of how life, the press and the Democrats have teamed up to make him look bad. Somehow, in the midst of all the suffering and dying he still times find for self-pity.
Looking at the smoking wreckage of the American economy, the ruins of the lower middle class, the shattered remains of the once-proud nation you have to wonder if we will ever be able to pay this off. You have to wonder if we can come back from this. When you read about the plans left behind by Obama and his council of advisors you have to at least wonder if somehow Trump isn’t to blame for all of this, or at least the last two thirds. Trump’s arrogance and blind ambition has laid the groundwork for the destruction of the American dream.
Tonight on the way home I’m going to listen to another song that seems perfect for Trump’s America. Expect No Mercy, by Nazareth, a song about the terrible and inescapable cost of hubris.
Feel that you can cut it
You think you got the time
They’ll only give you one chance
Better get it right first time
And the game you’re playing
If you lose you gotta pay
Indeed. In this case, we all pay, and it isn’t worth the price. You need to vote this year or you may never get another chance.
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