The next pandemic

There is light at the end of the tunnel. COVID-19 vaccine is on the way. It may not be here for all of us for a while and it may not be soon enough for some who will succumb to the virus. The vaccine is welcome news, nevertheless. But the pandemic didn’t have to be so bad. Trumpian leadership failed from the beginning. The president’s vanity trumped the simplest of defenses - a mask, social distancing, limited travel. That a vaccine was developed at warp speed is a tribute to the science that Trump has so disparaged. 

A second pandemic is upon us. It’s the assault on truth. It may turn out to be far more dangerous, more widespread, and long-lasting than the coronavirus pandemic that we know. Again, it didn’t have to be this way. President Trump is on record for tens of thousands of lies. As a narcissistic sociopath and pathological liar he is under the delusion what what he says is true. And a good many millions of people believe what he says. His lies have gone viral.

Trump’s power is in his millions of followers. More people voted for Donald Trump for president than any other presidential candidate ever (over 74 million) - except for Joseph Biden (over 81 million). A large number of the Trump voters believe 1) that he won; 2) that Biden votes were fraudulent or illegal; 3) the election was stolen. Certainly the popular vote would remain in the Biden column despite all the Trumpian protestations. The only thing left to attack were the thin Biden pluralities in the “battleground” states. 18 GOP attorneys general and 128 Republican house members signed on to the Texas case, gaming the Electoral College, that was brought to the Supreme Court and rejected. 

Not one shred of evidence has been put on the scales of justice showing that illegal votes were cast. There is no telling of the shelf life of the notion that Trump won the election and it was stolen from him. As long as the myth lasts, it will color the truth in the eyes of tens of millions of Americans. Mis-belief, let’s call it, is capable of paralyzing action needed to address the crises facing the country and the world. To name a few, there is climate change, there is economic equity, there is racial tension, there is a crumbling infrastructure, there is immigration policy, there is foreign relations. And most of all, there is faith in the government of the United States of America.

The next pandemic is here. It is the assault on truth.

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