I’m not with stupid
I’ve made it a point for some time now to often and emphatically make it a point that Donald Trump is stupid. The narrative that he is a cunning, brilliant manipulator simply does not square with observable reality, and it never has. I think this narrative comes from a common need to explain the hold Trump has on so many people. As is so often the case in the human condition, a mystery is a hole that must be filled, but the real mystery is why is it that the hole so often gets filled with nonsense. Sometimes the reason is because the obvious answer is unacceptable.
In the case of Donald Trump, the obvious answer as to how a stupid man can have so powerful a hold over so many people is because they are stupid too. I think the late George Carlin said it best when he said, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” That formula also applies in government. There is no mystery here. The need to make it something more, something mysterious, tracks back to the fundamental need for human drama. With Mr. Carlin I also give you Hanlon’s Law: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
America’s government is stupid. This is not a permanent condition, but it’s what we are dealing with right now. One only has to watch old Barack Obama press conferences to realize how precipitously America has plunged into the stupid zone. Obama was smart, funny, warm and compassionate. Trump is stupid, heavy-handed, oafish and out of his depth. That’s all there is to it. Mystery solved.
So where are we now? Your government should be telling you this, not me, and if Obama were in charge there would be no need for me or people like me. But let’s move on. A couple of weeks ago Dr. Fauci (who is not stupid, by the way, he’s just controlled and misled and bullied and intimidated by stupid people) predicted that America would have 60,000 deaths by late August. Not so. That will be the number of dead before the end of this month.
There’s nothing difficult or arcane in this prediction, it’s just based on simple arithmetic. There are a few more than 40,000 dead now, with 2000 dying a day, in ten days there will be more than 60,000 dead. Thanks to the MAGA hat wearing boobies across America who think they are being original and courageous by holding protest rallies against lockdown orders, done with the same booby logic employed by drunks in the 1970s who thought they were being original and courageous by driving a car, that rate will increase, not decrease. And with the same infuriating luck that occurs when a drunk driver kills everyone else but himself, these boobies will probably infect a hundred people apiece, but many of them will live on to booby another day.
Yes, and because Donald Trump is stupid, America now has a whopping 25% of all the coronavirus deaths worldwide. That number will probably rise to 50% by the end of May. The only country that has more cases of coronavirus infection per capita is Spain, but America will be number one in that category by the end of this week.
Meanwhile, because Donald Trump is stupid, he will continue to crow about how he implemented travel restrictions with China. He will continue to advance that narrative, summarized in this tweet from March 2nd: “I was criticized by the Democrats when I closed the Country down to China many weeks ahead of what almost everyone recommended. Saved many lives.” Because his followers are stupid, they will believe him.
America will likely have a million people infected by coronavirus by the end of April. That’s just the beginning of the long slide into oblivion. A million will quickly become two million, which will quickly become four million, and so on. And because the murdering child rapist refuses to face reality, gives campaign rallies when he should be giving solemn press conferences, insults reporters when he should be answering their tough questions, looks for people to blame when he should be solving problems, that slide into oblivion will be deadly and tragic and horrible and unnecessary. But if you think it won’t happen, just ask the people of Puerto Rico. Republican greed and neglect and stupidity has finally come home to roost.
That is why the murdering child rapist Donald Trump must go. Don’t be stupid too, vote him gone in November. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.