There has been a quiet uproar about the latest Time article interview with Donald Trump, in which he essentially reiterated ‘Mein Kampf.’ He talked about monitoring women’s pregnancies—menstrual cycles. Organizing stormtroopers to hunt through homes and businesses for undocumented aliens, firing state attorneys who oppose him, and, most frightening, establishing a “unitary” authority, also known as a king. Lest I get accused of hyperbole, Mein Kampf was Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto of how he saw the world and the seeds of his future holocaust against the Jews, Blacks, LGBT+, and any group that did not fit his self-hating Jew idea of Aryan supremacy. A line from the interview demonstrates Trump heading down that road. When asked about his supporters' belief in reverse racism, Trump states,
“They’re against Catholics. They’re against a lot of different people… I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed either.”Later in his statement, he doubled down on his belief that white people are getting a bad shake in America,“…But if you look right now, there’s absolutely a bias against white [people] and that’s a problem.”
Hitler convinced the public that Jews were rats or vermin and needed to be eliminated before they infected the purity of the German people. Trump famously talked about shooting Black Lives Matter protesters, shooting shoplifters and praised former Philippine President Duterte for the extra-judicial execution of an estimated 12,000+ alleged (no court, no trial) drug dealers. A significant portion of Trump’s base cheers for those actions, which is more an indictment of his followers than of Mr. Trump himself. One of the most overused statements by Americans after every school shooting, antisemitic act of violence, and stripping of human and Constitutional rights is, “This is not who we are.” Face it, this is precisely who we are—because we allow it.
Mr. Trump and his most ardent supporters have warned us that a new regime will consist of an unfettered march into autocracy. He has said out loud he will try dictatorship, goosestepping roundup squads, and allowing jail for pregnant women and doctors who seek or perform abortions. President Joe Biden is doing his best to ward off changes in America that would doom the democracy. In 2014, the world and the United States were in sheer panic over the Ebola outbreak. Governors were isolating nurses and doctors who came into contact with Ebola patients. Chris Christie, then governor of New Jersey, was in a heated battle with a nurse [Kaci Hickox] whom he believed might be infected and isolated in quarantine—even after testing negative.
Although only two people died as a direct result of Ebola in the U.S., President Obama took the long view and established The National Security Council’s Global Health Security and Biodefense. The office came up with a preparedness blueprint for any future pandemics. Former President Trump’s administration disbanded the office in 2018. Less than two years later, the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in America was diagnosed in January 2020; by March, we were in the throes of the outbreak. The blueprint was gone. Estimates vary between 400,000 and a million people died as a result of the new administration's unpreparedness. I was not privy to the Obama plan, but I am sure drinking bleach or introducing light into the body was not on the list of actions to take.
Yesterday, with Bird Flu on the horizon, President Biden again warned the public of Donald Trump’s future plan to disband the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR). Ignorance is not a strategy; it is a death sentence. The families of the hundreds of thousands who died of Covid-19 in America can attest to that fact.
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