JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP’S DING-DONG COMPARISON OF THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC TO PEARL HARBOR AND 9/11 – COMPARING A NATURAL DISASTER FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED TO A DELIBERATE ATTACK BY AN ENEMY – AND MOTIVATED BY HATE - THE MAN HAS NO SHAME OR DECENCY – HIS DOWNRIGHT INCOMPETENCE HAS CHANGED PERCEPTIONS OF AMERICA GOING INTO A POST-CRISIS WORLD

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN YOUR DESTINATION NOW


“Donald Trump says coronavirus is an ATTACK on America worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11 as the [American] death toll climbs to more than 74,000”


The world has two major crises – a pandemic and an economic collapse - plus many other serious ongoing problems, including wars and trade wars.

And at the very time of such great need for leadership, a demonstrated incompetent serves as the President of its most powerful country. A man who speaks only in dishonest terms, a man who refuses to cooperate with almost anyone, and a man seemingly bent on destruction.  Not just an incompetent, but a highly belligerent incompetent.

Trump's efforts are going to make America anything but great again when all this is over.

A lot of old friends and allies - quite apart from those he needlessly calls enemies - are going to remember this ghastly performance which has included a savage lack of compassion for the sick – both at home and abroad - and America's credibility and influence are going to be much reduced.

That will only magnify the effects of Trump’s previous clumsy, bludgeoning efforts to intimidate everyone into doing things America’s way. Well, it turns out, that in a crisis, America’s way is a disaster.

As well, we have his flash-fire intemperate readiness to tear-up important working international treaties and agreements, acts which only caution everyone about the value of obtaining America’s signature on an important document.

Trump’s America has the greatest number of coronavirus infections and deaths in the world, with a very great many more headed its way. America’s healthcare system, which knowledgeable people understood was poor and extremely unfair, has been put under spotlights for the world to see.

America has been shown not even able to marshal its own resources, as with medical supplies, an important area an unqualified, arrogant son-in-law was appointed to head.

America has been embarrassed by the firing of a very able Navy commander who was only looking after the health and welfare of his crew. At the same time, Trump pardoned another Navy man, one convicted of vicious murder abroad, a man some of whose past associates describe as sick, and even granted him a friendly White House chat.

But Trump is too wrapped up in himself to grasp the withering general impact of any of that. He is uncontrollably angry that the pandemic and its side-effects have interfered with his re-election, which he had earlier believed was pretty much “in the bag,” and which he regards as the world’s pivotally important event.

So, someone must be held responsible, and what better candidate for that role than China, a country he literally hates and has insulted many times over?

His obsession with China from the beginning has been to get it completely “de-coupled” from America. The world’s two most important economies “de-coupled,” and at a time of world disorder in finances, economics, and trade? He simply has no grasp of what he is doing, but he has astonishing depths of resentment and hate.

It’s a rather remarkable display seeing such incompetence and ignorance mated to insatiable drive and ego. But Nature is like that, often creating the most startling nightmare creatures as its long experiment with evolution proceeds, creatures much like the coronavirus itself.

I think it means that America’s relative decline in the world, already well underway and against which Trump has seen himself as heroically battling, can only be speeded-up, affected by perceptions of a President’s incoherent acts and words and the ensuing necessary heavy loss of confidence, in both America’s abilities and intentions.

Other countries, ones with far less resources, but endowed with generous cooperation and enlightened leaders, have simply done far better. How, after this, in any way can America be regarded as “indispensable” or “exceptional”? I think it cannot.