Thursday, March 26, 2020

WHAT IF WE HAD A SOCIOPATHIC NARCISSISTIC AS PRESIDENT IN A TIME OF CRISIS?

If, God forbid, we had a sociopathic narcissist as President of the United States in a time of grave crisis, we might get a tweet like this:


The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!

As usual with Trump's tweets, there's a huge amount of nastiness, divisiveness, us-vs-them-ism, and a whopper or two to unpack. However, let's just focus on ". . . in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success."
In other words, what we do about the coronavirus pandemic should be determined by how it might impact him. That is pure narcissism.
Epidemiologists--experts who devote their lives to studying, understanding and modeling epidemics and pandemics--tell us that stringent steps now can beat this virus down to a manageable level in a month or two--as the Chinese and a few other countries have managed to do. That would allow our health system to continue to function, and researchers to develop treatments or a vaccine. This difficult-but-necessary choice might mean thousands of deaths in the US.
They also tell us that getting everyone back to work or "back to church" prematurely will let the virus expand exponentially. This is a concept Trump doesn't and probably can't understand, but maybe some of his followers can. Exponential means that today's 75,000 cases and 1000 deaths in a few months could be multiplied not by 10 or 100 or 1000, but possibly by 10,000. That's right, unleashed to rage unchecked through the US population, this coronavirus could kill 10,000,000 people.
You don't have to believe me. You can research this for yourself in these two crystal-clear articles:
Any normal person faced with the choice between his own needs and the potential death of millions of people would put all those lives first. But a sociopath wouldn't. Much less a sociopathic narcissist.
But we'd never elect someone like that as President. And even if we did, sensible people, the "adults in the room," would step in to protect us. After all, we have the Constitution, Congress and the  Courts--all those carefully crafted checks and balances--to save us. Right?
Right?
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REA

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