When Someone Like Trump Gets Sick
This isn’t about seeing your enemies suffer — that implies that both parties are on equal footing.
While Trump is unique in many ways — we’ve never had an American president who has such obvious disdain for the rule of law and such active hatred for the majority of voters — in many ways he’s as ordinary as they come. He’s a privileged, pampered, narcissistic bully who’s enthusiastically interested in using his power and privilege to harm others for personal gain. The world is full of such creatures; so full, in fact, that we’ve all worked for several, all of whom fail upwards until they head a company, school — or, in this case, nation — and drive it directly into the ground.
But while most American Failsons are hazards only to the small number of people in their circles, the President of the United States can wield his power to harm millions of people at a stroke.
This is why Trump’s Covid diagnosis on either Wednesday (according to his doctor) or Friday (according to the White House) and subsequent hospitalization has been such a contentious issue on the left. The entire point of being liberal is empathy, justice, and fairness. Half of us are enjoying the spectacle of poetic justice unfolding before our eyes while half of us are scolding those people for not being “better than conservatives,” who cheered when Hillary Clinton developed pneumonia during the 2016 campaign and laughed when Trump mocked her for falling ill.
Trump has repeatedly undermined and attacked pandemic experts, mocked masks, lied about the seriousness of the illness, lied about the contagiousness of the illness, lied about his response to the illness, lied about the number of American deaths, lied about the number of American cases, lied about every aspect of testing. At every turn he has not only lied about the seriousness of the pandemic but also belittled, mocked, and undermined those who took the pandemic seriously and instructed his administration and supporters to do the same
So when he was diagnosed with Covid and then developed such serious symptoms so quickly he was medevaced to Walter Reed, there was a certain “I told you so” satisfaction on the left. Whether he recovers quickly or worsens, the fact remains that he has very much been hoist by his own petard.
His lies and inaction have cost this country 210,000 lives. And even if you’re a complete lunatic and believe the bizarre conservative spin that it’s actually 6% of that, it’s still 12,600 people dead. He destroyed the crops and salted the fields, then mocked the people for rationing food and begging for help. Now he’s starving, and it’s perfectly understandable to feel some satisfaction at the poetic justice.
Those on the left who are enjoying the fact that Herod tripped and fell on his own sword during the Massacre of the Innocents are being roundly scolded by people who are claiming we should be “better” and “wish him well” and “not wish illness on others.” As Stephen Robinson writes in Wonkette, you don’t have to feel sorry for Donald Trump.
Trump has actively sought to harm an enormous number of people in our nation. He believes wholeheartedly in the conservative principle that there’s an in-group the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group the law binds but does not protect. Liberals oppose this by insisting that all should be treated equally before the law. Those are the two most important functional differences between the right and the left.
The left is, especially today, largely made up of marginalized people. Women, BIPOC, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and religious minorities are all more likely to vote left than right. The only major voting bloc implacably loyal to the GOP is white men. The right is even losing support among white evangelical women. The typical Republican today has an intersectional identity that combines several groups with cultural privilege, and the party is focused solely on shoring up and maintaining that privilege as marginalized groups make incremental — but definite — gains in the fight for equity.
The GOP has been relentlessly, aggressively pushing to erode legal and cultural progress made by marginalized groups. The Trump Administration has rolled back protections for every single marginalized group in this nation. At this moment, the Trump Administration is:
*Suing to eliminate the ACA, abruptly canceling health insurance for 20 million Americans, ending all protections for pre-existing conditions, and reinstating discrimination against LGBTQ patients
*Attempting to ban diversity training; they’ve banned any diversity training that mentions “systemic racism” or “privilege” in any arm of the federal government, and have announced that they will no longer do business with any company that uses such trainings, or fund any nonprofits that use such trainings
*Reversing 100 environmental rules, dismantling most of the climate protections the federal government has put in place
*Attempting to end Social Security by defunding it; unlike liberals who come right out and say “defund the police,” when the GOP wants to defund something, they call it a “tax cut” and eliminate its funding source
*Attempting to eliminate funding for public schools that are using distance learning during the pandemic, and divert that funding to private and religious schools — including online conservative Christian homeschooling companies
And that’s just off the top of my head.
People aren’t just celebrating Trump and his administration (29 people in and around the White House at the time of this writing) experiencing the poetic justice of falling ill with a virus they denied, lied about, and ignored while Americans suffered and died.
People aren’t just celebrating the fact that the superspreader event appears to be the Amy Coney Barrett nomination party, and that defying Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish has brought her Fruma Sarah vengeance down upon them.
People are celebrating the fact that people who have been relentlessly, aggressively pursuing every possible avenue to harm them are temporarily sidelined. I don’t think anyone wishes death on Trump — least of all those of us who feel certain that Pence would have a much better chance of beating Biden than Trump does — but seeing him sidelined is, without question, a welcome sight.
This isn’t about seeing your enemies suffer — that implies that both parties are on equal footing. This is survivors’ laughter, the laughter of relief, the laughter that comes when the killer runs out of bullets, when the Nazi is tricked into ignoring the basement, when the lava stops just at your feet. This is the laughter of a temporary reprieve from destruction. We know we’re not out of the woods just yet. We know there is so much more work to do. But the Bad Guys just tripped and stumbled while they were chasing us, and it’s a moment worth enjoying.
