It's a Good Thing That Trump Wasn't President 80 Years Ago

He would have gotten bored with the Second World War by June of 1942.

“The president got bored with it,” David Carney, an adviser to the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, a Republican, said of the pandemic. He noted that Mr. Abbott directs his requests to Mr. Pence, with whom he speaks two to three times a week. https://t.co/DLM96aZKhw

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) July 19, 2020

The language spoken today in continental Europe would be German. Or Russian. In a good chunk of Asia and Oceania, Japanese would be spoken.

Dealing with a global crisis requires hard work and dedication to the task, two things that Trump has never been known for. Trump is presiding over the largest failure of presidential leadership, if not since Herbert Hoover, then since James Buchanan. Trump and the GOP have made this country into a global laughingstock.

It's not just Trump, of course. The GOP has been pushing a platform of "we don't need no science or book-larnin'!" since Nixon. Gingrich began the fight to cripple the Federal government's ability to handle problems. The utter failure of the Federal government to deal with the pandemic, to knock it back to the levels of cases and deaths now seen in almost every other First World nation, is a result of Trump's willful inattention and the GOP's unrelenting war on science and competence.

This is a prime example of the GOP's choice of willful ignorance:

While local health officials have the authority to keep school districts closed for in-person instruction through the fall, Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a letter to schools Friday that private religious schools are free to decide for themselves whether to reopen.

The idea that infectious disease has a religious component is an idea that is stuck in the 14th Century. (Funny how conservatives blast Muslims for "being stuck in the 7th Century", when the evidence shows that the evangelicals are hardly any different in that regard.)

it's no accident that COVID-19 is rampaging through this country. It is by the design of Trump and the GOP. It is by design of the know-nothings who believe that Their dear and Fluffy Lord will protect them from diseases.

And it is why the rest of the world is looking upon the U.S.A. with a mixture of horror, pity and, yes, schadenfreude.

(H/T)