By Dave Devereaux
Reel Urban News Opinion Piece
As society steadies itself for the new normal of face masks, social distancing, repetitive hand washing and the inability to embrace our loved ones that don’t reside with us, we are faced with a suspicion of who and what to believe about this virus and the information disseminated daily.. Should we believe the federal government and president, or our health professionals who are tasked with having to adjust their research directives as they learn more about this virus each day.
Donald Trump would have you maskless and going through your day without any precautions of contagion. He continues to ride on false information, yet proven, as if it has been. His comments have led people to inject or drink disinfectants causing illness and perhaps irreparable physical damage. This misinformation is irresponsible and dangerous to a country looking for guidance on how to avoid becoming ill or dying from this virus. To any lay person, that should have been an alarm that this president could care less about the citizens. He makes outlandish comments and later says that he was being sarcastic. I don’t think during this time, sarcasm has any place when addressing a frightened and weary public regarding health and safety.
We are talking about people’s lives here. The Trump administration has done a poor job of managing this pandemic and the proof is here we are with the worst statistics across the globe. Yet the president gives a briefing and says we are doing well and in a good place. When did hundreds of thousand lives loss rank as “doing well”? It is a travesty and reeks of dangerous and irresponsible behavior.The blood of innocent Americans is on his administration’s hands. I find it absolutely baffling that people will follow a man that has accomplished nothing by the way of improving the lives of its citizens. Trump hypes himself as being the president who has done the most. That is surreal.
Trump’s staunch supporters should look at this and reevaluate the idea whether this man has the necessary tenor to even represent them effectively. We have never had a leader who is so unpredictable and callous. His immature behavior of calling people names, some of them border on racist; his refusal to take the high road when criticized and his blatant habit of lying are alarming to say the least. Trump has made a mockery of the office of the president and taken change to a new low. His family should be ashamed as well, as they are guilty of celebrating the cronyism that he has brought to Washington and the republican party. And blatantly flaunts in America’s face.
The president’s repeated criticism of Dr. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is unprofessional, especially since I have never been informed that Trump has an MD degree. He seems to actually believe that he is a “genius”, as he so readily proclaims during briefings and interviews. His delusion that the cognitive memory test proved he is exceptional is almost laughable. The test is actually given to patients to test for memory loss or early dementia. Acing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test should not be hard unless, a person suffers from dementia. His passing that test is no real accomplishment. However, that too could be up for some level of debate.
As America tallies the daily losses, hospitalizations and positive test results of this virus, we need a leader to prevail with succinct directions that will support a very fragile country. We are not getting that. Instead we get uncertainty, discord, fallacies, lies and in-fighting. The Trump administration is a daily show of disgust and antagonism. White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany’s briefings are a good example of how dysfunctional the current administration actually is. The fact that she makes excuses for the president and rationalizes her answers is the most ridiculous. It leaves you to wonder, can she really believe what she is saying and does she know how this makes her look. People literally joke about her responses and mock that book she carries with reference tabs for questions. Trump Jr. is probably the most dangerous because his comments are more like that racist rich kid at school who abuses entitlements and uses his father’s position as justification that he’s more right than you are. Just like his father.
Where are we now? We are still languishing in doubt and discord about what is safe with this virus. Moreover we still have issues where a minority of people refuse to wear a mask in public, we are still reeling from the Black Lives Matter movement as a result of the lives lost at the hands of abusive police officers. Racism has not only reared its ugly head, it now lives next door and is not a good neighbor, and this was encouraged by this president’s reluctance to face it head on early in his presidency and denounce it as the most prolific issue in America. So, again, who and what do we believe today?
