The Gods are Speaking. Pray, Listen.
For those seeking guidance from the heavens, the unprecedented fires on the west coast of America and the global pandemic raging across the globe suggest that the Gods are furious.
Parents and grandparents who want only the best for their children and grandchildren have been for over 30 years unknowingly voting for legislators whose systemic disinformation campaign and fossil-fuel-friendly policies are inexorably degrading our shared planet. As our Garden of Eden inexorably heats up, the Gods are not amused.
Seers report that the Gods’ jaws dropped as President Trump unconscionably concealed his knowledge of the severity of the coronavirus for months, and knowingly promoted policies that are estimated to have caused over 150,000 avoidable deaths.
Like the fabled Greek warrior Achilles, President Trump, the most powerful and protected man in the world, has a mortal weakness, an Achilles’ heel: hubris. Hubris in believing that he is a special man, a man who could defy the scientific laws that govern viral spread. Hubris to underestimate his microscopic foe and not respect its fury. Hubris to shun mask wearing and social distancing, and promote large gatherings and premature opening of state economies before the virus was adequately controlled. Nothing riles up the Gods so much as hubris.
The man who has for so long flouted mortal laws, and has used the levers of governmental power to delay a reckoning, could not evade the immutable biologic laws that are deaf to his nonsensical happy talk. President Trump now has Covid-19.
The President’s machismo thinly veils the cowardice of the commander in chief who evaded the draft five times on the craven pretext of having bone spurs in his feet. Now, the lie is out, and the President is probably, appropriately concerned. Scared that as an obese 74-year-old male, he might die, and fearful that if he doesn’t, that he will lose the election. If he survives, we can only hope that he will now promote public health rather than his own electoral needs. But, if history is any indicator, we shouldn’t hold our breath.
Eight months before the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama nominated a highly qualified moderate justice, Merrick Garland, to the Supreme Court. Mitch McConnell, the Majority Leader of the Senate, refused to conduct a hearing because he said that a justice should not be seated in an election year. He claimed the people should be able to choose by virtue of who they selected for President in the coming election.
Now, even though voting for the 2020 election is under way, the Republican Senate is trying to ram through a Supreme Court Justice before the seating of the next President in January 2021. The malodorous hypocrisy wafts across the nation, and The God of Justice (GoJ) is not pleased.
At the introduction of the Supreme Court nominee in the Rose Garden, where attendees were mask-less, sitting closely packed, side by side, in direct contradiction to the dictates of the CDC, the GoJ unleashed his ignored plague on these power brokers.
Two Republican Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee have contracted Covid-19. Mike Lee, Senator of Utah, who avidly covets a seat on the Supreme Court, is sick because the GoJ cannot countenance a brazen liar. In commenting about the Trump-Zelensky transcript Lee said, “President Trump did not ask his counterpart in Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political rival” when in fact, that is exactly what he did.
Thom Tillis, Senator from North Carolina, and a reliable Trump enabler, is also feeling the GoJ’s wrath. Like almost all Republicans, Tillis has repeatedly voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and has led the Republican effort to block Medicaid expansion in North Carolina. He is running for re-election this year, and voters should accept the GoJ’s judgement, and vote him out.
Other enablers of Trump’s epic reign of malfeasance have also been stricken. Ron Johnson, Republican Senator of Wisconsin, is infected. Perhaps the GoJ has no time for a Senate based partisan probe of Joe Biden and Ukraine which, as Senator Mitt Romney said has the obvious “ear-marks of a political exercise”.
Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, also is infected. Perhaps this was punishment for his debate prep which advocated that Trump take an aggressive stance. The Gods, and all Americans, would have liked to have seen a civil, substantive discussion of the issues. Instead the proceedings set a new low for Presidential debates, and if one listened closely, one could hear the Gods booing.
One could hope that pious, God-loving legislators would take stock of the proceedings and apply the lessons learned to evade further arousing the Gods’ ire. But sadly, the party that willfully denies science appears unchastened and unteachable. We must vote them all out of office, or suffer further the wrath of the Gods.
Justin F. Thulin, M.D.
Salt Lake City, Utah
October 9, 2020
