Trump just wants to get Chernobyl back to work

I was reading this horrifying White House transcript and it’s just bonkers. The President goes on with some crazy nonsense and Republicans go around the room and praise him. The Soviet Politburo was insular and corrupt, but they were at least cunning. This is just dumb.

It immediately made me think of Chernobyl. That was a mess borne of Soviet structural problems, but they at least contained it. Maybe Stalin wouldn't have cared, but Gorbachev actually appointed people that somehow contained the fallout.

America is like Chernobyl with worse management. Over decades, it’s estimated that Chernobyl will have killed 4,000 people. America looks that many people to coronavirus roughly every two days.

But if you read this transcript, that’s not the world they’re living in. Everything is going great. They talk more about salmon and oil than the dead, and more time is spent praising the dear leader than anything else. Honestly, this would put a Soviet Politburo to shame.

Erasing The Dead

Stalin said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Trump says, “What’s a statistic?”

It’s not that he’s making a cold calculation. He just doesn’t care. This is not how a functioning leader talks about the fastest, greatest loss of life in American history.

You look on the screens, you look on television today, and you see body bags and you see mass graves. And we may be talking about 95,000 people ultimately. We may be talking about something more than that. But if you take a low number, one and a half million — so you multiply whatever number we’re talking about times 15, it would not — it would not be acceptable. It would not. It’s not acceptable now. One person isn’t acceptable, let alone perhaps 100,000.

So, we’re going to rebuild it. We’re going to rebuild it back as fast as we can.

Note how the pronoun ‘it’ seamlessly goes from referring to ‘100,000 dead people’ to ‘the economy’. Technically, it sounds like he’s going to raise the dead. But no. He’s just erasing them.

Leading The World

One hallmark of the Soviet Union and its eventually competitive satellites was the desire for international validation — even at the cost of their own people dying or starving.

Mao Tse-Tung oversaw history’s worst famine in China and still continued exporting food to Soviet Bloc countries. He wanted to buy arms, to feel special, and anyways, he was eating fine.

Trump feels the same way about ventilators.

And we’re giving thousands and thousands away to other countries that are — people dying because they don’t have ventilators, and they’re not equipped to do what we did. So we’re giving thousands and thousands of these ventilators away to many countries that have suffered greatly: Italy, France, Spain, so many countries. And Nigeria called. Tremendous problems in Nigeria. Tremendous problems all over. And so they’re very happy.

Nigeria had six recorded deaths from COVID-19 yesterday. America had 1,746. America should realistically be asking Nigeria for help, but Trump wants to feel important.

Mao killed a lot of people through malice, but he killed the most through sheer neglect and pride. Trump is doing the same.

Nothing Wrong With A Little Nepotiz

He goes on about the ventilators. Nobody wants a fucking ventilator. This is like bragging about having a lot of fire extinguishers when your house is on fire, and half the time the fire extinguishers don’t even work. People want to crush the damn virus and not end up in the hospital at all.

But don’t worry, Jared is on ventilators. There’s this absurd back and forth with his son-in-law where they’re fellating each other and joking about nepotism. Not even the worst Soviet dictator brought their son to work, let alone their son-in-law. But here he is.

KUSHNER: So, on an absolute basis, the job that you’ve led on that has been absolutely tremendous. And that’s giving the tools to America to start opening up these counties and allowing Americans to get back to work.

THE PRESIDENT: Good. Thank you, Jared. You’ve done a great job. Someday, people are going to appreciate it. (Laughter.) They say, “Oh, he’s a relation.” Well, he’s a relation. If he wasn’t a good relation, I’d get him out of here so fast. (Laughter.) Sometimes we have a problem, Louie. I say, “Get Jared on it.” So, great job, Jared.

MR. KUSHNER: Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Smart guy.

?

I don’t know what to say here. It’s an idiot delegating to an idiot and them both praising each other.

The Endless Praise

Trump is constantly praising himself, and the gathered Republicans are constantly praising him. Everyone that speaks must start or end by praising the dear leader.

REPRESENTATIVE CRENSHAW: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for having us here. And thank you for working every single day.

If he didn’t show up, fewer people would die, but go on.

REPRESENTATIVE CRENSHAW: And I appreciate what you’ve done. I appreciate you working with us for — to protect our energy industry.

Even the most rank oligarchies try to pretend like they care for ‘the people’, but not here. The Republicans spend more time talking about oil than the dead. There’s only one person that they seem to care about:

REPRESENTATIVE NUNES: Well, thank you, Mr. President. And it’s unfortunate what you had live through for the last four years.

Then you get the obligate 2-minute hate, proposed by the representative from Pennsylvania.

REPRESENTATIVE RESCHENTHALER: Thank you, Mr. President. Guy Reschenthaler from Pennsylvania. I just want to thank you and the administration for holding China accountable.

What this does to stop the American epidemic is beyond me. What do they want China to do? Come to America and run the country competently?

The Farce

This whole transcript is just madness. Wall to wall madness. Failure, corruption, greed, incompetence — and everyone praising each other for it.

The Soviet Union fell in one way, but the American Union is falling in another. Just… stupidity. And cruelty. And pride. Chernobyl was a singular disaster, something the USSR tried to cover up and only contained with a massive sacrifice of life and health. It was an embarrassment.

However, compared to the USA’s coronavirus disaster, it was a resounding success, a display of competence than managed to contain a disaster.

The US is not even trying. They’re just talking about re-opening the economy, ignoring the pandemic causing the economic damage. It’s as if Gorbachev was obsessed with getting the town of Chernobyl back to work. It would not have gone well. It’s not going to go well for the United States.

History is repeating itself. First as tragedy, now as farce. For the people dying, however, both seem to feel the same.