The plague which now possesses us will result in one of two consequences. We will recognize our spiritual, moral and biological interdependence and, in consequence, create a world in which health care is available for all, economic security is a human right, scientists, doctors, nurses and all health care workers are revered and respected for their expertise and dedication, and climate change addressed and reversed. The other consequence is inescapable. Diseases and natural catastrophes will bring us to the brink of extinction.
For the plague we now face, though imperiously real and inexorably threatening, would not have cast so wide a net over our hopes and our lives were it not for the criminal neglect and downright treachery of the Trump administration. Denying the extent and virulence of the disease, stigmatizing Chinese Americans, suggesting that harmful ineffectual drugs or injections of disinfectants have therapeutic value -- these and other dangerous, surreal and truly lunatic propositions emanate daily from Trump and his team of Republican sycophants. Every person in this country who blindly supports the lies, the bigotry, the disdain for professionalism in virtually all areas of human endeavor, the denial of scientific fact and inquiry, the will to power at the expense of the commonweal and the environment, the bottomless greed, the abuse of families and children on our border -- in short, the sheer unconscionable seemingly endless inhumanity of the GOP -- is equally culpable.
We have been consistently lied to in Trump's daily briefings as the plague itself becomes an opportunity to exploit the death of Americans for Trump's own political profit even as he quietly curtails our freedoms and threatens our survival by co-opting the Justice Department, attacking the World Health Organization, and encouraging his ignorant followers to infect others as they defy the wisdom of the scientific community.
When, as in the McCarthy era trials, will those immediately around Trump stand up, with integrity and self-respect, and in concert with the American people cry out, "Have you no decency?"
Everyone who keeps silent until that time arrives tacitly endorses a renegade fascistic regime -- a veritable death cult -- out to destroy the democratic underpinnings of our country and the very lives of our citizens.
