A Near Perfect Metaphor of Trump*
Democrats and the Party of Trump have nominated their candidates for president. Pols and pundits have reprised the question Reagan asked Carter days before the 1980 presidential election during their only debate, a question that became standard for challengers to pose about an incumbent:
“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
Carter said, “no.” His numbers tanked, and he lost the popular and electoral votes to Reagan by huge margins.
Trump was president four years ago, so “are you better off today than you were four years ago” is fair game to ask voters of every stripe.
It’s a laughably easy question to answer in March 2024, regardless of what metric applies.
“Fuck yes.”
I looked back to what I wrote four years ago to make sure my answer was fair. Almost to the day, I posted Everything is About Me and My Survival (“If people die in my calculation for continued survival, too bad for them. I don’t care. (Hint: I am COVID-19, not Mr. Trump)).” I wrote the post in first person from the virus’s point of view. The corona virus is a near perfect metaphor of Trump, except Trump’s cruelty is conscious.
Here are a few excerpts:
I am a member of the community of highly infectious diseases, the most notorious virus of late. I am not conscious. I don’t have a conscience. I’m not a cell. Technically, I’m not even alive. I am genetic material surrounded by a thin protective layer of fat. . . . I exist, am designed, and am purely and singularly motivated for one purpose alone: to survive. That’s it.
The best you can do for my survival, which is the only thing I care about, is to listen closely to Mr. Trump. I love people in positions of authority, people who make decisions, or don’t, that affect a lot of hosts and prospective hosts, people who reject science when it runs counter to their financial or political interests. . . .
I have been co-evolving with bats for longer than humans have been around. As an RNA virus I am “more promiscuous, more generalist” by inhabiting and propagating in a variety of hosts, increasing my chances of survival which, again, is the only reason I exist. . . . For a history of my origins, evolution, and leap from bats into new species that lack the ability bats have to repair the damage I cause their cells, this New Yorker article From Bats to Human Lungs, the Evolution of a Coronavirus nails it. If you read the article, please ignore any parts about reducing transmission.
I survive through replication and, when necessary, adaptation. I don’t have the machinery to self-propagate, like bacteria do. I wouldn’t want to be a bacterium anyway. There are some awesome bacteria that have adapted their way around even the strongest antibiotics and others that can eat through flesh, but that sounds like a lot of work. I propagate by embedding myself inside the cells of human hosts, sharing my RNA with the cells which stimulates the cells’ machinery and metabolism to do the work for me. If the hosts and their cells are accommodating and not resistant, I sit back, relax, and let them do the work, then take the credit and benefit from it. No need to change or engage in any form of self-improvement.
The replicated viruses become available for transmission from one human host to other human hosts. My survival rate increases as the means of transmission from one host to others improves, which includes unwitting, unsuspecting, careless, and stupid hosts and target hosts. If I encounter barriers to replication, say in the form of antibodies including those caused by vaccines or anti-viral medications, that’s when I try to evolve or adapt my way around them. My only job is survival.
My favorite targets and latest preference are the human lungs, an acquired taste, so to speak. (Inside joke for you Darwinians.) Lungs, I have found, provide optimum cells for propagating my kind. They are also a fabulous means of transmission from one host to others for, you guessed it, my survival. I do not care what damage I do to the lung cells so long as they propagate. Hosts “shed” me in abundance through breath, mucus, snot, and phlegm which hosts produce in abundance and are all directly connected in one way or another to the lungs. Sneezing is a vehicle that simultaneously delivers all four.
With my protective layer of fat, I remain viable on all sorts of surfaces for anywhere from two hours to nine days.
Not to brag, but I’ve had a pretty good run the past few months. I survive and thrive largely through trickery. I also rely on people’s unpreparedness, carelessness, and stupidity. I, with Mr. Trump’s able assistance, have lulled people into a false sense of well-being. One trait for survival of which I am proudest is patience, taking my time: I innocuously invade cells and kidnap their machinery to begin the replication process so hosts begin shedding me, but do so without letting the hosts experience symptoms or become aware they are sick. I don’t want them taking themselves or being taken out of circulation before they share me in abundance through their infected breath, mucus, snot, and phlegm.
To survive, I need circulation, physical interaction between and among infected and prospective hosts. The more infected hosts and target hosts in close proximity to each other (crowds are best), the better my chances of survival which, again, is the only reason I exist. Church services, rallies, CPAC, classrooms, Mardi Gras, concerts, theatre, parades, spring-breakers, White House briefings, roll-call votes in the House and Senate, signing ceremonies in the Oval Office, homeless shelters, even health-care facilities — especially health-care facilities. Ill-equipped emergency rooms and hospitals, clinics, rest homes, and assisted living facilities are best because they provide a convergence of everything I need to survive, including bodily fluids and heavily infected hosts and target hosts together in very close proximity, an abundance of me being shed on everything and everyone.
I am led to believe the mortality rate among people I infect is ten times that of the flu, that a high percentage of infected hosts die, particularly those above a certain age or who have health conditions that compromise their ability to resist me. Do I care? No. Except, I lose the benefit of their cell machinery, but good hosts have already shed and transmitted me to other hosts.
I’m a virus. It’s about me and my survival. If people die in my calculation for continued survival, too bad for them. I do not care.
Speaking of people dying in the calculation for continued survival, I want to extend a special thanks to my greatest ally for assuring and extending my survival. The United States did not follow the example of South Korea and, thankfully, ignored Bill Gates’ Ted Talks. Fortunately, Mr. Trump fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. He knew about me months ago, knew — or at least was made aware of — the science, and did nothing to inhibit my survival. He continuously downplayed my virulence and its severity to vulnerable hosts and prospective hosts while lying about U.S. capacity, capability, and response. He refused to follow the National Security Council’s 69-page playbook for fighting pandemics, thankfully leaving the United States vulnerable and without sufficient stockpile of emergency resources, completely exposed, wholly unprepared and lacking in testing and diagnostic capacity which is vital to understanding and curtailing my spread. He kindly delayed invoking the Defense Production Act to address shortages in personal protection equipment for healthcare providers and lifesaving ventilators for the most distressed hosts. And after invoking the Defense Production Act, he resisted mobilizing private industry. When he finally got around to moving to compel a company to manufacture ventilators, GM had already committed to do so and begun production.
Equally important, at least for my survival which is the only thing that matters to me, are Mr. Trump’s refusal to establish a national, centralized and organized response, his science denial, his repeated false reassurances and gas-lighting about my virulence, its spread and effects, his creating a competitive market between and among states and the federal government for limited supplies of lifesaving and personal protective equipment, his mob-style tactics with governors of blue states, his tying life-saving resources to personal grievances and insufficient “appreciation,” his insistence that on Easter Sunday churches will be filled beyond capacity, his prioritizing economics over the health and safety of citizens in anticipation of the 2020 election, his having divided the country so people’s views about whether I am a danger became a political calculation and, most importantly, his inability to make this pandemic about anything other than himself and his survival.
Sound familiar?
A country’s clear and present danger can be something else’s personal savior. I could not be more appreciative. This video is among my favorite compilations of Mr. Trump deceiving the public for his and my mutual benefit. The following article also reveals Mr. Trump’s dangerous recklessness. Analyzing the Patterns in Trump’s Falsehoods About Coronavirus.
R.VanWagoner https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner publishes. https://richardvanwagoner.medium.com/subscribe
*My brother the very talented fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner. Rob’s second novel, a beautifully written suspense drama that takes place in Utah, Wyoming, and Norway, dropped on November 17, 2020. Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Bookstore and your favorite local bookshop, this novel, The Contortionists, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. I have read the novel and listened to the audio version twice. It is a literary masterpiece. The Contortionists is not, however, for the faint of heart.
**Richard J Van Wagoner is my father. His list of honors, awards, and professional associations is extensive. He was Professor Emeritus (Painting and Drawing), Weber State University, having served three Appointments as Chair of the Department of Visual Arts there. He guest-lectured and instructed at many universities and juried numerous shows and exhibitions. He was invited to submit his work as part of many shows and exhibitions, and his work was exhibited in many traveling shows domestically and internationally. My daughter Angela Van Wagoner, a professional photographer, photographed more than 500 pieces of my father’s work. The photographs of my father’s art reproduced in https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner are hers.