Trumps in the Time of the Rona
A while ago, as we crawled past a fender-bender in clean-up on the highway, Chicken asked me a big question: "Mom, what if the President got in an accident? Would you help him?"
"Yes," I said. "If the President was in an accident and needed my help, I would help him. Not because he deserves my help, but because I will not give him the power to turn me into a person who doesn't help people."
I think about that conversation all the time—not just because it was one of those rare parenting moments when I gave myself a mental high five and thought NAILED IT —but because I wonder if I lied to him.
Never more than today.
When I awoke to the news that Donald and Melania Trump had tested positive for Coronavirus, I was immediately torn between following the words of two very different First Ladies.
They've gone low, and oh oh OH do I want to go high. I want to be the kind of person who unconditionally sides with the humans in the human vs. monster virus showdown.
I want to airily not comment because it's simply beneath me. I want to send up a prayer that God's will be done so I can slip into my white silk pajamas and sleep the sleep of the righteous. I want to donate to a tight Senate race in their names and let that little secret pettiness burn like an ember in my heart. Wait, does that still count as going high?
Yeah, I'm afraid this is the one and only time I'll be walking the path of Melania Trump:
Gimme a fucking break.
The Trumps have mutilated our democracy.
They’ve discarded human lives with the cavalier inhumanity of sociopaths.
They have EARNED the loathing of millions of people - not for their uncouth personalities, but for their genuine bigotry and the terrorism and violence that they've gleefully stoked, pardoned, and institutionalized.
I do not want to be the kind of person who delights in the victory of a malady. But I also cannot be the kind of person who tries to prove she’s better than sociopaths.
I can’t vacate heart space for people who mocked PPE, discredited researchers and doctors, repeatedly lied to Americans about the seriousness of the pandemic, forced people back to work by denying them relief, and shoved 200,000 teachers, nurses, parents, and children in front of an invisible viral army so they'd look cool and popular.
So yeah, I'm gonna TOLD YA SO like the Feral Goddess of Pettiness. I shall ride a shining liger through a lightning storm cackling “WELL WELL WELL, LOOKS LIKE DR. FAUCI MIGHT HAVE HAD A POINT,” with the joyous fire of a thousand supernovas.
200,000 American have died from this virus in large part due to the unconscionable choices of this man, who consistently prioritized profits, popularity, and his own mythological self-aggrandizement ahead of human lives. It's not like I'm PSYCHED that my neighbor with the yappy dog got the 'rona. It's not like I'm giddy with glee that a guy who took a parking space and a half at the Walgreens is on a ventilator. Trump's actions aren't some petty squabble - or rather, he treats life and death decisions like petty squabbles, an unforgivable and ghoulish failure of character.
That's why 100% of Katie is going to snarkily send thoughts and prayers and a care package of Clorox with a shot glass, and why the State of Katie has unanimously voted to faux-sincerely express gratitude that our own First Lady only yesterday supplied us with the perfect four-word sentence with which to deliver our heartfelt wishes to her and her family.
Sometimes we act like compassion is owed to selfish villains to whom compassion means precisely dick.
Sometimes we act like we have to tolerate intolerance in order to maintain our own honor.
Sometimes we feel like we have to interview the white supremacists to get their side of the story.
Sometimes we forget that if we prioritize balance over truth, we will choose moral flexibility over genuine integrity.
True story: if you refuse to wear a mask and ignore experts about how to stay safe during a pandemic virus, you could easily contract said virus! It's a consequence of their choices, and the definition of fair. And personally, I feel I'm allowed to be psyched to see fairness on the field again, looking fresh and ready to play.
That day in the car I said I wouldn't give these people the power to turn me into someone who doesn't help people. Today I know I didn't lie. The way I'm helping is by being honest: The Trumps don't deserve my compassion and they will not receive it. They deserve to be revealed as hypocrites for the top-notch health care they're about to receive, and that they want to deny other Americans. They deserve to be reminded every day for the rest of their lives that 200,000 families couldn't gather to mourn their dead.
They deserve fair consequences for their choices, and I deserve to eat all the cookies I just baked.
All of them.