October 19, 2020

By Thom Hartmann.

COVID infections now represent the third leading cause of death in America. This is an extremely contagious, crippling and deadly disease.

On top of that, there’s a growing legion of people who call themselves “long haulers,“ who have been seriously disabled by COVID and are unable to live a normal life because of severe chronic fatigue, screaming nerve pain, and other chronic conditions.

And that doesn’t mention all the COVID survivors who’ve had strokes, heart attacks, and permanent heart, lung, kidney, and brain damage.

Facing this simple reality, every developed country in the world is encouraging social distancing and the use of masks to reduce the number of people who are injured, disabled, or killed by this disease.

Every country, of course, except America.

The coronavirus has spread heavily across the American Midwest, and new epidemiology shows that much of that spread came from a half-million bikers gathering in South Dakota two months ago.

Now the President of the United States is encouraging the further spread of this disease with his rallies, bringing untold pain, misery and death to tens of thousands of Americans. All because he wants his ego massaged and he thinks somehow this bizarre and deadly behavior will help him win an election.

Some psychologists speculate that Trump might be purposely exposing his followers to this deadly virus because deep down inside he hates anybody who trusts him. They point to his behavior against his three wives, and the thousands of people in business who have sued him for breaking agreements and contracts as examples of this.

Others suggest that he’s simply so lazy that his new pitch for “herd immunity“ is just a rationalization for doing nothing so he can continue to spend most of his days watching television and playing golf.

And some political cynics think Trump is simply trying to make the national level of infection as severe as possible so he can hand off a screaming disaster to Joe Biden, and then spend four years criticizing him for how he handles it. Trump recently attacked his opponent, saying if Biden is elected the former Vice President “will listen to the scientists,“ which gives more credibility to this theory.

Regardless of his motivations, though, Trump is engaging in and encouraging behavior that is killing and disabling Americans by the millions. We’ve lost more people to COVID than all the Americans who have died in every war since World War II.

That, in and of itself, would instantly disqualify any normal politician from holding elective office in any normal time: inciting people to die or kill others could even land most Americans in prison.

American history is filled with stories of presidents and their cronies getting away with immoral, stupid, and even criminal behavior. But nothing has ever risen to this level.

Whether America ends up with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission like South Africa did, or we simply put Trump and his enablers on trial for their crimes and all the deaths they caused, we must hold these people accountable.

In the madness of the election and its aftermath, let us never forget this. We must decide soon the best way to make sure this never happens again.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute

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