For they have sown the wind

… and they shall reap the whirlwind.

So Trump has Covid-19 and we all wish him a speedy recovery.

At least Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have all made apparently heartfelt declarations to that effect. It makes you wonder what Trump would have said if the shoe were on the other foot and it was, say, Biden who was stricken.

Foxnews, meanwhile, has decried all the hate directed at Trump (apparently there are some on social media who do not wish Trump well), and Twitter has banned posts wishing for Trump’s death on their platform. Not surprisingly, the four members of “The Squad”, who have all been receiving Trump-fueled death threats on Twitter for years are wondering why this policy couldn’t have been invoked for their benefit as well.

As faithful readers of GOML know, yours truly, Stewie Generis, has often railed against Trump and everything he stands for, i.e Trump himself. You might be wondering how I feel about all this. Well, I don’t wish him ill or, actually, anything at all. I simply wish he would go away and let us all get back to life as we knew it Before Tweety. It will take years to repair the damage this guy has wrought on our country, its institutions, and its place in the world. We need to begin as soon as possible.

But you do have to feel something, perhaps pity or scorn, for the many in Trumpworld who have been required to accept the anti-science fantasy that the big boss has been insisting on since February, and who are now also stricken. Some will not recover from this, and some, Herman Cain comes to mind, have already paid with their lives.

But today’s post isn’t about how Trump’s incompetence and narcissism have led us into this entirely predictable and preventable tragedy, or how it is now clear that, until an effective vaccine becomes available to everyone in this country, we can all, every one of us, expect to get sick at some point.

No, today’s message is about how numb we have all become to the many bombshells that have been dropped on us in rapid succession. So many, so fast. And how it’s now as if they never exploded at all.

Just 48 hours before the news dropped that Tweety tested positive for Covid, he managed to completely blow up one of the last institutions of American political life that was still intact – the Presidential Debate.

I had briefly puzzled over reports that he wasn’t “preparing” for the debate at all, while Biden was holed up with experts and documentation trying to get informed on all the issues and policies he needed to think about as president. Then it dawned on me that of course Trump didn’t need to prepare. Preparation is only necessary in a fact-based environment, an environment Trump has little use for and avoids at all times.

His debating strategy is simple: wait for a “keyword” in the question, then interrupt with a fire hose of insults, lies, slander and non-sequiturs. For example, if the question begins, “On the subject of health care and the pandemic…”, Tweety jumps in and does about five minutes of “No one in history has done more for health care than me. Insulin is now free for everyone. It’s beautiful. If Biden had been in charge, millions would be dead by now. One is too many. China, China, CHINA”, and so on. Why would anyone need to prepare for this?

The media went wild about the debate/tantrum for the two days before the Covid diagnosis, but neglected to mention that it had completely erased the previous bombshell that had fallen only the day before: Trump’s tax returns had finally been produced by the Failing New York Times. It was the biggest story in four years but Trump’s “debate” performance cancelled it and now you can’t even remember that it happened.

Doesn’t really matter, though. As soon as the news dropped that Trump wasn’t a successful businessman at all, that he had cheated the U.S. government for years, and that it was only the success of The Apprentice that kept him from personal ruin (and vaulted him to the presidency), he launched the expected rebuttal: it was all fake news and the Times had broken the law in getting the info. Lock them up! Makes you wonder, though, why the Times would need to break the law to generate fake news. Couldn’t they just make up the fakes right there in their own offices without talking to anyone else?

Anyway, the holy grail of Trump’s taxes had been found and, contrary to the fondest hopes of everyone who values democracy and sanity, it had no effect whatsoever. Less even than the Mueller report, for example, which showed clearly the Russians had interfered with the 2016 election and Trump had been complicit, but which was immediately and permanently relegated to the status of “hoax”. Forgot about that one already, didn’t you?

But the tax story did have an important effect. It evaporated any and all memory and interest in the previous week’s bombshell – Bob Woodward’s book, “Rage”, which again outed Trump as the liar he is by revealing tapes of him admitting that he knew the truth about Covid since February, but played it down anyway (resulting in millions of Americans unnecessarily getting sick and hundreds of thousands dying). And also that he thought members of the military were suckers, etc. etc.

Again, none of that would have mattered even if it had gotten more than the week or so of attention it did. Team Trump had already mobilized its response, which boiled down to “So what?”. This torch was carried by a truly ridiculous senator from Louisiana, one John Neely Kennedy, who answered all questions about it by repeating the mantra, “These gotcha books don’t really interest me that much. There will be a new one out tomorrow.” Check it out for a laugh:

Anyway, I just want to forget about all this for at least a few hours. Don’t really feel like waiting for the next bombshell to explode, either.

Fortunately it’s Sunday and that means I can zone out and watch the Patriots. I don’t like their chances much against the brilliant Patrick Mahomes and the Superbowl champion Chiefs, but it’s something to look forward to and might let me temporarily escape the whirlwind. And who knows- with Cam Newton now at quarterback for the Patriots, maybe they can make it interesting.

Wait, what? What’s that you say? Cam has tested positive and the game is postponed?

Ah, shit.