By Patricio Zamorano on October 2, 2020
Of course, it is impossible to think of a greater irony than the one that emanated like wildfire in the early morning hours today from Donald Trump’s Twitter account. After months of stubborn denial, part of a political strategy to unify his electoral base around conspiracy theories that the conservative right enjoys and cultivates, Trump has been infected with COVID-19.
For months, Trump has been boycotting the use of masks as a first and basic preventive measure against coronavirus. In the September 29 debate, he ratified this, ridiculing Joe Biden for wearing masks and for his precautionary measures, which his government’s own CDC is desperately trying to reinforce among the population. And hours before he was forced to reveal that he was infected with the coronavirus, Trump noted in a speech that “the end of the pandemic is near.”
Irresponsibly, Trump has dragged thousands of his followers into indoor campaign events, where masks have been almost absent. A dozen of his closest advisors have slowly fallen under the effects of the infection.
It is difficult to understand the logic behind the refusal to wear masks. The feeling behind this irrational resistance is rooted in white, rural, midwest culture. From the state-fearing militias or international communism, which “threatens” to take away their weapons, their land and their freedoms. It is the United States of underground bunkers in the courtyards of modest homes, crammed with canned food and water for a year in case the final day of civilization arrives. It’s the America of sleeveless leather jackets, mustaches, Nazi symbols on shoulders, and chrome-plated, long handlebars. It’s the America so radical in its conservative ideological pursuits that it despises the help of the political center-left that tries to give them free or low-cost health insurance. Trump’s fanatics would rather suffer with disease and lost teeth than “subjugate” themselves to the “socialist concept” of “health care for all.” In last Tuesday’s debate, Trump called Biden’s low-cost health plan “socialism” and an affront to our “freedoms”.
That’s the America Trump is targeting when he constantly boycotts his own global pandemic expert, renowned epidemiologist Anthony Fauci, whom he has accused of being ignorant and incompetent, simply because the doctor is trying to fulfill his oath to save lives. Trump’s supporters cheer from the mindset of remote, forgotten corners of America when the President disregards the preventive measures of governors, mayors, and his own scientists, because they see in him the opportunity to finally have a powerful voice that repudiates the State and its threat against freedoms. Faced with data, science, factual evidence and statistics that tell them “beware, you can catch a virus with a very high death rate,” Trump’s base prefers to ridicule the reasons and oppose this “unforgivable” interventionism. They choose to take the risk, to emulate Trump, their leader, who until now walked undaunted in crowded, enclosed spaces, with no protection covering his mouth and nose.
The strategy also fits with a feeling of inferiority that the country’s leftist elite inspire in the deeply rural, white, and poor United States. This is understandable. That generation, largely post-World War II Baby Boomers, who lived through Vietnam and the Cold War, take strong offense when the left liberal middle class or progressive millionaires with their Harvard and Yale degrees lecture them on what “science” demands or what “scholarship” imposes. It is, therefore, a social class issue as well, not just a racial or ideological one. The typical middle or lower-middle-class American is proud of his/her culture, his/her ideological heritage, his/her piece of land, his/her family, and his/her church. There is nothing wrong with that. But Trump, in a choice that borders on criminal, has given voice, too, to the anti-humanist sentiments that this religious nationalism can also generate: racism, white supremacism, sickly and irrational anti-socialism, and the denial of science on such fundamental issues as climate change and pandemic disease, in this case. The same segment responds to conspiracy theories against vaccines. And, oh great irony, at the same time that Trump himself is using the eventual COVID-19 vaccine as an electoral weapon that, one way or another, must miraculously appear before November 3rd.
Conspiracy theories abound, including that Trump made up his infection. That he wants to prove the disease is mild. That he’ll win votes with it. The truth is that this diagnosis is disastrous for his election campaign. For 14 days he will have to stop the rallies he loves with his supporters and that help him amplify his political voice.
He proved in his own body that the coronavirus is real and not an invention of the country’s leftists. The most anti-science electorate must somehow create some explanation for why Trump was infected with a virus that is not supposed to exist. And the October 15 presidential debate is also hanging by a thread, which wouldn’t hurt considering Trump’s disastrous participation last Tuesday. And, finally, there is the Russian roulette of his own contagion, and the possibility of death if his overweight and age, 74, turn against him and the virus ends up developing uncontrollably.
In this dramatic scenario, in a matter of hours the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, could become the most powerful voter in the November 3rd presidential election.
Source: teleSUR , translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau