An Open Letter to MAGA about Coronavirus.

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:

9 That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

10 They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

11 For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

~Amos 5:8-12

Dear Trump Supporters;

I wrote a letter the other day, aimed at the Bernie Bros.

You're next.

Listen, ya'll. I know how much it sucks, believe me, I do. But it's time to admit...to yourselves if no one else...that you've been conned, ya got rolled. You got took, and there's no two ways about it.

The first step in dealing with a problem is always admitting that it's there.

Yes, I'll be the first one to tell you that I've always been against Trump. He first came to my awareness because of bankruptcies and divorces, and I've known he was a racist since 1989 when he decided to involve himself in the Central Park Five case.

Note; I was a young conservative at the time, a bit over two years later when I turned 18, I registered to vote as a Republican. I would remain a predominately-conservative swing voter right up until 2008. But this isn't about that, I'm not actually here to debate you nor the morality of your President, at least not directly.

This is a warning. I am here to tell you that Donald Trump does not care about you. He does not give a fuck if you live or die, and his administration's handling of this Coronavirus mess should show that to you.

I may not agree with you about much, or even like you very much, but I don't necessarily want you to die, simply because of my own conscience and because I don't want to live in the kind of country where life or death would ever be dependent on one's politics. I don't, and neither do you. It's really that simple. All around the world, we see footage of Association Football teams playing in empty stadiums, people avoiding close contact, people in masks, etc. etc.

And Trump is here saying "We'll hold tremendous rallies?" Something doesn't add up about that. It seems to me that Trump cares more about his image, and about the idea that the cheers from the people that like him will keep coming.

I understand that, I guess. I was a teenager once, too. Granted I stopped being one by the time I was about 20 years old...unlike some people. But, I do get the impulse.

You'd think that would matter less, in the face of public health and people's lives. You'd think a  leader...somebody who cares about their people...would understand "Hey, I've got to go without, a little bit, so we all can survive."

Instead, Republicans in general, those affiliated with Trump in particular, and Trump himself most of all...have tried to deny the threat and ignore it, hoping it would go away. Now that they can't do that, they're making sure that the response is inefficient, opaque, and slow. It's like they want you to die. We're barely even testing for this disease...and it is here, and a vast number of Americans cannot even afford to stay home from work if they show symptoms of this or any other illness because they have no family or sick leave or even paid time off.

Do you support that? In matters of public health do you somehow not see yourselves as members of the public? Or do you simply believe that it won't happen to you? You know, I'm pretty sure that Iranian health minister believed it wouldn't happen to him, either. Playing politics with things like disaster relief and pandemic response, and wishing and hoping does not make for good government policy. Appeasing corporations who make their business model dependent on low-wage workers with no benefits might be good for somebody's bottom line...but it's abominable public health policy.

I've worked in food service for decades, I know how this goes, but I have paid time off and sick leave, and even in my own workplace that makes me one of the lucky ones, a lot of people don't have paid time off or even a full time paycheck where I work. That's why when I had the flu last weekend, I called off on Monday night, because I didn't want to risk compromising whatever level of immunity pool we have even more. I can afford to do the right thing.

And that shouldn't be on me, employers and our government should be doing more...or at least doing something...about this mess.

COVID-19 is a virus. That is, it's basically not much more than a strand of DNA and the capability to replicate itself, and it makes you sick. It doesn't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican or Black or White or any other damned thing. It just wants to spread, that's what it will do. That's all it does. It can't be bribed or bullied or bullshitted and it doesn't care or even think about you. It was not developed in some secret "Deep State" or "government" lab somewhere, it evolved naturally in some other animal and made the jump to humans because humans ate it. The origin of the disease has been traced back to a huge commercial fish market in Shanghai, China. Nature doesn't care about you or your politics, it simply is, and it's only the hubris of humanity that lets Man think he is above nature somehow.

But witness a storm at sea, or a tornado, or various natural landmarks like the Grand Canyon...or even simply look up at the stars at night and you should know that Man ain't shit, not in the grand scheme of things, he's not.

And I know that is not the message that conservatism likes to have. But it is what's true. For all the puffed up stupid talk of an event like CPAC, those people there...whatever their relative status...are just as capable of getting a disease as you or I can. The elites don't have some kind of magical mojo or special technology that keeps them from getting sick. They just have more money to throw at the problem, usually.

But something like this virus will kill them just as dead as it will kill some poor redneck that doesn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

I know from experience that conservatives like to believe that we are in some kind of a just universe where all things work together for good and this, that, and the other thing...but the truth is, that is not the case and it never has been. Money and political power and status can purchase that illusion, but only for the very few at the top.

Thus far, working people like myself are denied such things, and I rather expect you are, too. It's not just that, though. It's that these people are trying to spin this illusion that "something is being done" and "things are under control" not for the sake of protecting the people...but for the sake of the numbers of the stock market...and even the markets aren't buying it. We're effectively in a recession and facing a huge threat and Republicans think it's all about them and blame "The Left" for ginning up all this to try and hurt Trump.

I've got news for you. If "The Left" had that much power, Trump would still be running The Apprentice and I guarantee you that Hillary Clinton or any of the other 2016 Republican candidates would be doing a better job with this mess.

Meanwhile, as our various government agencies fiddle while Rome burns, others are stepping in to try to do the work that those agencies should be doing...and the numbers are getting worse all the time. I guarantee you this problem will not be gone by November, if anything, it's going to be worse by then.

This isn't a time for ignoring things and hoping they'll go away, it's a time for acting and reacting rationally based on data, science, and truth...and on what your eyes and ears tell you, not The Party.

I'm not saying that because I'm not a Republican anymore. I'm saying that because I'm a person who doesn't want to die from this shit..and if I had to guess, deep down I would think you don't want to Kamikaze yourself for somebody else's grandiose, overblown, vainglorious ego either.

Or at least, I'm going to have enough faith in you to presume that you don't.

Have the sense to have some self-preservation, please.

I'm not asking you to not be a conservative. I'm asking you to recognize that a lot of the people who now claim the label simply aren't, and they don't care about you. Consider that Mick Mulvaney got fired last week, and that this President eventually betrays or fires damned near everybody on his team. Not just that, but these people politicize everything, including stuff like this epidemic that it's not appropriate to politicize. This isn't about Trump, it's about you and whether you want to survive or not.

Do you care more about yourself, or about wealthy men who don't give a shit about you and are as much as telling you so right to your face?

They care more about their own power and wealth than they do even about their own survival, much less yours.

A lot of conservatives have been duped into thinking that their fortunes rise or fall with those of Donald Trump, or that Trump is all that stands between them and utter ruin.

The truth couldn't be more different. The truth is, that having a better country isn't about voting for the "right" politician or for whichever deceiver tickles your ears better.

The truth is that if you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

The truth is, if we want to beat this epidemic, we have to go by reality and reason and science and know that we can't ignore it or bullshit or politicize our way out of it.

The truth is you can't "Own the libs" if you're dead, and the truth is, that kind of thinking was stupid to start with.

If we want to survive, we have to remember that we're all in this together, we're all Americans.

And anybody that tries to convince you that one is better than the other almost certainly doesn't have either your...or our...best interests in mind. Those who profit from division will only seek to encourage more division.