Here are a couple of observations about Trump’s recent suggestion to inject disinfectant to treat COVID patients…
First, when one is wealthy and powerful, people will defer to you, even if you aren’t, well… playing with a full deck. Donald Trump provides a perfect example of this behavioral tendency, which we should now call the TIE effect. (Think of the red TIE, for Trump Idiocy Exposed). As an innovation consultant who teaches that there are “no bad ideas”, I would normally point out that he was simply trying to stimulate innovative thought… especially if he were the CEO paying my consulting fee and I had to kiss up to him. But this is not the case.
For many years, Donald Trump was able to fool Americans into thinking he was clever and capable, shielded by the appearance of wealth. But the truth is that he is the perfect example of the Peter Principle — he has risen to a level that dramatically exposes his incompetence. And boy, his incompetence is staggering… he has not only destroyed his own brand, but he will also likely be remembered as the guy who singlehandedly destroyed America through sheer ineptitude. His inability to govern wisely, and prepare for the pandemic he was so frequently implored to safeguard against — and even dismantling the Pandemic Response Team as a way of minimizing his enviable predecessor — will likely cause an American depression that will allow China to wrest control of the global reserve currency. Whoever controls the reserve currency is essentially getting a trillion-dollar interest free loan, and losing it will turn America into the next “former colonial empire” like the UK. What’s more, China has already started securing more blockchain patents than America and will be able to put far more money into quantum computing , and will likely surpass America on that front as well. It is difficult to overstate how bad a mess Trump has caused.
And second, if this were last year, Trump could have easily laughed off his comment by claiming he was just joking. But today, after failing so monumentally that America has become the world leader in coronavirus infections (yes, Trump has finally made America #1), so venal that he tweets to encourage protest rallies to support his campaign — knowing that doing so will surely kill a number of his supporters, so unable to take responsibility like a true leader that he… he… well, let’s just say that Donald Trump is no Harry Truman, okay?
I have a theory that we will soon enter a new phase, focused on ridiculing Donald Trump. It isn’t just the liberals in America and the leaders of the G7 who are making fun of Trump now… people all over the world, from all walks of life, are laughing at the American idiot. They are pointing fingers at him like he was a “developmentally challenged” child who just pooped in the pool. What’s happening is that the collective subconscious is now seeking ways to marginalize him. The survival instinct of the human race is demanding that Trump be forced out of the driver’s seat before he plows into even more people. It’s like our collective unconscious is screaming, “For god's sake, stop doing those daily COVID briefings!” Instead of providing information to save lives, they’ve been perverted into propaganda distribution events, replacement rallies for attacking journalists and rivals, and nationally televised opportunities to sell snake oil.
Of course, Trump’s faithful cult followers will insist everything’s a conspiracy, and you know, they’re right — however, it’s not a conscious conspiracy, but rather, a subconscious one, driven by the deep fear that he’ll continue to make mistakes that will cost lives, not only in America but all over our small world. Like, for example, being so peevish and needing to shift blame that he cut funding for WHO… at the apex of a global pandemic. This will certainly lead to more deaths around the world.
However, the greatest danger he poses now is actually to the Constitution of the United States, as he and his Senatorial enablers will do whatever it takes to win reelection, and buy him another four years of executive privilege. Trump is likely now to be desperate enough to do anything to win — threaten to kill by infection to suppress the vote, destroy the US Postal Service to block voting by mail, covertly accept Russian electoral interference, maybe hire Cambridge Analytica 2.0 —there’s always a new A.I. expert willing to “take it up a notch or two”. Like a “cornered rat with orange hair”, Trump probably feels he has nothing to lose and is going to take us all down with him if he has to face the flood of prosecutions that will follow his loss at the polls.
However, if Trump proves corrupt enough to do “whatever it takes” to win reelection, history will not look kindly on him. It’s instructive to remember the story of Qin Hui, a corrupt politician who was the Chancellor of the Song dynasty in China about a thousand years ago. He lied and schemed to bring about the execution of his political rival, General Yue Fei, a beloved hero and the inventor of the Hsing I Chuan system of martial art. For his treachery, iron statues of him, along with his co-conspirators, were made to kneel before Yue Fei’s tomb (located by Hangzhou’s West Lake). For a thousand years, these statues have been cursed, spat, and urinated upon by young and old.
If there is one thing to take away from reading this howl, it’s that the survival instinct of humanity is stronger than you can imagine. Our collective consciousness knows that Trump must be removed. And to insure this, humanity’s subconscious will do the thing that will work best in a situation like this… it will make him the butt of a billion jokes. Humanity will make him the laughingstock he deserves to be.
And so, it is possible that in the far future, the only thing humanity will remember about the stupidest American President is this Lysol injection gaffe, like how we only remember Nero for fiddling while Rome burned or Marie Antoinette suggesting to “let them eat cake”. Many years after this pandemic is over, we will likely learn that America will never forgive Trump for his narcissism and incompetence. But if he goes away quietly, we will, as Mr. T suggests, “pity the fool”. But if he doesn’t and makes the situation even worse, humanity could end up spitting on Donald Trump’s grave for a thousand years.