The voters who put Donald Trump in office don't trust or believe in our government. They wanted to destroy the system. Sadly, they have gotten what they wanted. Thanks to his narcissism, lies, and incompetence, Trump has critically damaged our government -- and all Americans must now pay the price for that.
Here is just part of an excellent op-ed by Julia Ioffe at gq.com.
We are watching an experiment play out in real time. On one side, you have governments, like those of Singapore, Japan, South Korea, China, and Hong Kong that used the powerful tools at a state’s disposal—surveillance, financial and institutional resources, the bully pulpit—to keep citizens informed, to institute smart and targeted travel restrictions and quarantines, thereby keeping the virus from wreaking wider havoc. Then you have Italy, where a messy, squabbling government and piecemeal approach have led to the whole country being shut down, and Iran, where, after weeks of dissembling and lying by state officials, reality has given way to satellite images of burial trenches being dug for the mounting Covid dead. Thanks to Trump’s narcissistic penchant for lying about anything that doesn’t fit his heroic narrative of himself—and thanks to his eagerness to destroy institutions that aren’t slavish in their loyalty to him— America, the richest, most powerful country in the world, is now firmly in the camp of Italy and Iran. Some 63 million Americans voted for a man who wanted to smash the system to smithereens, either because they felt it wasn’t doing enough for them or because breaking glass just feels so primitively satisfying. Or maybe it's because the Republican Party has been peddling a dystopian anarchistic anti-government pipe dream to them for the last four decades. Now, it turns out, a functioning government is a good thing to have when a global pandemic arrives on your shores. It turns out that maybe reforming an imperfect system is wiser than just taking a sledgehammer to it, better to trust people who have dedicated their lives to being public servants than trashing them in favor of a one-man, megalomaniacal savior, better to have a functioning system than dancing on its rubble while crowing about the death of the “deep state”—or “the political establishment.” To those 63 million Americans, I say this: you wanted to smash the system and you got what you wanted—in spades. Now we will all have to pay the price.
