These People Are Exhausting
As I begin writing this post for my VIP friends the American mainstream political media is on day three of a meltdown because the president of the United States dared to tweet this to an emotionally fragile country:
I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
THE HORROR!
The MSM narrative is that the president is “downplaying” the seriousness of the virus. That is, of course, the Number One DNC talking point for the Biden campaign. It’s imperative that they keep this alive in the minds of the low-info crowd the Democrats rely on for votes.
It’s also patently absurd.
The notion that in the midst of suffering from the virus the president isn’t taking the virus seriously, is only something that someone who is in the frothing-mouth stage of Trump Derangement Syndrome believes.
What President Trump has been doing the last several days is the thing that all of his detractors and many of his reluctant supporters often accuse him of not doing: acting presidential.
The knock-on Trump is that he is unwilling to be everyone’s best friend, which is practically a cardinal sin in the Participation Trophy Era. The nation is awash in wussiness (it’s a word now). One of Joe Biden’s biggest supposed selling points is that he is empathetic.
That’s super cool if I need a gal pal to sob with about failed relationships over a bottle of white wine. I need something less Hallmark and more George S. Patton in a president, however.
The president has been projecting strength and vigor while being stricken with a virus that is not kind to people in his age demographic. He’s doing it for the country. It’s not unheard of. Throughout FDR’s presidency, they pretended he could walk for the very same reason. It was better for the citizens of the United States if they believed their president was strong.
People have been losing their jobs. People haven’t been able to properly grieve or bury loved ones. People have seen businesses they’ve built disappear. People have been shut in their houses for eight months.
At present, the Democrats’ mantra is: “Yes, more of this please.”
The president’s attitude is precisely what the mentally exhausted country needs.
The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald put it very well in a recent City Journal column:
Lockdown proponents are hoping that Trump will follow the course of British prime minister Boris Johnson, who reversed his position on keeping the economy open after his own hospitalization for coronavirus. Trump should foreswear such a self-involved about-face. Either a policy is valid, or it is not; its impact on any given policymaker should not determine that judgment, even if the human mind works from personal experience outward.
Instead, Trump should tell the American public something that it has needed to hear from a political leader for months: we must go on with our lives. There will be more coronavirus cases; there will be, tragically, more deaths. But we cannot shut down our human interactions in order to prevent one kind of death. We have never done so before, and the consequences of having done so this year will cripple human life for generations to come if we do not overcome fear now.
Trump articulated as much in an address from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday. He could not be “locked up in a room upstairs [trying to be] totally safe,” he said. “I had to be out there. This is America, this is the United States. . . . we have to confront problems. As a leader you have to confront problems.” The sentiment is exactly right. The effort in which we are currently engaging—to “stay safe” from one particular risk at whatever cost—is inimical to civilization. No matter Trump’s medical outcome, the strength of our governing institutions will carry us through, thanks to the sacrifices of countless people over the centuries who were willing to risk everything, even to die, for the expansion of justice and freedom.
The country has needed this “thumbs up” show from its leaders for a long time.
Back in June, I wrote about the mental health problems that were already being manifested because of the lockdowns and quarantine. In August, a Wall Street exec told Politico about the disruptions in business causing his company to deal with “rolling nervous breakdowns” among its employees.
The Democrats prey on human misery. If they can’t offer the government as a savior they’ve got nothing. Even if there wasn’t an election looming they’d want this COVID-induced misery to last as long as possible for their own political purposes.
They want you miserable. They want you cowering in your living rooms. They even want you sick. Their concern for the death toll of this pandemic is all theater.
That’s why they have been shrieking about President Trump telling you not to be afraid.
They want you to be afraid.
No.
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PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.
