With the Covid-19 (aka Coronavirus) pandemic entering it’s fourth month and the slow, if not laggardly, actions of Pres. Trump and his fellow MAGAs to fight this pandemic. The biggest problem is that like all MAGA Pres. Trump does not really understand the age in which we live.
This is the Information Age.when everything you say in public can, and often is, recorded for all time. More than that it can, and will, be shared with the entire world with in hours, if not minutes. An unlike MiniTrue in 1984 it is not possible for any government to control what information is peeing shared. So we have the problem facing the Governor of Georgia saying that he just found out that asymptotic people can spread the infection. With in minutes he was show to be either 1) a liar 2) ignorant beyond belief or 3) a total fool.
This is the problem of the use of the “Leadership Priciple” as first formalized in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. You have to be shown ‘leading’ and it must conform to your exposed political principles (even if it has nothing to do with politics) and you just may get it wrong. But as the ‘Leader’ you can’t be wrong, so now what? Back in the middle of the 20th century it was possible for government and big businesses to make the unpleasant truth to disappear down the memory hole.
There are several great examples of this in history the one I like the best was how Stalin was able to make one of the biggest communists of the revolution just disappear from wall USSR records. Photographs and all. But it was not just in communist states has this happened, nor just in the 20th century. This has been going on since before recorded records. Until now.
With the arrival of electronic computers, the internet and the ‘cloud’ it has become almost impossible for anything, truth of lie, to disappear down the memory hole. Now what happens is the truth is buried under an avalanche of lies and other ‘the real truth’. But do not loose hope. We also have the tools to protect the truth and it too is as old as history. Critical Thinking and the simple fundamental principle that the universe is non-partisan.
Something like Covid-19 does not, in fact can not, care what the leaders want. It will do what the natural laws of the universe dictate. If our leaders refuse to acknowledge this and we don’t do ‘social distancing’ and we let profiteers practice ‘classical’ capitalism and the ‘privileged few’ think it “can’t happen here” then we will have a great pandemic here with many deaths that would not have happened if they, the leaders, had acted as the medical specialist recommended.
Remember “The piper is Always Paid.”