There Is Blood On His Hands (And Ours)

So according to the last numbers I’ve seen, over 100,000 Americans have died of Covid-19. Oh, and almost certainly that vastly underestimates the actual numbers because lots and lots and lots of people are getting sick and/or dying out of sight, because we don’t have the test kits, the trained personnel, and the hospital beds required to determine if they have (or, tragically, had) the disease.

Doubtlessly, that number will be even higher by the time you read this.

And none of it had to happen. If we had prepared...even on the most basic level...we could have saved thousands of lives. If Donald Trump and his Trumplicans (the former GOP) had not eliminated our national capacity to respond to pandemics... if he and they had reacted promptly when it became clear that a deadly disease was spreading from China...and if he and they exercised decisive leadership as soon as Covid-19 showed up on our shores…then many of those people would be alive today, our medical facilities wouldn’t be strained to the breaking point, and our economy would not be on the verge of collapse.

Alas, he, and they, did nothing productive. Now, at best they look like fools, and at worst like a cruise ship crew who abandoned their vessel and its passengers the minute they heard the hull scrape against the reef. And either way, they have blood on their hands.

And here’s the thing. The people who voted for Trump in 2016 do not have blood on their hands. Not at the moment. They didn’t know what they were doing when they put him into office. But they can’t claim ignorance any longer. Now they know perfectly well what sort of man (or un-man) he is, and the kind of monsters they are. 

But if they vote for him again...in 2020...they will have blood on their hands. They will vote knowing what he has done, what the GOP has done, and what he and they are likely to do in future. They will be as guilty as he, and as much at fault as they.

And lest we on the Left become complacent and self-congratulatory, let us recall that many among us declined to vote in 2016. Or, if they did, they threw away their votes on Third Parties or write-ins who had no chance of winning. And, so, they passively supported Trump.

If they do so again, if such people elect not to vote or vote for third parties...because “Republicans and Democrats are just alike,” because Biden “is not really a progressive,” because of whatever reason ranging from insufferable self-righteousness to inexcusable laziness...then they, too, will be guilty. They, too, will have blood on their hands.

So, let us not allow that to happen. For God’s sake, let us vote and vote blue. After all, the life we save could be our own.

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About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

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