The decision to leave came when my wife, Carolyn, and I heard Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announce that Canadian citizens abroad displaying symptoms of COVID-19 would not be allowed back into Canada. That focused our minds.
That was Monday. However, even if we hadn’t heard that news, the blasé attitudes on display around us would have been enough to get us to pack up, change flights, and come home early.
There was the shopkeeper who rolled his eyes when I offered my elbow to his outstretched hand, and said, “Way more people die of the flu.” There was the woman at the gas station who, parroting Donald Trump, called the coronavirus pandemic “a hoax.” There were the two men laughing about reports that some Trump administration officials have taken to calling this disease “Kung Flu.” Chinese, get it?
Carolyn and I have been in the southwestern United States for the better part of a month. We’ve been fortunate to be in relatively isolated parts of this beautiful corner of the country. We’ve also had a close-up view of its reaction — at the federal, state, local, and individual levels — to this growing threat.
Put simply, too many people are still not taking this seriously enough. Where we are, in Moab, Utah, there are still many people in shops, restaurants, bars, national parks, and campgrounds and out on the street. And the blame for that lies squarely with President Trump, who has the single biggest bully pulpit in the land and has chosen to dissemble rather than to lead.
Trump has created something resembling a cult among many millions of Americans, people who believe every word that comes out of his mouth. Unfortunately, what comes out of his mouth is almost entirely nonsense, and, in the case of COVID-19, dangerous lies.
From “we have [the virus] totally under control” to “anyone that wants a test can get a test,” from “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better” to “just stay calm, it will go away” — and with dozens of mendacious stops in between — Trump has left his country woefully unprepared for what’s happening now.
As a result of his wilful ignorance, we’ve been watching a disaster unfold before our eyes. The federal government — led by a vapid, pathologically narcissistic imbecile and cheered on by his co-conspirators online and at Fox News — is in utter denial.
It has fallen to local officials and individual business owners to take matters into their own hands. Taking their cues from San Francisco, Washington State, and Italy — but not the White House — some public places and businesses are starting to close. Others are refusing to handle cash. Still others are maintaining a “six-foot” rule to keep people away from one another.
Still, this feels inadequate. It’s like Carolyn says, “If you have a fire in your house, you don’t wait until the whole house is engulfed in flames before calling the fire department.”
I’ve been highly critical of Trudeau in the past. And, while I haven’t been in Canada for a while, from afar, it appears that he’s channelling the wisdom of infectious-disease and public-health experts and making policy decisions based on the best available advice. In other words, it seems as though he’s doing his job.
Meanwhile, Trump is autographing Dow Jones readouts, rating himself 10 out of 10, and saying things such as “I’ve always known this is a pandemic. I’ve felt that it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
At a time when the U.S. needs effective leadership, it has what appears to be a dim third-grader at the helm.
Regarding America’s late entry into the Second World War, Winston Churchill is reported to have said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.” There were compelling, if mistaken, reasons for the U.S. to stay out of the world wars in 1914 and 1939.
History will record no such compelling reasons for the Trump administration’s delayed response to battling this virus. Its decisions, and lack thereof, have cost lives and will cost many more. Right now, the U.S. is a broken country.
We’ll be coming home on Thursday.
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