Monterey Herald

Covidshmov­id, as long as you’re healthy

- By Stephen lessler Stephen Kessler is a Santa Cruz writer and a regular Herald contributo­r. To read more of his work visit www. stephenkes­sler.com

President Trump has convinced me not to panic about the pandemic: It’s over because he says so, there’s nothing to worry about, all those people on ventilator­s are actors hired by the fake-news media and child-sex-traffickin­g Democrats to trick the public into wearing masks and canceling football season and holding an election. America needs to get back to work and open for business despite the deep-state conspiracy of socalled scientists trying to close our bars because they don’t drink. COVID-19 is in the rearview mirror as we accelerate down a dead-end street.

My fellow Americans, attitude is everything. Magical thinking is real. If the president says so, in his omnipotenc­e it must be true. It’s pointless to lament much less protest the death of democracy — as when being violated, just relax and enjoy it. Donald Trump, Inc. is president for life no matter how big a landslide Joe Biden wins by. Biden is a squishy liberal who lacks the ruthlessne­ss and Supreme supermajor­ity and nuclear codes and armed forces to question much less overthrow the incumbent’s incompeten­ce and executive infallibil­ity and electoral undefeatab­ility.

Having dispensed with democracy and that pesky coronaviru­s, let us now do the same (as Republican­s have been doing for decades) for the hoax of climate change. Those fires raging all over the West and pumping tons more carbon into the atmosphere, spiraling the planet into everrising temperatur­es and drier droughts and wetter floods, are yet another Democrat attempt to damage the president’s brand. All we need to do to stop global warming is to stay cool and it will go away, like a miracle. Well, we do need to clean our forest floors, clear and chip a few million square miles of drought-killed trees and desiccated underbrush, but we can hire some illegal immigrants to do that dirty work. Then we can forget about climate change, light up a joint and enjoy the weather.

As long as they don’t start closing down newspapers or poisoning journalist­s with Novichok, I will be free to exercise my First and Second Amendment rights to my heart’s content. I can write whatever I want and shoot whomever I please because no matter what I do, it won’t make a bit of difference. This country belongs to Trump after Trump as far as the eye can see because that’s the way it has to be — and is, get over it — with Ivanka and Jared and Don Jr. and Kimberley and Eric and Lara and Tiffany and Barron nestled like Russian dolls one inside the other to rule us for generation­s to come.

That’s why we don’t have to panic, object, dissent, complain or protest, much less burn and loot. The Trumps have sworn on a stack of tax returns to take care of us no matter how many preexistin­g conditions we have or how underemplo­yed or homeless or otherwise marginaliz­ed or disenfranc­hised we are. It doesn’t matter because the Supremes say it’s all good and the rest is fake news and blue- state sour grapes. We live in America First and that’s what counts; we’re free to spew as much pollution as we please and eat ourselves to obesity and invest in the stock market and overdose on opioids and play video games and watch Fox News and shoot off our assault weapons and worship a white God and discrimina­te against whomever we fear and hate because that’s what freedom is all about.

If you’re still wearing a mask like a Biden bumper sticker, take it off, throw it in the ocean with the rest of the trash and breathe easy. The virus, like the climate, has vanished, it’s like a miracle, what a great country we live in — talk about law and order! That knee on your neck is a hoax dreamed up by Antifa-Democrats. And they’ll be taken care of soon enough.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

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