Finding a pandemic scapegoat
At one point in the presidential campaign, Joe Biden pointed to the 220,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19 and said, “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain President of the United States.”
Now President Biden has topped that death toll himself.
Oops.
He’s obviously fumbling and bumbling with the pandemic he promised to “shut down” pronto upon becoming President.
His staff is reported to be huddling on what to have him do next. Perhaps he should get back to blaming Trump.
Whatever the problem, blaming Trump has heretofore proved to be a reliable panacea. The media, academia and Hollywood can always be counted on to join enthusiastically in blaming the ever-annoying Trump for . . . for whatever. Bad weather, crop failures, your aching joints, whatever.
In any event, Biden may have to return to blaming Trump for the same reason addicts keep returning to the source of their addiction. Their addiction has taken control of them.
Trump is the Democratic Party’s crack. Or — another analogy — he’s the party’s “Shmoo.”
Folks of Joe Biden’s advanced age demographic will recall the Shmoo craze of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Shmoos were the invention of Al Capp’s popular comic strip, “Li’l Abner.” They were lovable creatures who brought contentment to mankind by agreeing to take the rap for everything that went wrong. The Shmoos adored being kicked around and taking the blame.
Donald Trump is to the Democrats’ — and to the New York Times, to CNN, to the Washington Post, etc. — what the Shmoos were to the folks of Li’l Abner’s hometown, “Dogpatch.” The role of Shmoo evidently feeds Trump’s ravenous egotism as well as soothes his detractors’ hysteria.
Along with Trump, COVID-19 was, during the presidential campaign and afterword, Biden’s best ally. It enabled Biden to take cover and lie low, to secure his waning cognitive faculties from public view. The blabbering, blustery Trump was left alone, to make the case against himself.
Early on, you may recall, Biden and Kamala Harris not only blamed Trump for the mounting COVID deaths, they also cast skeptical aspersions on the “WarpSpeed” vaccine he was rushing into development.
Be very wary of that “Trump vaccine”! they warned. Who knows what testing corners had been cut by America’s version of Vladimir Putin!
In the campaign, Biden declared that he had a “comprehensive plan” to halt the pandemic dead in its tracks. Biden’s comprehensive plan turned out to be, ironically, putting all of his chips on the once-doubted Trump vaccine.
The Trump vaccine, previously critiqued as hurried into use, suddenly was now hailed as being just short of 100 percent effective. The vaccine was now suddenly a miracle elixir, a magical potion fully worthy of regulatory decrees declaring it mandatory.
Those who hesitate to embrace Big Pharma’s experimental inoculations — for which Big Pharma demanded and received full liability immunity — were, suggested Biden, yahoo science deniers, an infectious fifth column, un-American subversives who are exacerbating and prolonging a plague.
Yet despite the inoculation push — and despite other scientifically iffy measures such as mask requirements, school closings and arbitrary shutdowns of small (but not big) businesses — the pandemic lingers on.
Its various variants seemingly taunt the epidemiological Wizards of Oz who, from their cable TV lecterns, remonstrate with the unlearned masses over their ignorant superstitions.
Certain vaccine doubters — “anti-vaxxers” — of course didn’t need the Biden/Harris partisan comments to egg on their paranoia.
Is it then a realistic option for Biden now to kick the Trump Shmoo? To change directions and blame the continuing pandemic on Trump and his un-miraculous vaccine?
Could Biden pull off such a switch after having taken the directly opposite tack? Probably not. But remember, he pulled of such a switch before, embracing the Trump Warp-Speed vaccine after questioning it trustworthiness.
Casting doubt once again on the Trump vaccine also would seem to have the political advantage of revillainizing Big Pharma, heretofore a favorite nemesis of the Democratic Party left,
Normally, it’s also a shrewd political move to latch onto a foreign foe as a scapegoat to take the blame for . . . whatever.
And regarding the pandemic, China would seem to be the ideal candidate — all the more so since the scientific evidence does point to the distinct possibility of a leak in a Chinese lab and to the initial failure of the authoritarian People’s Republic of China to acknowledge and contain the spread of the virus.
But placing the blame where it possibly belongs compromises too many political VIPs and multinational corporate interests with sensitive Chinese investments at risk, e.g., Google, Microsoft, and, ahem, Hunter Biden & Family including maybe “the big guy.”
Russia also might be a tempting prospect for blame as well, were it not for the fact that the Kremlin already is loaded down beyond weight limits with blame for myriad other matters such as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential election defeat.
Eventually, pandemics exhaust themselves. Even the Black Plague did so, without a medical cure. What then will the party of maximum bossy government find as grist for its political mill?
What’s on the shelf to drum up panic and hysteria, to encourage acquiescence to the authoritarian impulses of those who always know what’s best for everybody else?
Fear not, there’s always something. For example, there’s the “existential threat” of — shudder, shudder! — climate change. Brace yourselves for the next big scare.