Trump’s Not Superman. He’s Superspreader.
Have
his supporters seen the light?
Opinion
Columnist
- Oct. 6, 2020
The most important question today is
not what President Trump has learned from his bout with Covid-19. Trump is one
of those leaders who never learns and never forgets, as the saying goes. The
most important question is what have we as citizens learned — and, in
particular, what have Trump’s supporters learned?
Because the debate over Trump himself
is over. The verdict is in: He cast himself as Superman, but he turns out to
have been Superspreader — not only of a virus but of a whole way of looking at
the world in a pandemic that was dangerously wrong for himself and our nation.
To re-elect him would be an act of collective madness.
But while I see it that way, and maybe
you see it that way, will enough Trump voters see it that way? That will depend
on Joe Biden’s ability to help them see all the big and small things where
Trump has been so fundamentally mistaken.
The list of “small”
things is long: Caution in a pandemic is not a sign of weakness, but of wisdom.
Face masks in a pandemic are not cultural markers, just common-sense protection
that says nothing other than “I’m a responsible person who wants to protect myself
and my grandparent, myself and my customer, myself and my co-worker, myself and
my neighbor from an invisible pathogen.”
Machismo in a pandemic is not strength.
Resisting mask-wearing in a pandemic is not safeguarding freedom. Lockdowns in
a pandemic are not an abridgment of our rights of assembly or speech. Blue
states aren’t more attractive to the coronavirus than red states. Scientists
are not politicians. Politicians are not scientists. Everything is not
politics. Lysol is a disinfectant for cleansing counters, not your lungs. Our
choices were never masks OR jobs but masks FOR jobs — the more your employees
and customers wear them, the more your business can stay open and flourish.
The big things Trump got wrong were
twofold. The first was how to lead in a pandemic. The quality of our leadership
in general is always a serious business, but in a pandemic, it becomes a matter
of life or death. Leaders at every level — teachers, scientists, principals,
presidents, school superintendents, hospital directors, C.E.O.s, mayors,
governors, media, parents — are all being looked to for direction today more
than ever because so many people feel disoriented and unmoored.
Donald Trump proved to be the worst
kind of leader in a pandemic — a morally reckless leader.
“When it comes to living in the face of
uncertainty, people tend to fall along a spectrum, reflecting their attitudes
toward individual freedom versus responsibility and their disposition toward
risk-taking,” explained Dov Seidman, the founder and chairman of the ethics and
compliance company LRN and the How Institute for
Society, which promotes values-based leadership.
You can see this spectrum starkly in
how people contracted the virus and dealt with Covid-19, said Seidman. “First,
there were those along the spectrum who were just unlucky and unfortunate —
wrong place, wrong time when a tiny invisible pathogen was present.”
Second, he added,
“there were frontline workers, heroes, who bravely ran toward the virus to help
save others and were infected by it in the process. Third, there were
individuals who were reckless and did not wear masks or stay six feet apart,
harming themselves, their family, friends and co-workers, too.”
And finally, said Seidman, there were
the leaders: “There were those in positions of power and authority — whom
people were trusting for lifesaving guidance. Some shouldered their
responsibility, knowing that in this time of crisis more people than ever would
heed their advice and emulate their example, if they behaved accordingly. Other
leaders, though, did not lead that way; they actually encouraged people to
ignore the science and let down their guard. That is moral recklessness.”
That was Trump.
As a result, concluded Seidman, “today,
we have a real crisis of leadership and authority — people don’t know who to
trust and what to believe. But what is clear is that leaders who can put more
truth into the world than they muddy and put more trust into the world than
they erode matter now more than ever — those are the leaders we admire and whom
history will remember well.”
Trump and Fox News and Facebook will
not be among them. They will be remembered for how much truth they muddied and
how much trust they eroded, which together have helped to compromise our
country’s cognitive immunity — our ability to sort out facts from fiction — and
our social immunity — our ability to face this crisis together.
The second big thing Trump got
completely wrong is: You don’t mess with Mother Nature.
This pandemic was a natural systems
event. But Trump looks at the world through markets, not Mother Nature. He and
his advisers consistently downplayed the virus so as not to panic the market,
whose rise they saw as Trump’s ticket to re-election.
At a White House briefing back in
March, Kellyanne Conway literally sneered at a reporter who implied in her
question that the virus was not being contained.
“Do you not think it’s being contained
in this country?” Conway barked at the journalist.
“You said, ‘It’s not being contained,’ so are you a doctor or a lawyer when
you’re saying it’s not being contained? That’s false. You just said something
that’s not true.”
Of course, it was
true. While Trump and his advisers were playing down the virus to protect the
market, Mother Nature was silently, inexorably, exponentially and mercilessly
spreading the coronavirus around our nation, irrespective of state boundaries
or political affiliations. Conway herself now has Covid-19.
In a pandemic, Mother Nature asks you
and your leader three basic questions. (1.) “Are you humble? Do you respect my
virus? Because if you don’t, it could hurt you or someone you love.” (2.) “Are
you coordinated in your response to my virus, which I evolved to find any crack
in your individual or communal immune system?” And (3.) “Is your adaptation
response to my virus grounded in chemistry, biology and physics? Because that
is all I am. If it is grounded instead in politics, ideology, markets and an
election calendar, you will fail and your community will pay.”
When it came to Mother Nature, Trump
was not humble, he did not seek national coordination in response to the virus
and he did not ground what strategy he had in chemistry, biology and physics,
but rather in ideology, politics, markets and an election calendar. Our nation
has paid a huge price for that.
Trump wanted us to believe that we had
only two choices: open the economy and ignore the virus, as he claims to
prefer, or close the economy and fear the virus, as he claims Democrats prefer.
It’s a fraud. Our real choices were to
open the economy smartly or to open it recklessly.
That is, open the economy by doing the
easy things, like wearing masks and social distancing, so people could shop, go
to school and go to work with a reasonable prospect of not getting sick, as Joe
Biden proposes, or open the economy recklessly, without masks, and force people
to risk getting sick every time they go to work or school, as Trump demands.
Trump did not respect Mother Nature or
us. All I can do now is pray that enough Trump supporters have learned that —
and vote against him between now and Nov. 3. The lives and livelihoods of many
Americans depend on it.
Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs
Op-Ed columnist. He joined the paper in 1981, and has won three Pulitzer
Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,”
which won the National Book Award. @tomfriedman • Facebook
