As a member of one of the first families of the evangelical movement, we were raised to believe that the bible was true; -only- the bible. That science was a hoax. That the earth was only some 6,000 years old, and that proof to the contrary, say, the fossils of dinosaurs, were perhaps put there by Satan to trick us.
So as someone who grew up with a fundamentalist evangelical background, I can tell you firsthand how very dangerous an anti-science view can be when facing an epidemic like Coronavirus.
Which is why it is so unnerving that, after slashing Obama’s health budget out of spite, Donald Trump, the most ignorant, anti-science president if ever there was one, has put Mike Pence in charge of this government’s response to the Coronavirus. Mike Pence, an anti-science fundamentalist evangelical who, due to his own bigoted incompetence, presided over a major HIV outbreak when he was the governor of Indiana, resulting in a public health crisis that is studied as an example of what NOT to do in such cases.
Combine all of this with the fact that Donald Trump, a narcissitic, sociopathic, congenital liar who routinely displays a shocking lack of humanity and is not trusted even by his own people, is physically incapable of taking any personal or professional responsibilty for anything, and has thus blamed the stock market crashing, not on his own feckless response to this grave public health crisis, but on the Democratic candidates for President; an outright political lie designed to cash in on a medical emergency in order to forward his dreadful little career.
Whether we like it or not, the Coronavirus is going to bear out an undeniable truth on a global scale: If you do not have trusted leadership, whether it’s in China, Iran, or America, you can not deal with emergencies that suddenly come out of left field.
The kind of symbolic, almost prophetic nature of a theocracy buff like Mike Pence, a homophobic bigot who is anti-science in everything he believes, having been put in charge of a program that *requires* science, facts, and trust to make it run, by an untrustworthy president who has never had any relationship to facts and has, since taking office, defunded science projects, rolled back environmental protections, and pulled us out of global connections AT THE VERY TIME WE NEED THEM MOST is like a signal from TRUTH ITSELF that the last thing we need at this crucial moment in time is a bastard like Donald Trump in charge.
Good luck, America. We are in trouble.
