Every once in a while, someone says something of which you are aware, but you hadn’t “felt,” or at least seen quite so clearly. Jennifer Rubin just reset my day when I read her column, in which she states that it is possible that Trump’s “delay” in getting on board with the seriousness of the Coronavirus (something that maybe we can say happened a week ago, some might say a couple of days ago), will go down in history as the single costliest “misstep” in United States’ history.

Rubin lets Trump have it, the cold truth:

President Trump’s delay in preparing for the coronavirus might be the costliest presidential bungle in history, one that will likely increase the number of deaths and damage the long-term well-being of Americans. (The pathetic attempt to rewrite history to keep the Trumpian myth intact will not protect his reputation nor that of his enablers, including those who voted for acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial.) He has also poisoned the well of public opinion.

To the extent that the column has some good news, it is in reporting the results of the surveys that no show that Trump is no longer fooling many people – some, but not that many:

A new NPR-PBS NewsHour–Marist poll finds only 37 percent of Americans “now say they had a good amount or a great deal of trust in what they’re hearing from the president.” Sixty percent have “not very much or no trust at all in what he’s saying.” Imagine if in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 60 percent of the population didn’t trust President George W. Bush. The understandable loss of trust in a compulsive liar is itself a crisis that might prevent the public and other politicians from taking action to protect themselves.

I have been telling my daughter this for the last 3-4 days, that this is what it was like after 9-11 when you realize that time will be measured in units “before 9-11, and after” and now “before Coronavirus and after.” We could add a third page-break to that evaluation, life in the United States before Donald Trump, and life afterward.

Then there is the damage done to our faith in “who to believe” when information is critical. Trump has – for his selfish purposes – been pounding away at media credibility (as well as the “Deep State” credibility, including the FBI, the CIA, and the State Department, all entities which could have “hurt” him at various points, but now entities in which we need to trust).

Trump has also convinced his followers that they cannot trust the information provided by the media (despite his 180-degree reversal to align himself with the weeks-long effort by the media to warn of an unprecedented national crisis). “When it comes to the news media, two-thirds of Democrats trust the information they hear coming from them; independents were split, and Republicans overwhelmingly said they do not trust what they’re hearing from the media,” NPR reports. 

Call it “inevitable, intentional conditioning” straight out of Russia, or at the very least, modeled on Russia and autocrats everywhere. To his loyalists, only trust the words coming from the “leader.”

As I wrote this morning, I was in a store just the other day, the policeman behind me – who’s actually an okay guy, I know him – kept discussing, to no one in particular, that the flu killed more people, and that everyone was overreacting. We all know which news station he watches, and who he votes for.

It shouldn’t be this easy to mark our fellow Americans, based on their overall cluelessness, or hostility to truth. We shouldn’t be this divided. We will all sink or swim together. Concerning how Trump has “bungled” things in our society? He has been bungling stuff long before the Coronavirus, and the costs go far beyond that associated with the Coronavirus. Indeed some costs can only be repaid through time, and significant effort.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom