Friday, May 1, 2020

Trump's Feel-Good, Down-Home, Ol'-Fashioned Remedy!

"Step right up, ladies and germs (wait, too soon?) for Donald Trump's amazing fix-it, feel-good, down-home remedy for curing that nasty ol' virus! Yes, sir, one small glass of this amazing concoction will do you up right, made you whole again! Better than snake oil, more effective than leeches, I'm talkin' a' course about Donald Trump's Lysol! Who would like to sample just a taste of this do-it-all miracle drink? How 'bout you, sir? No? What about you, madam? It's gonna be...great. It's gonna be...fantastic."

Okay, you get the idea. Yep, our president made the colossally bone-headed, extremely dangerous, absolutely unfounded, foot-in-mouth recommendation that we start injecting disinfectants. By Trump's clearly scientific standards, this means meth addicts have already got a foot up in the fight against COVID 19.

Wow, just...wow. Thank God Clorox, Lysol and other corporate Gods stepped up quickly and told everyone to not do what the president suggested.

But Trump's got his followers (although, really? Still?), so it's no surprise there was a huge uptick in sales of major disinfectants following Trump's suggestion. But, oh what a fickle world politics is, Trump has now turned his back on his Trumpites and refused to accept responsibility for the surge in popularity of disinfectants. There hasn't been a clear number of fatalities due to this major Trumplosion, but I'm sure they've occurred.

Backpedal, Trump, backpedal like the wind! Now he says it was "sarcasm." Hmmm...didn't sound like it to me. And even if it was meant to be sarcastic, I'm kinda thinking what you all are: sarcasm is exactly what I look for in a leader, right?

Trump's cabinet members (Fox newscasters?) have warned him to stop going off page with his shoot first, duck later comments. How'd he respond? "Fine, these briefings are a big waste of time anyway. I'm taking my disinfectants and going home!"

Ooh. How so...so...*swoon*...presidential.

I'm reminded of two people: 1) the aforementioned snake oil salesman; 2) the late (not so great) Reverend Jim Jones. As everyone (excluding some millenials--Hey, it's sarcasm!) knows, Jones was a crazy-ass religious zealot in the jungle of Guyana who coerced 909 followers to drink the poison Kool-Aid. Sound familiar?
But what do I know? To try to make some sense of the post-Trump world, I took it out on my characters and stories in my collection, Twisted Tales from Tornado Alley. Things get kooky (but I'm kinda thinking "kooky" is the new "normal").
 

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