"Attack the enemy Chinese Virus!" Trump knows he can exhort his footsoldiers into action by striking "Wartime President" pose.
“. . .Americans who rage against political correctness are the most xenophobic — and most likely to vote Trump,” proclaims the AlterNet headline.
Fortunately, those of us not prone to infection from xenophobia have the ability to educate ourselves on how that disease spreads, protect ourselves against it, and arm ourselves with intelligence to thwart its vectors. If we take the correct action, we may be able to resist collapsing under a threatening epidemic that looms along side and uses the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic to spread among us.
Let’s begin our briefing by looking at how this new form of viral disease came to be, what the tactics and strategies of the invading xenophobic organisms are once they are deployed against a body politic, and finally, how we can best address it.
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Ask yourself some diagnostic questions: Is "Chinese Virus" contemptible racist labeling? Yes. Is it a dog whistle to Trump supporters? Yes. Is "Covid-19" contemptible racist labeling? No. Is it a dog whistle to Trump supporters? Surprisingly, yes it is. How did this happen? It was developed by Trump, his advisors, and the white supremacist elements in his cabinet as an antidote to political correctness, which is viewed by them as a debilitating social disease aimed at destroying the forces of MGATs.
“Chinese” or “Wuhan virus” has become the Trumpist faction's politically incorrect euphemism to be used by all Red Hats against the scourge of blueish political correctness. It is being deployed by the Orangeman-in-Chief and his reactionary far right followers against weakened ordinary Americans who are fatigued by cultists who bestride their neighborhoods in order to arm themselves against any threat of resistance from "elite liberal” linguists.
With his insistence that his troops use “Chinese” or “Wuhan” before they say virus, Trump has made the first aggressive mood in the conservative obsessives’ war by deploying a weapon of mass distraction. The redefining of words that appeal to the prejudices of his base destroys well defined terms that have never threatened anybody. From Trump insisting on misnaming a disease to pander to anti-Asian prejudice, he and his pleased supporters can claim a victory over a pandemic that they otherwise have no control over. Having now staked out his conquered territory, the wartime president will next pivot to face his generals and give them their marching orders to defend it.
What is the new strategy? Attack and accuse anyone who refuses to use his pejorative terms of being anti-American. Refusniks are to be persecuted, slandered, and demeaned as unpatriotic advocates for the “yellow peril” now sickening and killing red-blooded Americans. The left leaning, mostly atheistic, betrayers of American values who refuse to join the ranks who demand that true believers pray away coronavirus, attend Easter Christian services to celebrate the return to American prosperity, and kowtow before their obese idol are fair game, i.e. targets.
Be prepared to don your PPE when the right wing troll troops launch their information war and spread the propaganda that liberals prefer defending the Chinese but won't defend Americans because they say “Covid-19.” Do you see how the war has been escalated by the trollers? Those who want to misname a disease in order to denigrate a race will release a poisonous cloud of self-righteousness to defend their bigotry. Under cover from this disorienting fog, the xenophobic vectors will advance and overrun opposing positions with broad-brush condemnation of the civilian insurgents who persist in using the factual names, SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19. Militant tribunes of Trumpian shock jocks will soon have the guilty liberals lumped with foreign disease-mongers as being beneath contempt.
In case you are still among the ranks of the unaware, that part of the jingoistic campaign has already started.
Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton stated, “Anyone who complains that it’s racist or xenophobic to call this virus the Chinese coronavirus or the Wuhan virus is a politically correct fool, and they ought not to be listened to about anything.”
The last stratagem in the War on Reason is to put the racist labeling memes into the megaphone of wing nut media. In only a matter of days, the first operational blitzkrieg following Cotton's irrational accusation hit the airwaves.
Bill O’Reilly told Glenn Beck: “The worst thing in this pandemic virus outside of the actual illness itself of course is the political sic correct media still, still peddling garbage that hurts the American people.” Quoting an ABC News reporter, O’Reilly said in a whiny, mocking voice, “A lot of people think it’s racist if you call it the Chinese Virus. …It’s sickening.”
Of course, what is truly sickening about this soon-to-be election year epidemic of shaming is the SARS-CoV-2 virus is rife among the electorate. It’s stealthy, it’s invisible, it’s well nigh invincible, and frighteningly lethal. And it has only just begun its invasion of America.
Otherwise healthy citizens can be brought to their knees within hours of becoming symptomatic. The elderly and those with co-morbidities seem marked for death. We are huddled, often alone, sheltering in place, hoping to be passed over by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. No one is immune, not even the young. Children in their teens have fallen victim to the dread pneumonia that causes organ failure. When the victim is over 60 the decline can be so rapid as to require pulmonary support from a respirator in the emergency room and death can yet outstrip treatment in a matter of hours despite every medical intervention thought to be beneficial.
At a time when our humane leaders are urging us to stay at home and save a life, the Trump-crazed footsoldiers plot bomb attacks against “un-American” liberals and swear themselves — if they test positive — to commit coronavirus crimes in the name of their fuhrer. Crimes like intentionally sneezing and coughing on law enforcement and medical personnel to infect them with SARS-CoV-2 virus, or licking goods in grocery stores in hopes they will create contaminated fomites. Yet, all the while, it is those of us who eschew complicating the real threat to America from Covid-19 by calling it a made-up alternative name,who are the ones Donald Trump indemnifies as un-American.
Encouraging a minority of mindless cultists to turn an actual pandemic "enemy of the people" into an existential faked ethnic plague is peddling the garbage that really hurts the American people. Doubly so. It threatens to possibly compound deadly outcomes, not necessarily from viral infection.
Our best protection against an epidemic from the xenophobic racist element that supports Trump and his brand of bigotry is probably adopting the same behaviors that we do to protect ourselves from the virus, SARS-CoV-2, that causes the disease,Covid-19. Quarantine (ourselves) and lockdown (xenophobes).
Do this by learning about the real pandemic threat from credible expert sources and follow their directions. As for the bigots, recognize that they are voluntarily confined in their wrong-headednes. Refuse to entertain their messaging, but constantly counter it with knowledge, facts, data, verification, and humane caring for one another.
Now, go wash your hands and do battle against infection with coronavirus!
