Tag Archives: pandemic

I don’t know why exactly, but as I try to think my way through the philosophical and moral morass raised by the fake President’s response to the virus, these words keeping ringing in my cranium: killing or letting die. That’s a distinction philosophers try to make. In a way it’s an easy. one. You stick a needle in a person’s arm and you inject poison. That’s killing. You (say you are a doctor) don’t stick a needle in a person and don’t inject anything. And the person dies. That’s letting die. Seems pretty clear, maybe.

Judith Jarvis Thompson writes that most people believe killing is worse that letting die. But she thinks up an elaborate example to cast provisional doubt on that assertion, as follows:

1. Alfred hates his wife and wants her dead. He puts cleaning fluid in her coffee, thereby killing her, and that

2. Bert hates his wife and wants her dead. She puts cleaning fluid in her coffee (being muddled, thinking it ’ s cream). Bert happens to have the antidote to cleaning fluid, but he does not give it to her; he lets her die. 1

Alfred kills his wife out of a desire for her death;  Bert lets his wife die out of a desire for her death. But what Bert does is surely every bit as bad as what Alfred does. So killing isn ’ t worse than letting die. 

So I guess I am wondering if the fake President’s plan is perhaps a form of letting die. His plan to just let the pandemic burn seems to me to parallel Bert’s failure to give his wife the antidote. Burt withholds the cure; the fake President fails to supply the leadership and the plan to curb the virus.

This is the sort of stuff stick in my brain these days.

While researching my neighbor’s claim that the President might still be sick, I found people claiming that he was never sick. They say, he is faking it. Sure we saw a helicopter descending, like a giant butterfly, over the hospital. But how do we know he was in it. And if he was in it, how do we know he didn’t go inside to hang out in the TV room and restaurant for three days. Yea, maybe, he had a fever. But that could have been a cold. And sure he was wheezing, but what else do you expect of an obese, three hundred pounder.

While lacking proof that he was eating burgers in the restaurant, these people point to his history as evidence. Faking being sick would not at all be out of character for a man who has no character. His is a history of lying, cheating, hectoring, bullying. He is a manipulator and a buffoon, a charlatan and a grifter. Lawyers, money and corrupt accountants have kept him out of jail. He breaks the law and he uses it to break others. He is the apotheosis of a sick system that sees no value in the individual except as he or she may be used to generate more money,

As to why he should fake being sick, they say, “For God’s sake, he was the central character in a reality TV show.” Can’t you figure it out? The sole purpose of a reality TV star is to keep the attention of the viewers focused on him all the time. To do that, you must constantly stir the pot. Make as much stink and trouble as possible. And what could be more dramatic than a President sick with a potentially deadly virus. That will keep them on the edge of their seats.

Don’t you see? While we concentrate on what might happen next, we are not paying attention to the fact that he and his cohort of corrupt vipers have failed to address the mess that is dragging us all down.

I am sad to say my identification with the un-sick President has brought me no relief. I had thought that my identification with him, as a fellow septuagenarian and fellow old white guy, would show me a path through the thicket of the plague. Where he would go, I would follow. But instead I feel led astray. I have been led, not through the thicket, but straight into it.

First he seems to assert, as his philosophy of the virus, pretend it doesn’t exist. Do not wear a mask, do not social distance, forget washing your hands. If you do these things, the virus dominates you. But then he gets the virus and immediately goes to a hospital, via helicopter, These actions suggest the virus really does exist and is not a hoax. Then he is given many medicines and pronounces himself cured and feeling better than he has in twenty years because, contrary to common sense, he is “extremely young.” But this miracle cure is not available to people like me.

I am no closer to being through the thicket than I was before all this. Then I learn from my neighbor, a fellow septuagenarian, that the Sick President may not be in fact cured. The virus may still be there in his body operating outside his consciousness and preparing for a counter attack. And it has only been a few more days that a week since he was diagnosed with the virus. Plenty of time remains for the virus to strike back.

My identification has led me into complete confusion. At this moment I am convinced I will get the virus and die in the years ahead. Because it is not a hoax and will be with us forever. Either that or I will lose my mind.

He may still be sick, my elderly neighbor said. She was out walking her dog. I was on my way to get the mail. How can that be, I said. He is cured. My hearing is going so I could not quite make out what she said. And when I tried to get closer she would move away like I had the plague or something. But I think she said something like this:

He may think he is cured. But maybe, the experts say, all those drugs they gave him only Suppressed the disease but did not cure it. Like Nyquil she said. You take it and it takes away that icky-sicky cold feeling, stuffed up nose and itchy throat. But in the morning you still have the damn cold.

So the drugs may have taken away the SYMPTOMS but not killed the bug itself. He may think and feel that he is twenty years younger. Or that he has dominated the virus. But it may be lurking just outside the range of his consciousness, hiding out, and preparing for a counter attack. And this counter attack she said would be most likely to come, if it comes, when the drugs they gave him begin to wear off.

When I asked when this might happen she began to talk about some big wig in a foreign land by the name of Boris something-or-other. He caught the plague and made many videos right after saying he felt twenty years younger. And after a couple of weeks he got sick as a dog. He started singing a different tune then, she said.

I do not trust old ladies or rumors started by so-called experts. But the idea that the Sick President might collapse at any moment made me feel more anxious than ever. In fact, I feel sick with anxiety and wonder if I might be coming down with something. These are not good feelings for a person in my age bracket.

The really sick President really wanted to get out of that hospital. I don’t blame him. I hate hospitals. They stink of disease and death no matter how much they try to cover it up with all manner of stinking disinfectants. And if you have to share a room you have to share the TV with some stranger. The food is atrocious, and they keep waking you up at night. My brother, who died of brain cancer, really complained about them never letting him sleep. What can you say about a place, he said, that commodifies compassion.

So I understand why the Sick President wanted to go home. It’s much nicer there, in your own bed, all snuggly, with your own remote, and some servant to bring you a nice cup of tea. And why shouldn’t he go home, what with the servants there. He has also his own little hospital room in the White House where he can lie around and tweet while they give him fluids intravenously. All at the taxpayers expense.

After all he is the President. He is not one of those all bent over and smelly little old ladies that you see creeping around the halls of the hospital and that are hard even to look at. (For God’s sake, can’t they keep them out of sight!) Who, you know, can’t breath and have a tube stuck down their throats, and who die completely alone because their children and grandchildren can’t get in the hospital.

So hell, yes, I understand why the sick President wanted to get out of that hospital. And he could because He is The President.