How the Pandemic Helps Trump

I’m going to make the argument here that the pandemic has fit right in with Trump’s consistent long-term strategy and that it has been extraordinarily useful in furthering his goals. This contradicts the nearly universal belief that the pandemic has been as much of a disaster for him as it has been for the country. To see the value of the pandemic to Trump, we have to recognize that his goals are NOT the goals that the rest of us would have if we were in his shoes. We simply MUST make the effort to understand the pandemic’s value to him. Until we do so, it will remain impossible to understand why he continues to downplay the virus, to discredit the science and scientists, and to demand that all efforts to restrain the virus be lifted. Worse, this lack of understanding is setting us up for his ultimate goals to be realized. 

Here’s how the analysis will proceed. First, we’ll look at various effects that the pandemic has had on our society. Second, we’ll look at how Trump’s actions have magnified those effects. Then, we’ll look at how those effects fit in with Trump’s various strategies he’s demonstrated on other topics. Finally, we’ll examine how those strategies have drawn various groups to support him and we'll get a glimpse of why that is likely to continue to impact the United States...whether or not Trump wins this election.

Effects on the United States

Even considering the very high amount of damage the pandemic has inflicted around the world, the damage it has had on the United States is notably large. Here are eight major ways it has impacted us.

A Nation More Divided

The pandemic has been extraordinarily divisive. Who would have thought that people would physically attack each other over disagreements on the use of masks to stop a deadly virus? Yet here we are. People have quite literally been killed over this topic. Similarly, people have reacted with fatal violence when someone accidentally gets too close. 

For months, close to half the country didn’t even believe the pandemic was a real thing. They thought the danger was vastly exaggerated by the media in an attempt to hurt Trump politically. The number of disbelievers has since gone down somewhat but some people are still referring to it as a “hoax” or as the “plandemic”. In other countries there are disagreements on how to respond to the pandemic, but far less disagreement on whether or not the pandemic is real. I spoke with someone just two weeks ago who questioned the definition of “pandemic”, suggesting that we have expanded the definition for political purposes. She got this idea from QAnon. 

As we all know, arguments about what we should do about the virus (or not do) are also getting people all riled up. The anger is not just between strangers. Family and friends are furious at one another. People have written to advice columnists about setting boundaries or even abandoning relationships altogether because other people aren’t taking the same precautions they are. And on social media - the ultimate shaming forum - people lambast one another’s decisions about just how much social distancing is required and what level of social interaction is acceptable. These are friends. Family. Not enemies. Not people unknown to one another. Not even mere acquaintances. Actual friends. Or maybe by now they are former friends, I don’t know. I do know this topic is extremely divisive. And I know that Trump thinks that’s a good thing (we’ll get to that momentarily). 

Increased Racial Bigotry and Violence 

Racial prejudice, discrimination, and violence have increased dramatically around the world with the COVID-19 pandemic. This Wikipedia article covers the topic in great detail. The list of incidents in the United States is particularly extensive. 

Here's a snippet from that article on how people of Asian descent have been targeted:

'There were a few thousand incidences of xenophobia and racism against Asian Americans between 28 January and 24 February 2020, according to a tally compiled by Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. An online reporting forum called "Stop AAPI Hate" recorded "650 direct reports of discrimination against primarily Asian Americans" between 18 and 26 March 2020, this later increased to 1,497 reports by 15 April 2020, and most targets were of Chinese (40%) and Korean (16%) descents. According to a WHYY-FM report (21 April 2020), incidents of anti-Asian racism, including discrimination, racial slurs and violent attacks, especially towards Chinese Americans, were caused both by White Americans and African-Americans;[271] most cases remain unreported to the authorities.'

The article also discusses how antisemitism has also increased due to conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus: 

'On 23 March 2020, the FBI's New York office issued an alert reporting that extremists are encouraging one another to intentionally spread the coronavirus to police officers and members of the Jewish community if they contracted it. That same day, the FBI foiled a terrorist plot by a white supremacist to use a car bomb to blow up a Missouri hospital overflowing with COVID-19 patients, with the man having referenced far-right conspiracy theories that the virus was "engineered by Jews" online before he was shot and killed in an altercation with FBI agents. The next day, the Department of Homeland Security released a memo to law enforcement officials warning of the possibility of violent extremists taking advantage of the pandemic to commit terrorist attacks. The memo cites calls by far-right extremists to commit attacks on Asian-Americans and other targets, as well as spread the virus in diverse neighborhoods and places of worship. On 28 March, the FBI warned again that white supremacist groups were plotting to "expose Jewish people to coronavirus" by having members use themselves as bio-weapons" to infect areas Jewish people are deemed likely to visit.'

Key Pillars of Western Civilization Damaged 

Western thought is built on a number of key ideas which have been under threat for several decades now. The pandemic has contributed to the damage which won't be easily repaired. Here are some of the pillars of Western society that have been weakened:

Trust in science and scientists has been eroded. 

According to this article from The Hill: 

“A poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 67 percent of Americans have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the CDC to provide reliable information about the coronavirus. That number has dropped 16 percentage points since April. Trust in the CDC among Republicans has dropped a whopping 30 percentage points.” 

Here are some of the ways this erosion has occurred:

• A lot of anger towards scientists has been fired up because the forecasting models and recommendations changed as their understanding of the virus changed. Correcting understanding as new information comes in is a feature of science, not a bug. Nevertheless, the early errors were used to cast doubt on the role that science should even play in fighting the pandemic. 
• Conspiracy Theory: People think that 5G spreads the virus. 
• Conspiracy Theory: Trump's supporters believe that cures touted by Trump are being withheld by scientists en masse to hurt Trump politically. 
• Conspiracy Theory: Many people believe that the vaccine is a front for Bill Gates to inject us all with tracking chips.  Trump's ex-wife pushed this one.

Trust in the news media has gone down.

In July, an Axios and Harris Poll survey showed the media has lost the most approval out of any industry during the coronavirus pandemic, second only to airlines. The poll asked, “How has your view of each of the following industries changed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic?” Respondents dropped their rating of the media down by five percent. 

Trust in leaders have declined.

Per The Hill article linked above: 

“The Consortium poll found fewer than half, 47 percent, trust the news media, while just 43 percent say they trust President Trump and only 42 percent trust Congress. Those numbers have all declined precipitously from the spring, when most Americans rallied to their leaders as the crisis began to unfold."

The United States is more alienated from its allies.

A large part of the world thinks the U.S. has done an unfathomably bad job at controlling the virus. Opinions of the U.S. have reached record lows in some countries. It has reached the point where a United States passport is now reason to disallow entry into a large number of Western countries. Most people in other countries as well as most people in the U.S. believe other countries have done a better job in responding to the pandemic. 

The rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

According to this article, "Billionaire wealth jumped by more than a quarter during the height of the coronavirus crisis, according to new research, with a rally in stock markets helping the wealth of the world’s richest surpass the $10 trillion mark for the first time."

It isn't only billionaires the pandemic has helped, the upper middle class has also done quite well. At the same time those at the lower end of the wealth scale are losing their shirts. So yes, the pandemic is making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The Militia Movement Reenergized

Per this article: 

 ‘“Almost four months before the FBI arrested six men for plotting to kidnap Michigan’s governor, the bureau warned local and state law enforcement about a surge in militia extremists seeking to target government officials, particularly those they blamed for pandemic restrictions, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Yahoo News.’ 

 ‘“Militia extremists likely pose an increased threat to state and local law enforcement, government personnel and associated facilities due to a perceived resurgence in recent months of activity surrounding state-level gun control legislation, as well as concerns specific to state and local government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the FBI said in an intelligence bulletin dated June 18 and produced jointly with the National Counterterrorism Center.’ 

Note that the militias’ anger is directed at state and local governments, not the federal government. This is the opposite of what most militias originally wanted: a restricted federal government and more local control.

Fear, Anger and Adoration

While it is certainly true that Trump has lost a lot of voters that supported him before, it is also true that he has gained some new voters based on his rhetoric about the pandemic, and that he has strengthened the allegiances of earlier supporters who stuck with him. Emotions have a great deal to do with this.

Cure Worse Than the Disease

The pandemic provides a perfect opportunity for blame to be created and widely distributed. The bigger the problem and the more adversely it impacts people, the angrier they get about it. The anger will be directed towards whomever they are convinced deserves the blame.

Let's first note that there are quite a few things that could have been done early on to more effectively respond to the virus. Here are some of them: 

• widespread and rapid testing
• contact tracing
• quarantines in hotspots
• production of PPE for healthcare workers and N95 masks for the public
• encouraging the use of masks
• social distancing
• providing financial aid to individuals and businesses
• providing aid to state and local governments

State and local officials only have control over a very few of these and even then, what they are able to do is limited. Not only that, what little they are able to do can be and has been disrupted at the federal level. The blame then gets shifted to state and local officials - mostly Democrats - for the austerities that people have to suffer. It is all about the phrase “the cure is worse than the disease”. This tactic works because there is quite a bit of truth in the statement. 

Shutting down the economy to save lives does indeed do other damage, and some of that damage is severe. While it can be argued that dying is worse than becoming homeless, the fact remains that people are much more likely to get upset about the thing that actually happens rather than the thing that was avoided. This is especially true if there is vehement disagreement about whether the thing even can be avoided or should be avoided (and let’s just acknowledge that the disagreement in the U.S. couldn’t be much more vehement). If governors and mayors had let the pandemic run rampant and the numbers of dead and disabled due to Covid were even higher than they are today, more people would be furious about that. As it is, because most people haven’t yet been directly affected by the virus but they have been directly impacted by the mitigation strategies, it is the mitigation strategies they are more likely to be upset about. 

When stressed, look for strength

When people are stressed, it's a natural tendency to look to people who can give them some sort of assurance that things will be okay. For those who have enough savings to ride out an extended lock down, the main focus of stress is the virus itself. Those people are more likely to be willing to think that lockdown measures are good. On the other hand, for those who are in severe financial danger from lockdown measures, the financial burden is the main source of stress. Because the financial problem is theoretically not addressable (even though Europe managed to address it much better than we have), there is no better assurance than denial of the pandemic itself. It gives people the feeling that something actually could be done (just going back to normal) which makes them both angry at the people who aren't doing it and appreciative of the people who are trying to do it. 

Conspiracy theory fears

Another issue that some people are angry about is that they believe that Democrats will mandate a COVID vaccine. Or they think the vaccine is a front for Bill Gates to implant tracking chips in them. Or both. These conspiracy theories are courtesy of QAnon and they have made some people very afraid and very angry.

Election Disrupted

Many of the ways the pandemic has disrupted the 2020 election are obvious, but the one I think is the most important is not getting the attention it deserves. It is this: the pandemic enabled Trump to completely rewrite the entire narrative around election security. For the first three years of Trump’s presidency, Democrats in Congress pushed for steps to be taken that would ensure our electronic voting infrastructure - which is managed at the state and local level - couldn’t be tampered with. There was constant pushback from Republicans in Congress on this issue. 

Then the pandemic hit and Democrats’ concerns around voting turned into concerns about how voting might endanger everyone’s health. That led to the push for expanded mail-in voting. Which, in turn, gave Trump the opportunity to claim that the election would be rigged by mail-in ballot fraud. That led Democrats to defend the security of mail-in voting by insisting that the election as a whole will be secure.

See what happened there? Democrats went from being seriously concerned about election security - and (unsuccessfully) trying to make sure those concerns got addressed - to insisting that our elections are secure. That’s a propaganda coup for Trump. 

Here are just a few of the other ways the election has been disrupted:

• Democrats self-limited their early efforts at campaigning and voter-registration to online methods so as not to contribute to the spread of the virus. Trump and Republicans took the opposite approach and viewed people's votes (for them) as more important than some percentage of lives lost so Republicans kept up the rallies and door-to-door campaigning and so on.
• Polling locations / ballot drop boxes are limited to suppress the blue vote.  In Texas, there is only one ballot drop box per county. Blue counties tend to be very large, like Harris County with a population of 4.6 million. Most counties are much smaller than that. Many of them have just a few thousand or even just a few hundred residents. And those rural counties tend to be very red. If you want to be outraged, here's the list of Texas counties and the population of each. 
• A significant portion of the population has to rely on the U.S. Postal Service to cast their ballot. The delays with the mail will undoubtedly disenfranchise a lot of voters. It may even tip the election.

The Pandemic is Distracting

The pandemic has taken over the news cycle, drastically reducing our ability to pay attention to other very important things that the Trump Administration has been doing. Some of the things that have not received enough attention due to the extreme focus on the pandemic are: 

• the firing of 5 inspectors general, including for the intelligence community and for the department of defense
• removed leadership of the National Counterterrorism Center, a group that is supposed to "connect the dots" using information from across intelligence agencies to identify terrorist threats and coordinate response to those
• results of the the Senate Russia Investigation
• the assault on the environment 
• lawsuits to cripple Congress
• executive orders to cripple the federal government
• Trump's own corruption in his financial affairs
• foreign affairs - such as the fact that Putin pulled off a soft coup in Russia, rewriting the constitution and ensuring he can stay in power until at least 2036. 
• even the fact that Russia put bounties on the heads of American soldiers and Trump couldn’t care less about it received only a tiny amount of news coverage.

The Health of the Nation Has Been Severely Damaged

The pandemic has severely damaged the health of our nation in multiple ways as everyone (who accepts the virus exists) has noticed:

• Over 9 million cases and just under 230,000 deaths so far
• CDC estimates that 1 in 5 people who are symptomatic have some symptoms that linger - some of whom appear to have long-term disability
• hospitals in hotspots are overwhelmed
• depleted the financial reserves of our citizens, many of whom can no longer afford fundamentals such as housing and food
• depleted the financial reserves of local and state governments

Trump's Actions Around the Pandemic

Trump's actions have vastly magnified the effects described in the previous section. Many of his actions impact several topics discussed above simultaneously. 

What Trump has said and done: 

• said it will go away on its own 
• promised 27 million tests by end of March (there were 1 million delivered)
• said/still says it's almost gone
• insists masks don’t work
• said kids don’t get sick
• gave himself credit for how wonderful the U.S. is doing (although we have been doing terribly all along) 
• insulted scientists and insisted they were wrong
• suggested light and bleach could be used as treatments
• called it the “China Virus” and “Kung Flu” 
• mocked people who wore masks
• demanded efforts to restrain virus be lifted
• tweeted "liberate Michigan"
• blamed Democrats for the fact that people got sick and so many have already died 
• claimed efforts to restrain the virus are attempts by Democrats to create a fascist state
• claimed efforts to address financial impacts are attempts by Democrats to create a socialist state
• gave implicit support to QAnon (which espouses numerous conspiracy theories related to the pandemic, among other topics)
• when asked, Trump refused to condemn QAnon
• Trump's immediate family members have retweeted QAnon
• Republican allies in congress have retweeted Qanon
• Trump's ex-wife pushed the micro-chip tracking theory on the vaccines 
• Trump himself has retweeted QAnon conspiracies

Leading by example encourages spread of virus: 

• rallies without masks
• publicity stunt when he ripped off his mask after returning from Walter Reed
• no social distancing
• put those around him at risk (including military leaders who then had to quarantine) 

Using his presidential powers:

• closed the border with China but exempted U.S. citizens, green card holders, and some other groups - all who would have been just as likely to be infected. Those who came through were neither tested nor quarantined. They were free to spread the virus.
• publicly announced he was closing the border with Europe without bothering to tell European leaders first
• PPP was given to companies associated with him and his administration
• administration gave Wall Street a heads up that there would be a problem
• demanded praise from governors in exchange for federal assistance
• demanded that the FDA approve treatments that the general scientific community was skeptical of
• made states scramble for PPE
• swooped in and outbid them for said PPE
• withdrawing U.S. from World Health Organization
• continues to push lawsuits to destroy the Affordable Care Act  
• and to encourage even more adoration, he promoted a commemorative coin sold in the White House Gift Shop: "Trump defeats COVID-19"

How This Fits With Trump's General Strategy

Trump has managed to unite a group of ideologies that most of us would not have considered unifiable. While they are not all united with each other, they are all united behind him. This is remarkable due to how extreme some of those ideologies are. Here's a partial list of the various groups and the beliefs that Trump has tapped into to get them to follow him:

• Evangelicals who believe Trump will usher in the End Times and see that as a good thing
• Accelerationists who believe reelecting Trump will accelerate economic collapse in order "wake people up"
• Those who believe there is a cabal of powerful people that have all conspired together for thousands of years in order to run the world
• People who believe Democrats are Satan-worshippers running a pedophile ring
• White supremacists and antisemitists
• People who emotionally align themselves with the Confederate side of the U.S. Civil War.
• People who see the world as unfair and have been convinced that Trump has been treated unfairly - just like they have
• People who like a few of his policies: criminal justice reform is an example...never mind the fact that he still thinks the Central Park Five are guilty
• People who believe in locking up political opponents simply because they are political opponents
• People who are anti-immigration 
• People who think that the pandemic is a manufactured crisis to implant tracking chips into people
• People who are pro oil and gas industry
• People who are pro law & order, which may include any or all of the following:
• against social unrest, even when it occurs as a response to extreme injustice
• for an authoritarian, hierarchy-based societal structure
• those fearful that they personally might become a victim of crime  
• Already wealthy people who are financially doing even better with the pandemic
• Poor people who are worse off due to the pandemic and believe Democrats are at fault for attempting to slow the spread of the virus
• Science deniers, including some or all of the following (and more):
• disbelieve global warming
• distrust mainstream medicine entirely
• believe the world is flat
• believe that lizard-people are ruling the world
• believe that chemtrails are actually harmful chemical/biological agents sprayed in the sky for nefarious purposes  
• And, of course, conservatives who want to remake the courts to advance conservative goals (goals which themselves are an odd mix but were united long before Trump):
• pro-Christian religion
• anti-abortion
• anti-LGBTQ rights
• believe that women's primary role should be in the home creating an environment where family values reign
• for creationism being taught in schools
• against science where it conflicts with creationism
• for universal celebration of Christmas
• for states' rights
• for corporation rights
• against socialism
• for allowing the rich to acquire and keep enormous amounts of wealth, even when that wealth is acquired in a way that harms society as a whole
• against government caring for the wellness of those who are disadvantaged (anti welfare, anti universal healthcare) 
• pro gun rights / anti any-limitations-whatsoever on guns

It's an eclectic mix. And some of them are directly at odds with one another. If you are a Trump supporter, you might object to my including some of these in the list because you don't hold those beliefs yourself. You might even think Trump is against those beliefs because he's managed to convince you that he supports your opposing belief. You're missing the point. The point is that other people who support Trump do hold these beliefs and they support Trump specifically because they think he holds their beliefs too. 

So how has he managed to get all these different people to support him? Let's take a look.

Divisiveness as a strategy

Trump has used the "divide and conquer" strategy throughout his short (but much too long) political career. In the 2016 campaign, he was so divisive to the GOP that a lot of Democrats were cheering about the impending demise of the Republican Party. It didn't quite work out that way. 

Then he got elected and kept up the attacks on his own party. Republicans had control of both the House and Senate at that time so most Democrats viewed it as a stupid approach. But it worked. He sacrificed a handful of moderate democrats who were never going to fall in line behind him anyway. Doing so in such an aggressive and destructive way ensured that the Republicans who didn't have the courage to face such an assault wouldn't speak out against him even when they were privately aghast at what he was saying and doing. By going on the record again and again defending him, eventually they had to believe the defense themselves. Knowing that you are not living up to your own morals is so hard to face that people will change their beliefs to reconcile thought and action. The term for it is dissonance theory. The linked article puts it more clearly: "Changing your beliefs to be in line with how you acted may not be the most principled approach. But it is certainly easier than changing how you acted." At any rate, Republicans got in line. 

More recently, Trump used this strategy with the BLM protests. He sent federal troops into Portland and other Democrat-led cities despite pleas from the mayors of those cities and the governors of those states to stand down because increased police presence would only increase tensions. This is part of his efforts to divide the Democratic Party, pitting moderates against progressives (who he falsely claims are for the looting). He's referred to this division in the Democratic Party as "the Democratic Party civil war". 

Racial bigotry as a strategy

Encouraging racism makes it spread and makes the sentiment stronger in those who already feel it. That makes white supremacists and other racists a bigger and more loyal constituency to whomever is willing to back them. Trump has made it clear that he backs them. In return he has their very vocal support.

You might object to yet another accusation of racism directed at Trump. Lots of people call him a racist. But if you support him - and you don't see yourself as racist - then you are not going to want to admit that his dog whistles are actually dog whistles. Trump helps you deny it to yourself by occasionally also throwing out a few comments against racism. The term for this is "speaking out of both side's of one's mouth". It's a common technique of using contradictory statements to appease opposing groups. 

Communication is less about the actual words said and more about what people understand is being said. And let's be clear: white supremacists definitely understand what he means when he tells them to "stand by". The fact that you can't see it because you don't want to is just an indication of how effective the "both-sides-of-ones-mouth" technique is.

Destruction of key pillars of the Western World as a strategy

We'll get to the "why" he might want to do this momentarily. For now, let's just note that he has been working on this destruction effort since before most of us were even paying attention to him. His attacks on the media and on our elected leaders and even on our civil servants is relentless.

This article in Nature goes into detail about his attacks on science. Here are a couple of quotes from that article that are relevant to the pandemic:

'“This is not just ineptitude, it’s sabotage,” says Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York City, who has modelled the evolution of the pandemic and how earlier interventions might have saved lives in the United States.'

'“He has sabotaged efforts to keep people safe.” “I’ve never seen such an orchestrated war on the environment or science,” says Christine Todd Whitman, who headed the EPA under former Republican president George W. Bush.'

Distraction as a strategy.  

The idea here is to inundate people with so much information, so many issues, so much anger that they end up swimming in the chaos. Ultimately, it is their own intense emotional response to what is going on around them that determines which current they get caught in. At that point they can't even see any of the other issues - or at least not see them well enough to think they matter in the slightest.

The QAnon rabbit hole is a perfect example of this. People get totally swept up in the various conspiracy theories touted there. There are so many theories promoted there that even adherents to just a subset of them dismiss as bonkers other subsets of theories promoted. They do this by saying "well, QAnon is actually a group of people and they aren't all right about everything." But the torrent of information comes so fast and is so gripping that people latch on to whichever set of fabricated stories outrages them the most. And away they go. They are caught in a riptide. Nothing else matters.

And then everything else that is happening - everything else that people might actually become alarmed about if they were paying attention to it - is missed.

Reenergizing the militia as a strategy

This seems fairly obvious, though perhaps hard to accept. If you are trying to become a dictator (by definition, that requires the overthrow of the government if it is built on democratic principles), you are going to have to use at least some force to do it. It's true that a large part of the population will get in line behind an autocratic leader due to one of the strategies listed above. But those manipulation techniques will not persuade everyone to support the leader. The holdouts will have to be brought into submission with force. Until the country's military can be stripped of anyone not sufficiently loyal to the leader, the next best option for subduing the citizens are militias that have aligned themselves with the leader. If local police forces will join them all the better. 

By the way, he's got the support of the police unions, too.

Fear, anger, and adoration as a strategy

It doesn't matter what the emotion is. Any emotion that is felt intensely has a way of taking control of the thought processes. Extremely strong emotions give you tunnel vision.

Blame is a useful tool here. If other people and groups can be assigned blame for something that really upsets people, the people who are upset tend to get very angry with those accused. As we know from the success of QAnon, it is not even necessary that the thing they are accused of be real. But not everyone falls for stories about non-existent problems. A real issue on the other hand, such as the current pandemic, gives the blame tactic a vastly wider reach. It makes a whole lot of people very angry with a whole lot of other people. The pandemic provides a perfect controversy for such blame. That is, it does if you can manage to turn the pandemic into a controversy. That making it a controversy part has clearly been successful. 

Creating intense and disproportionate emotion has been a key political strategy on the right for years. Inciting extreme anger is how we got to the point where a very large part of the population will vote for whomever says they are against abortion regardless of what their stance is on any other issue. Families without food and shelter? No problem. Kids separated from their parents? Seems okay. Black people dying at the hands of police? They deserved it. Black women wanting access to an abortion? God NO! Save those precious black fetuses!!! We'll KILL any doctor that tries to hurt those poor fetuses!

They can't help it. This is how strong emotions work. It's good if you want to manipulate people. Not so much if you want democracy to survive.

Trump has exploited emotions in ways too numerous to mention them all. The key is that he holds himself up as the only person who will protect people from whatever thing they are fearful or angry about. He even does this in ways that conflict with one another. As just one example, he portrays himself as the only person who can deliver a vaccine quickly. This addresses the fear that people have about the virus and the anger they have about life not being able to get back to normal. He contradicts scientists to insist that the vaccine will be available very, very soon and this makes people angry with scientists. People get mad about not getting the vaccine fast enough. At the very same time, he promotes QAnon who drums up fear about getting the vaccine. QAnon claims that the vaccine is a conspiracy to inject us with tracking chips. Note that these fears are on opposing sides of the issue. Yet Trump manages to portray himself as the savior to both sides.

But it isn't just Trump's supporters in whom he has brought out strong emotions. He does that with pretty much everyone. A lot of people on the left have been really stressed about the virus and stressed that everything that could be done to mitigate the problem is being blocked at every turn. The result is a hyper-focus on the pandemic. And inability to see anything else. 

All these emotions running high at all times is very polarizing, too. Obviously.

Disrupting the election as a strategy

Most of this is obvious. The non-obvious part was brought up earlier but bears repeating: Trump completely rewrote the narrative about election security. Rather than there being concerns about security of the voting machines and other election-related computer systems (due to Russia's prior snooping around in those very systems), it became a denial of concerns about mail-in ballot fraud. That could turn out to be a problem.

Damaging the health of the nation as a strategy

"Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him."

- Sun Tsu, The Art of War

The question you might be struggling with is: Would Trump intentionally do such a horrible and nefarious thing as allowing vast numbers of people to die from an illness just to further his own goals? 

Well, we know there is at least one thing in his personality that supports an accusation that he views leveling devastation as something to be admired. Remember when Trump’s campaign tweeted a meme of Trump as Thanos - the super-villain who destroyed half of all life in the universe? How many people envision themselves as a super-villain in their normal day-to-day job? A lot of his followers might think the super-villain is a super-hero because the meme was about wiping Democrats off the earth and that’s a good thing, right? The point is that destruction is not a problem for him. Including killing masses of people, or at least it’s not a problem in his imagination. And it's not taboo enough to stop him from saying it out loud. On the contrary, he aspires to it. I contend that this aspiration extends to real life and that he would have no qualms about destroying anybody and anything if it would further his self-serving goals. 

What else supports the existence of such a personality trait?

• his non-response to Khashoggi’s murder
• his non-response to Russia poisoning political enemies both at home and abroad
• his non-response to Russia putting bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers
• his calls to reinstate the use of torture 

I'm sure I could find more if I looked.

Coincidentally, that Thanos tweet occurred on 12/10/2019 - right about the same time the virus took hold in Wuhan. The tweet was presumably in response to the two articles of impeachment which were unveiled that same day although I don’t think anybody ever really figured out what Thanos has to do with anything. To most of us, the Thanos meme made about as much sense as that COVFEFE tweet. 

The End Goal

Like many of you, I think Trump wants to be a dictator. This whole thing isn't just about him, though.

Destroy the Foundation of the Western World

A dictatorship and a functioning democracy are mutually exclusive. They simply cannot coexist. This is by definition. Therefore, if someone wants to be a dictator, they must first destroy democracy. 

Democracy relies on the belief that the people we elect to represent us (at least the majority of them) will indeed have our best interests at heart. This is not to say that we shouldn't expect some corruption in the halls of power or that we shouldn't try to root that corruption out, but that we cannot believe that every leader is corrupt-to-the-core merely because they have been elected to those halls. When every last ounce of belief in all of the people who represent us is destroyed - whether those people be our elected leaders or career civil servants - the end of democracy is near. 

Democracy is a natural product of an educated society, a free press, and power (meaning money) being at least somewhat widely spread across society - so if you want to be a dictator, all these things must go. 

To achieve a goal this big one needs to align oneself with allies that also want the same goal. So who else wants to destroy the Western World Order? What groups should a wannabe dictator like Trump align himself with? This looks like a pretty good list:

• Religious zealots who want to usher in the End Times  
• The "evil cabal" conspiracy theorists 
• Neo-Nazi fascists 
• Putin  
• Other strong-arm leaders around the world  

Check, check, check, check, and check! He's got them.

But that's probably not a large enough portion of the population to succeed at this effort so he'd need to add a few more groups. The groups to add don't have to completely want to destroy Western Civilization, they just need to want to destroy select pieces of it. Like these people:

• Adherents of accelerationism 
• People who distrust science (like anti-vaxxers)  
• Wealthy people who want to tip the balance of power even more in their favor 
• Strongly devout Christians who believe that science is a threat to creationism and that the Bible should dictate our morals and our laws

Again... check, check, check, and check!

Still More Groups Needed

Even with all of those groups above who want to destroy Western Civilization altogether or who merely have a problem with certain aspects of it, Western Civilization is still pretty popular. That makes it necessary to get people to align with Trump for other reasons. Given compelling enough reasons to support Trump and being helped along in denying the reality of the groups they are joining in doing so, they will fall in line behind him. These people have done just that:

• Moderate Republican leaders who don't want to lose their seats
• Republicans who want to rewrite the Constitution to align with their world view
• People who are wealthy or upper middle class who want their financial fortunes to keep rising
• Conservatives who have always voted Republican and can't stand the idea of not doing so
• People who believe Trump's claims that he's been treated unfairly
• People who are afraid of socialism
• People who think Democrats are to blame for the damage done fo society by the pandemic
• People who believe Trump is "draining the swamp"
• People who feel supported in their beliefs in other bizarre conspiracy theories that are lumped in with the QAnon ones that Trump and team tout

Again...all checks.

Consolidate Military and Police Forces

This will certainly be useful if the election is contested and protests erupt in the streets. I don't think anything more needs to be said at the moment.

Some Final Thoughts

I do want to point out that while I tried to be very methodical in the analysis and broke it down into fairly small steps in order to make the case that Trump has quite intentionally exploited the pandemic to his advantage, this is not supposed to be a description of how I believe Trump thought it through or decided what to do. To a person like Trump, it’s not necessary to think the whole thing through in a step-by-step manner because the actions to create a chaotic environment would be rather intuitive. Each of the actions he has taken would come naturally to someone who - as a matter of personality - stirs things up and creates discord. 

Also importantly, the actions don’t depend on one another to have an effect. It’s not necessary, for example, for the anti-Asian feelings to widely take hold in order for the pandemic to still be extremely divisive. The anti-China rhetoric simply adds fuel to the fire. Trump is very good at identifying possible sources of fuel to create chaos and then turning those topics into that fuel. 

As a final and perhaps most important point: regardless of whether or not Trump wins the vote, we can be sure that the people and groups he has aligned himself with will continue their objectives. People who have inadvertently found themselves aligned with those malicious groups had better realign themselves with democracy in a hurry here. If they don't, we are in for a world of hurt.