Denying reality kills people

To the Editor,

Time and again, President Trump seems to defy logic and reason. He has continually used rhetoric and taken actions that appear to be counterintuitive. President Trump did not accept or act on the explicit warnings of many who briefed him about the impending threat posed by COVID-19. When these threats could no longer be denied, he did not, and still has not, ever mobilized the full power and resources of the federal government to combat the spread of the virus and limit its destructive ferocity. This existentially awful health crisis handed him a perfect opportunity to display real and decisive leadership, and he blew it. As one political pundit once said, “a good crisis should never be wasted” and he has done exactly this.

Instead, President Trump’s penchant for magical thinking and his surreal monumental narcissism distorted his perception of reality. The iconic economic theorist John Maynard Keynes once said, “When the facts change, I change my opinions.” Not our president. Trump can never back down, never admit a mistake — even though an admission he was wrong about COVID-19 would have likely been widely accepted, and even though most of us already knew that he had indeed made serious mistakes in his handling of the crisis.

Donald Trump’s character failings will likely extinguish his chance to be re-elected. But those failings have extinguished the lives of thousands of Americans. 

Ken Derow
Swarthmore