Today’s foray into words gives us three terms totally applicable to what has befallen the Trump administration since Friday.
The first is a word, schadenfreude. It’s German, and the Germans have given us great words over the years. The best words.
Schadenfreude means to take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.
The second is Shakespearian, (from Hamlet, actually). And it’s to be hoist upon your own petard.
You hear this expression from time to time, and it’s come to mean someone who is the main architect of his or her own demise. You know, poetic justice.
But what it means, literally, is being blown up by your own bomb, as a petard is a small explosive device.
The third is hubris, which is Greek, and means an unhealthy self-confidence and/or foolish pride.
So alrighty then. The plethora of Trump people who have contracted COVID-19 over the last few days (press secretary Kayleigh McEnany being the latest) is certainly the direct result of the overt carelessness of the administration about protecting people from this virus. This includes Donald Trump, who has, clearly, been hoist upon his own petard.
Schadenfreude becomes a key word of the day because, boy, oh boy, is it tempting to grab a megaphone and a 2-by-4 to make sure everyone understands the irony here, first to shout it out and second to hit people over the head to make sure they get it.
Come on. Admit it. If you’ve spent the last six months pacing around your living room wanting to break through the TV and throttle the President for his cavalier, scornful attitude toward COVID, this really is the very definition of ironic reversal. If you haven’t outright wished this upon him, you’ve at least entertained the thought. I know it’s not nice. And your better self has probably tried mightily to block these thoughts. But it’s hard.
And just when you’ve reached the point where you’ve calmed yourself down (sort of like Jim Carrey’s portrayal of Joe Biden in the Saturday Night Live cold opening) Trump pulls Sunday’s stunt, commandeering a driver and a crew to escort him around the streets surrounding the Walter Reed medical center to wave at his adorers and give the old “thumbs up.” This absolutely flies in the face of information given earlier in the day that his oxygen levels were low enough that he had to receive it medically.
Monday, upon announcing he was leaving the hospital, Trump told his disciples not to be afraid of COVID. This was before he knew the full extent of the conditions of the people in his circle who have been infected.
This is a classic example of extreme hubris. Clueless hubris, even.
So let’s follow the bouncing ball here. The President, through the hubris he routinely demonstrates, was hoist upon his own petard, having joined 7.6 million of his fellow countrymen in contracting a virus he downplayed as an exaggeration; and half the country is engaged in schadenfreude as a result.
How did this all happen? There’s no definitive answer, but there’s this: two Saturdays ago there was a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden where Trump announced his nominee to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. Hardly anyone wore masks, yet they were all seated close together. A good number of those who attended, including three U.S. senators, Kellyanne Conway, Trump and his wife Melania, adviser Hope Hicks, and McEnany, now have COVID. We call this a “superspreader” event. It would seem the most unlikely of coincidences that all of the above contracted COVID independently of one another.
Also, don’t forget former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who helped Trump prepare for that free-for-all last Tuesday, and who remains hospitalized with the virus as of this writing.
It’s necessary to point these things out. We need to know that these correlations exist, that carelessness where this disease is concerned can be deadly, and that even POTUS, FLOTUS and the rest aren’t spared if they don’t take extreme precautions.
But you can do it without gloating about it and doing your own victory dance — which is hard when you see him, even now, treating this thing as if it were a big joke.
In reality, it is sad that the President of the United States, arguably the most important person in the world, thinks so little of his responsibilities and his office, not to mention the lives of the people around him, that he’d put them all in such jeopardy.
And it’s that sadness that stays with me. I hope all of them recover, even the ones I consider lower than loathsome. Besides, it just isn’t sporting to hate on the afflicted. I like my objects of hate good and healthy!
Yet at the same time, perhaps — in the three months I hope he has left in his presidency — Trump develops a better understanding of how harmful the stance he took on this disease was to the welfare of the country and its citizens.
