I get where Reverie is coming from. Even if he’s construed as a victim of his own derangement, no more tears need be shed than on behalf of any of the great monsters of history.

I immediately thought of Tolstoy’s child in the carriage which pulls on the straps inside and thinks it is in control of the carriage. It’s part of one of Tolstoy’s many skewerings of the Great Man theory of history that appear in War and Peace. In fact I pulled up a full text version and tried to find it but in vain. In any case Trump’s vanity is such that he thought he could command the SARS-CoV-2 virus but he was like that child in the carriage. He wasn’t the only one. I can raise in myself no fellow feeling on behalf of his victimhood, if that’s what it is, any more than on behalf of, say, Bolsonaro’s, or Putin’s. In any case the virus — the natural world — swamped him and others like him him. The tragic and scary thing is that it took 250,000 deaths before we could vote him out of office, and then just barely. If he had displayed anything that even looked like competence he would have been re-elected.

We. Are. So. FUCKED.

Idiot America — 40% and growing! — guzzles down bleach and begs for more. If I were younger I would move to New Zealand or someplace.