Oh for a genuine fifth grader in charge! nnPundits have likened this president to a fifth grader. His gaffes are legion: Pearl Harbor? What was it? George Washington’s planes in the air? North Korea’s “nice guy” leader?
But we are maligning fifth-graders.
A genuine fifth grader knows the limitations of his knowledge. Even the smartest fifth-grader recognizes that the pupils in grades six and up know stuff he hasn’t yet learned. His teacher knows more, and he knows the teacher knows more. Parents know more; parents regularly remind their children of that fact. Genuine fifth graders come with a genuine dose of humility vis a vis their intellectual talents.
This president, though, thinks he knows more than the experts he summons, then dismisses. Scientists? Bah? Physicians? Pay them no heed! Meteorologists? What do they know? Statisticians? Numbers-guys. He shuns the wisdom of experts, because he knows better. Instead, he marshals a cadre of sycophants who echo his line-of-the-moment. Witness the son-in-law, Jared, turned, presto, from diplomat to supply czar.
His latest pronouncement: what do we have to lose with a “wonderful” (his adjective) drug, hydroxychloroquine? It has not gone through the clinical trials that safeguard our drugs. It could work well, for some people at some stage of the virus; it could work no better than a placebo; it could harm some patients. We won’t know until scientists put it through the paces. Yet he urges its efficacy. Maybe the shareholders of Sanofi spurred him; he is a shareholder. A well-connected friend owns stock. But skewing tests to focus on one politically-connected drug takes attention from tests of other plausible treatments. Worse, this drug helps people with lupus and malaria. In boosting hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19, he spurred the stockpiling that has made the drug scarce for the people who depend on it. His latest plug: zinc, another “wonderful” additive from the Quack-in-Chief.
A genuine fifth-grader cannot dismiss the teachers who grade him, or the parents who rebuke him. The officials who call out this president have a short tenure. Repeating his television show, he fires them. The latest casualties: the inspectors general charged with overseeing the mistakes that government makes. He cannot fire the journalists who come out for his press-briefings, but he disparages them, and their news outlets, with the vitriol that would earn a fifth grader a “time out.” His response to the World Heath Organization, which criticized the United States’ slow response to the epidemic: eliminate their funding.
A genuine fifth grader does not lie with impunity. A teacher or a parent will call out the lie. Have we done a truly incredible job of containing the virus? No. Have we ensured the safety of the nurses, physicians and medical staff who work in hospitals? The pleas for more protective equipment, including masks, have not spurred a rapid response, whatever the rhetoric. Enough ventilators? Not at first, when this president parried pleas with “I am not a shipping clerk,” leaving it to states to barter and bargain on their own. Did he act early to combat the virus? No. When much of the world was “social distancing,” he was promising open churches on Easter Sunday. Are we testing more people than any other nation? Not per capita.
Finally, a genuine fifth grader is taught that greed is not a virtue. He is taught to share. The businesses that have stepped in to help during this dystopia merit praise. Luxury hotels, like the Four Seasons, the St Regis, and the Plaza, have given up beds for emergency medical staff and patients needing isolation. Not this president. His real estate empire of hotels and country clubs remains in a pre-virus modus operandi, charging pre-virus rates. He missed the “sharing” lesson of fifth grade.
An election is looming. We need a genuine adult as president.
Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2020
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