It's certainly easy to fan the flames of civil war right now. Public health initiatives and pandemic preparedness used to be nonpartisan issues, but the coronavirus has only further polarized Democrats and Trump's base. Fox News viewers are significantly less likely than everyone else to take the pandemic seriously and stay home. Governors are mobilizing to resist Trump's declaration last week that he has "total authority" over the country; Gavin Newsom had already been referring to California as a "nation-state." Governors on the East and West Coasts are forming their own regional pacts to work together on how to ease into re-opening. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo mocks Trump frequently and said America wants a president, not a "king." But this is exactly why a tea party resurgence in 2020 is so paradoxical; the far right's own guy is already in charge, presiding over their misery. The fact that this coronavirus lockdown is going to last so long is Trump's own fault, because his authoritarian response to the pandemic has prolonged it.
It's outrageously dangerous for a president to be shouting about liberation during a deadly contagious outbreak, which can only be stopped by widespread cooperation. Even Singapore, which has a low number of cases due to a successful early response of widespread testing and contact tracing, has moved to lockdowns. Everyone must abide by social distancing rules, everyone must wear masks, everyone must act responsibly to stamp this thing out, or it will only drag out longer, cost more lives, and deepen economic pain.
During times of war and mass hardship, presidents are supposed to galvanize the nation into unity. Trump loves to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln-"I've always said I can be more Presidential than any President in history except for Honest Abe Lincoln," he said at one Texas rally. But Lincoln would be horrified by him. On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, Lincoln used his inauguration speech as a last-ditch effort to avoid the conflict and appeal to the "better angels of our nature." "We are not enemies, but friends," he famously said. "We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection."
Trump could, of course, use this as a unifying moment, but that's not how he builds power. A logical pandemic response doesn't fit into his political agenda. He needs to scapegoat and stoke fear and anger toward perceived enemies-immigrants, Democrats, the media, Barack Obama, China-in order to keep an active and loyal base. He needs people to think that if the coronavirus curve flattens, it's because he himself had some genius, unique idea to do it, even if that means recklessly promoting a drug that hasn't been approved by the medical community or trying to pay a German scientist working on a vaccine for the exclusive rights to it.
Donald Trump is the anti-Lincoln, galvanizing his supporters towards political violence against dissenters. He inspires hate crimes. He once bragged that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone" and not "lose any voters." He already has blood on his hands from bungling the coronavirus response with a slow and chaotic approach, and now he's gunning for a civil war. But even 68 percent of Republicans support stay-at-home orders, fearing the premature easing of common-sense public health measures, and as more voters' family members and friends fall ill and pass away, that may be a losing cause. What's increasingly clear is that if Americans need to be liberated from anything right now, it's the man in the White House.
Laura Bassett is a GQ columnist.
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