Epic failure

Posted on: October 5, 2020 at 19:59:46 CT

Fate leads the willing, Seneca said, while the unwilling get dragged.
For his entire life, Donald Trump has stayed one step ahead of disaster, plying his gift for holding reality at bay.
He conjured his own threadbare reality, about success, about virility, about imbroglios with women, even about the height of Trump Tower.

As president, he has created a bubble within his bubble, keeping out science and anything that made him look bad. He has played a dangerous game of alchemizing wishes to facts, pretending that he was a strong leader, pretending that the virus will magically disappear and that it “affects virtually nobody,’’ pretending that we don’t have to wear masks, pretending that dicey remedies could work, pretending that the vaccine is right around the corner.

Now, in a moment that feels biblical, the implacable virus has come to his door.
This was the week when many of the president’s pernicious deceptions boomeranged on him. It was redolent of the “Night on Bald Mountain” scene in “Fantasia,’’ when all the bad spirits come out in a dark swarm.