pretty much business as usual: #TrumpKnewAndDidNothing
3 min read
“President Truman said the buck stops here, Trump has never seen the buck”
Trump’s bliss is also his ignorance.
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 1, 2020
Real estate developers begin as storytellers. They drive a few stakes into an empty expanse and begin spinning a tale of winding streets and welcoming houses, of shops and schools and playgrounds, a community center, a swimming pool, a golf course. Or maybe instead of a subdivision, they tell the story of a skyscraper, an apartment complex, a retirement village.
They need people to believe them. Bankers to loan the money. Governments to grant the permits and abate the taxes. Tenants to sign the leases. Buyers to take out the mortgages. As if by alchemy, the story comes true because people think it will come true. Enough belief makes the whole thing fly.
Looking through the lens of President Trump’s real estate background is the only way I can begin to understand his response to the novel coronavirus, which has otherwise been as baffling as it has been feckless. More than three months after his belated declaration of a national emergency, as the country continues to set records for the number of new cases diagnosed each day, Trump seldom speaks of the pandemic, except to disparage the disease and talk down its consequences.
“Fascists are never content to merely lie; they must transform their lie into a new reality, and they must persuade people to believe in the unreality they’ve created. And if you get people to do that, you can convince them to do anything.”
– Hannah Arendt
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) July 1, 2020
— Hayden Center (@mvhaydencenter) July 1, 2020
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) June 28, 2020
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