Do YOU share my PTSD (Pandemic Trump Stress Disorder)?

I AM SUFFERING FROM PTSD: Pandemic Trump Stress Disorder. Seriously. When I go to bed my mind cannot help but wander into the terrible Trumpian wonderland. Within a minute or two I develop a heart arrhythmia.

I’m okay during the daytime because I try to avoid reading news about the latest polls. I’m not a CNN, MSNBC or Fox News junkie. I watch the CBS Evening News. I do read articles from web sites and from links sent by friends and family.

My heart doesn’t skip a beat during the daytime. But before I can drift off to sleep I get agitated. and I wonder. . .

• With nearly 200,000 deaths attributed to the pandemic from more than six and a half million cases, how can any sane observer not hold Trump accountable for mismanaging our country’s response to the virus?
• Didn’t they hear him say he was a “wartime president” waging a battle against the virus? More Americans died under his COVID-19 command than in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan combined!
• Didn’t they hear him admit to Bob Woodward he knew about the severity of the virus in February but he kept it secret from the American people so as not to panic them. Americans don’t panic when they know their adversary. They take appropriate action, like wearing a face mask if their president asks them to.
• How can millions of people ignore medical advice and refuse to wear a mask to help stem the spread of the virus?
• How can millions trust Trump’s pronouncements over medical experts who have spent their professional lives studying infectious diseases?
• With millions unemployed, their savings being depleted, how could anyone find succor in Trump’s trumpeting stock market gains when 50% of the population is not invested in the stock market?
• How can millions trust Trump when he says he favors a health plan that covers pre-existing conditions when he is supporting repeal of Obamacare with its coverage of pre-existing conditions?

For four years Trump has said he has a better plan than Obamacare. He has yet to reveal his plan. How can anyone believe him?

I cannot comprehend how millions who believed in Republican elected officials and thought leaders like John McCain, Bill Kristol, John Kasich, Colin Powell and Jim Mattis, now believe in Trump, a man who lacks core Republican principles and, unlike George Washington, cannot tell the truth.

I wonder how any member of the LBGTQ community can vote for Trump when he repeatedly proposes actions to diminish their equality of opportunity; how anyone who expects to receive social security benefits can support Trump when he proposes elimination of the payroll deduction tax that underpins the solvency of the retirement plan?

I marvel at people who believe Trump’s rants against Democratic governors’ handling of Western wildfires when most of the forests on fire are located on federal land that is managed by the Trump administration. . .  at Trump supporters who don’t believe our own intelligence services when they reveal that Russia meddled in the last election on his behalf and is meddling again. Or why Trump has never criticized Vladimir Putin but has badmouthed leaders of our allies in Germany, France, Canada, Australia and Great Britain?

I don’t want my arrhythmia to kickstart in, so I’ll close here with a prayer that with the start of the Jewish New Year we are all blessed with a good, healthy and sweet year.

Shana Tova Umetuka!