Trump's denial will seal his demise

God does not look favourably upon Donald Trump. 

How else to explain his imminent downfall? He was on a clear road to re-election victory until the arrival of a once-in-a-hundred-year virus. It’s like getting struck by lightning on a sunny day. 

For those who thought he was God’s unwitting agent of all that is good, may this belief finally be put to rest. Unless another act of God is in the offing, or more likely, malfeasance on the part of Republicans, I do believe Trump will lose Tuesday’s election (fingers crossed, knock on wood, hang that horseshoe). 

And here he was doing so well! Sure, he was investigated by his own Justice Department, impeached by the House of Representatives, and found wanting on almost every ground of moral merit. But he survived it all. If anything, he emerged stronger. 

The economy was humming. Liberal Supreme Court Justices were falling like flies. Democrats were flirting with a self-declared socialist for leader. Everything was coming together for Donald Trump, Act II. 

Until the virus. Until this seemingly divine retribution. If it were Hillary Clinton as president, American religious leaders would have been screaming: “You brought this on us!” Instead, they continued to back a president down a dangerous path of denial and disinformation. 

It didn’t have to be this way. One has only to look at Canadian leaders to see how a time of crisis can be handled with broad public support. Three provincial elections were called this fall, and in all three, the incumbents won with a larger share of the vote than what they previously held. 

One has only to look at Doug Ford in Ontario to see how even leaders on the right – where skepticism of the virus and lockdowns is greatest – can rise up to the challenge. He did this by acting rational; by seeking solutions and showing concern. Much like 9/11 turned the tide for George Bush’s flailing presidency, covid-19 gave Ford new purpose. 

Trump had only to try – just a little – to be concerned about others. To tear himself apart – just a little – from his base’s libertarian instincts. To act – just a little – normal. 

I understand, this is asking a lot of the man. He would have had to undergo a transformation of Darth Vader-like magnitude. But at the of risk of alienating some of his most radical support, he could have gained so much more; and most importantly, saved so many lives. 

Instead, he denied the virus’s threat: “This is like a flu.” He shifted the blame: “It’s China’s fault!” And today, with caseloads higher than ever, he contests reality: “We’re rounding the turn!” 

One would have thought his own bout with the virus would have allowed for a moment of introspection. If ever he had the opportunity to garner public sympathy – to relate with the broader public’s fears – it was then. Instead, he returned from the hospital like a Marvel comic superhero. While standing on the balcony of the White House, wind blowing through his flowing blond hair, all he needed was a cape. 

But by trying to appear superhuman he became even more unrelatable. Never mind that superheroes don’t need to be attended to by a fleet of doctors, nor injected with experimental drugs (whatever those were). Real heroes also wear a mask. 

“It’s ending anyway,” he said at one of his covid super-spreader rallies this week. 

The fact is, his term is ending (fingers crossed, knock on wood, hang that horseshoe). The pandemic is not.

Survival of the mediocre holds merit

Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society by Daniel Milo is worth reading, whether you believe in evolution or not. 

Full disclosure: I’ve never been a fervent follower of Darwin. I was taught Creationism at the tender age of 13, when I was told that there are actually two diverging theories on life’s origins. Who knew? Until then, I was a whole-hearted theistic evolutionist. Now, after years of re-learning, I may be devolving back to my original childhood state. 

But whether you’re an evolutionist or creationist, or half-way between, the Darwinian ethos flows through our neoliberal veins. One has only to look at the convergence of the Religious Right with free-market capitalism to see its fruits. To many religious-minded people, survival-of-the-fittest in the economic context makes complete sense. 

This form of Darwinism can be rationalized in any number of ways, but a common one is that as the “fittest” rise to the top, they make a better world for everyone. When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes $50 billion during a pandemic, we’re all better off. (Well, maybe if you’re an Amazon Prime member.) 

Milo challenges this key tenet of Darwinian theory: that nature produces only the fittest, best adapted, and most perfectly designed. Instead, he proposes that nature is filled with mediocrity. Just because a species can survive does not mean it’s exceptional. 

The same holds true for humans. Not only are most of us unexceptional, but embracing exceptionalism can come at a steep cost. We can strive to make life better for ourselves, but there’s no sense killing ourselves (and others) to rise to the top. In fact, beyond meeting our basic needs, there is little fulfillment gained in excess – whether that be excess food, wealth, or fame. 

Yet it’s in our genes to continually gather more than we need – to ensure our “safety net,” as senseless as this has become. For someone like Bezos, that safety net is currently $200 billion and counting. That’s an extreme example, but compared to the thousands of generations before us, we’re all members of an advanced aristocracy (modern healthcare alone is worth more than we could ever realize). 

Nature creates safety nets, too, but they’re physiological. The giraffe, writes Milo, has an extra-long neck when it’s entirely unnecessary – for feeding, reproduction and safety. It's but one example, he argues, of nature’s over-compensation. 

The same could be said for the human brain. Until very recently, its size did little to benefit the human race, except to cause death during child birth (chimpanzees and apes, with smaller brains, sustained much larger populations historically). Milo suggests we got lucky: “[A]mong a tiny sliver of humans, the brain overcame itself. Its burden persisted, but by inventing the future, it rescued humanity from extinction. With the future came the seed of restlessness."

This restlessness creates a need to continually find problems and solve those problems, however trivial they might be. Or in our modern era, to create an endless cycle of production and consumption. “Planned obsolescence,” writes Milo, “is not just some conspiracy to enrich the tech sector but an essential feature of the human safety net. The alternative to planned obsolescence is mass unemployment – large swaths of humanity with nothing to do.” 

There could be nothing worse for our over-developed brains. (Try to not think of anything for just a minute – see how that goes.) At this stage of modern society, both unemployment and boredom is a pertinent threat to our existence.  

An idle mind is the devil’s workshop, as the proverb goes. Evolutionists and creationists alike would agree.

New technology grants God-like powers

I have to admit, the thought of no mosquitoes holds appeal. Especially if it’s the kind that live in northern Saskatchewan.  

Simply splice the DNA of a few female mosquitoes, enabling a hereditary trait of sterility to be passed down from one mosquito to another... until the entire population crashes. I get giddy just thinking about it. 

This was only theoretical until about eight years ago. In some parts of the world, it's now actually being considered.

You may have heard about the two recipients of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last week – Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who discovered what has become known as CRISPR, a revolutionary new method to edit genes. 

Their discovery in 2012 has been laying the groundwork for experimentation that was previously the material of sci-fi movies. We’re talking super-muscular police dogs... Horses with horns in the middle of their heads (yes, the unicorn could be coming to a farm near you)... And previously extinct species, like the woolly mammoth, once again roaming the Arctic. 

These are extreme examples, and in the case of the woolly mammoth, could take some time. But over the next decade, their potential is very real. 

More practical uses of CRISPR gene-editing are already being applied, like creating disease-resistant livestock and crops, as well as more nutritious fruits and vegetables. 

In case you’re getting a little anti-GMO squeamish, remember that genetic modification has been around for a long time. Close to my home town there’s a national historic site that commemorates the work of a man named Seager Wheeler, who developed new strains of wheat, oats and barley in the early 1900s. He used a primitive form of genetic manipulation to exploit nature; CRISPR simply takes it to the next level.  

While modern tools to artificially edit genes have been used since the 1970s, they were difficult to design and prohibitively expensive. They were also far less precise. In this new age of do-it-yourself science, one can establish your own CRISPR lab for as little as $2,000. 

In her book, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, Doudna (and co-author Samuel Sternberg) admits her discovery could lead to negative outcomes. One has only to think of the potential ecological havoc caused by the extermination of a pesky insect like the mosquito. Or how genetic modification could fundamentally change humankind. 

While the benefits to humans could be immense – like the potential to reshape the treatment of cancer and genetic diseases – one could also envision a brave new world of genetic enhancements and designer babies. Imagine the extent to which wealthy parents might go to create the perfect child, where traits of intelligence and beauty could be passed on for generations.  

To her credit, Doudna has taken the moral implications of her discovery seriously enough to gather scientists, ethicists and policy makers to consider the guard rails necessary to ensure this technology is not misused. But she’s at once optimistic and fearful. 

Like the physicists who designed the nuclear bomb, she understands the genetic genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Any foreign power, terrorist group, or college student, for that matter, is free to use this new technology for good, evil, or just for fun (gene-edited micropigs are already a thing). 

 While I share some of her optimism, I also share her feelings of doubt: “With our mastery over the code of life comes a level of responsibility for which we, as individuals and as a species, are woefully unprepared.”

Dead dinosaurs still hold appeal

If you’re like me, you’ve been doing more reading these days. Or watching more Netflix (no judgment).  

Full disclosure: I tend to read material that some might call dry. Books on economics, politics, and science... they all fascinate me. And to my daughter’s dismay, this means my progress in the Harry Potter seven-book series has come to a standstill. I'm stuck on page 142 of book three...

But if you’re an adult who once had a fascination with prehistoric beasts, I would recommend The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, by Steve Brusatte. I’ll try to contain my excitement, but it really blew my mind. Before this book, I had little understanding of these incredible creatures.

I had no idea dinosaurs only became dominant during the Jurassic period, for example, narrowly beating out the ancestors of our modern-day crocodile. In the preceding Triassic, dinosaurs only played a minor role, where they were picked on by some menacing crocodile-like beasts. Sure, crocodiles endured in the long run, but does it really matter? Are there museums dedicated solely to crocodiles? I think not! 

The Jurassic period saw an explosion in dinosaur species and sizes, including the sauropods, the largest land animals to ever roam the earth. They were incredibly diverse and huge; animals like the diplodocus, brontosaurus, and brachiosaurus (enunciate the words slowly, it’s such a pleasure to say them aloud). The largest of them weighed over 50 tons. To give some perspective, the largest elephants on earth weigh seven tons. 

So how could they support themselves? They had lungs like birds, scientists suspect, taking in oxygen both through inhaling and exhaling. This allowed them to support their large bodies and keep cool, with respiratory sacs ventilating their gigantic bodies. 

Not to give too much away, but birds are actually the direct descendants of dinosaurs. According to Brusatte, they are dinosaurs. If you’re having trouble making that leap in thinking, think of an ostrich. In body and form, it’s much like the two-legged theropods that once roamed the world – those fearsome carnivores like the Tyrannosaurus Rex that were actually covered with an early form of feathers. Yes, feathers! 

The T. rex used the same breathing mechanism as birds to ambush its prey with sudden bursts of energy. While it lacked the ability to run fast, it had the nimbleness we would normally not attribute to creatures of its size. The T. rex grew at a phenomenal rate, putting on 1,700 pounds per year until it reached its top size of seven tons by age 30. It grew fast and lived hard, with each of its dagger-like teeth exerting three thousand pounds of pressure – three times that of a lion’s bite!  

And it may not have been the brainless brute we once thought. Recent discoveries have shown dinosaurs like the T. rex to have large brains, to brood over their nests and to protect their young. Social animals, they were thought to hunt and travel in groups.  

Dinosaurs were incredibly diverse, as evidenced by the vast number of new species identified each and every year. Discoveries are made almost every day throughout the world. The more we dig, the more we discover. 

So how could they all disappear at roughly the same time?  

Well, it turns out that a ten-kilometre wide asteroid (or comet) does a lot of damage. Brasette describes in detail how its impact would expel the same energy as a billion nuclear bombs. Upon striking the earth at the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, it caused earthquakes as far away as Europe and tsunamis that reached the Atlantic coast, annihilating every living thing within a 1,000-kilometre radius. It’s widely believed the consequent nuclear winter led to the death of every one of those poor prehistoric creatures... Except for the birds, of course. 

The bird-watchers of the world can be thankful for that.

Trump as vulnerable as the rest of us

The irony of it all. 

Yesterday Donald Trump was to host a conference on covid-19 support for vulnerable seniors – 12 hours after he tested positive for the virus.

There are currently two presidential candidates over the age of 70, one almost 80, running for office during a pandemic that kills, by in large, the elderly. 

It doesn’t matter how tough you think you are. If you’re over 65, the chances are much higher that you will require hospitalization if you contract covid-19, and possibly even die. 

Testing the boundaries is not worth it. In this modern era, most people in their 70s are healthy, functioning individuals. Some feel like they have their whole lives ahead of them. They even have the energy to run for highest office! And like many of us wrestling with covid fatigue, they’re letting their guard down.  

Even Trump. To this, you might say, he never had his guard up. But I seriously doubt it. There’s no way this self-professed germophobe wasn’t scared of getting ill, particularly during an election campaign. While he may have put thousands of his supporters at risk at jam-packed rallies, he ensured he was far, far away from the virus-breathing commoners. Above all else, he took every precaution to protect himself. 

Except among his own people. Hope Hicks, one of his most trusted (and incidentally, most attractive) advisors, tested positive a few days earlier. He could very well have contracted the virus from her; the White House’s West Wing has been notorious for not adhering to covid-19 precautions. 

The truth is, we’re all getting a little too comfortable, particularly with the people we’re most comfortable with. We act as if they could never possibly be infected (symptoms typically appear 5-6 days after contracting the virus), because we know them. This is akin to saying our closest friends could never contract the flu, which we know all too well, they do! 

As much as the anti-maskers detest putting a piece of cloth to their face (maybe by winter they won’t be as offended by the thought), there’s reason to take precautions. It’s about protecting our most vulnerable: namely, the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions. Most of us would survive the virus, although there’s no guarantee we wouldn’t suffer long-term effects; for the elderly, it’s a different story. 

As much as I hate the thought of nursing homes being in lock-down for another year, we really don’t have a choice.  

My 97-year-old grandma complains of the boredom, and understandably so. It’s sad the last years of her life have to be lived this way. But on the other hand, she says she’s glad to have the support she does given the circumstances. 

Another relative, who’s 89, says she’s even enjoying the new normal. The best thing for her is having meals delivered to her door every day! 

Both of them gave up independent living in the past year, and despite the hardships of adjusting to a new life, are glad they did. Navigating life on your own during a pandemic can be stressful. You might even end up being more isolated than in a care home. 

We all feel the effects, to some degree. A co-worker of mine, a spry 35-year-old, commented on the sadness she suddenly felt when going to the store the other day. Keeping their distance, faces hidden by masks, each person was in their own protective bubble. “It’s kind of lonely,” she said. 

I can only imagine how it feels for the most vulnerable. And yes, that includes Mr. Trump.