July 21, 2020
As the president’s prospects for reelection plummet, he’s rolling out an aggressive two-pronged strategy for his political recovery. First, he aims to remake himself (again) as the leader of the fight against Covid-19, getting photographed wearing a face mask and tweet-touting mask-wearing as, suddenly, “patriotic.” Second, he’s deploying unidentifiable federal agents to attack and detain protesters in “liberal Democrat” cities – already in Portland, OR, and with Chicago, New York, Detroit and Baltimore on a short waiting list.
The first thrust is of course pure pose, a phony “mask” designed to obscure the real aim of sending kids and teachers back to the classroom, and forcing workers back to the factory floor, so we can juice the cratering economy and get back to some semblance of “normal life” without delay (and for sure before the November election).
The second posture, on the other hand, is the true Trump, the authoritarian strong man who’s been itching to break out since he took office in January 2017. The mask of the pathological con man who in bad faith swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States is finally ripped off to reveal the power-craving fascist who’s been hiding behind it (albeit barely) until now.
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 