The anger is deserved.

I am becoming more and more convinced that Trump has been persuaded to just let the virus wash over the US. Someone has convinced him it’s better to go about business as usual and bet the death toll is not enough to fuel public outrage any further. Trump is gambling that most voters will not experience a tragedy in THEIR lives so the increasing numbers of infections and needless death will not be something that sticks in voters’ minds. If it does – he thinks he can pass the blame onto Democrats and state governors.

Trump has calculated that the economy will come right back to where it was in January – despite indicators it won’t – because he is convinced people only care about the stock market. The rest of the indicators of economic activity will make people’s eyes gloss over. Or so he believes.

Trump is incapable of understanding that the economy is complex, and it’s not just a pussy he can grab – and drag in whatever direction he wants.

Let’s think about Trump’s plan to reopen the economy. He thinks that you can order a whole economy to reopen…like magic. Say the word, and hey presto! All’s well. This way of thinking is based, like everything else Trump does, on bullying, bluster, intimidation. He thinks he can abuse it back into line, a thing which he controls, dominates, which he can order and command around, using fear as a cudgel. Trump is trying to treat the economy the same he treats everything, from business to politics to…women.

Tyrants and dictators of every kind — from Soviets to Nazis — have long tried to whip whole economies into line this way. And they’ve discovered that something else happens: it backfires explosively. And so Donald Trump, one of the great fools of history, is about to learn one of its great lessons, too — the hard way. It goes like this (and pardon my French).

You can’t grab the economy by the p*ssy. (And no, you shouldn’t grab anyone by their privates.)

If you find yourself offended by this turn of phrase — so am I. I’m not the one who came up with it. Yes, it’s vulgar, and disgusting. And it gives us a window into the mind of a man whose obscenity is so grotesque that my words surely fail to do any justice — so let his.

Exactly what I predicted not so long ago is now already taking place. That’s not to toot my own horn — it’s to draw out a crucial lesson in the economics of depressions. That lesson is this — and it’s simple. You can order people back to work, but you can’t make anyone spend, invest, buy, acquire, consume. “There was not a customer in sight.” See what I mean? You can think of it this way, if you like. You can cross someone’s boundaries, try to control them, molest them, even, as in “grab them by the…” — but in the end, you can’t make anyone date you or like you or love you. So it is for economies, too.

The primary reason Trump is so willing to take this cruel and heartless stand is that EVERYTHING is transactional to Trump. The concept of duty and devotion to the country is foreign to him. So he cannot understand why experts are telling him what he does not want to hear. This is all the more maddening because had he acted earlier on the expert’s recommendations, he might have been able to capitalize on it. There was no downside to acting more aggressively, just an upside if it worked. But Trump can’t think long term.

Trump is so short-sighted and not knowledgeable about how the government is supposed to work; he cannot and will not bring himself to think of the common good. It’s here where his narcissism comes to the fore – if he is not getting all the credit, he just does not care. This is why the numbers, the trends, and the individual horror stories have to be front and center in the public eye. Trump cannot be allowed to sweep this under the rug – he is directly responsible for this disaster, and he must be made to account for it. He and his enablers have to be made to pay the price for their sloth and criminal negligence.

The United States could have avoided a great deal of the suffering it has endured if the country had acted sooner and more aggressively. The information was there – so too were the solutions as South Korea demonstrated. Trump ignored all of it. He’s unfit and has to go.

I think that deep down, most non-MAGA hat wearers are aware of this. His true-blue followers may, in fact, also know it – but they made a calculation a long time ago that sticking it to the other side is far more critical. Besides, they already think that nothing bad can happen to them, and if it does, they will find someone else to blame. It’s who they are.

This cannot go quietly and just be noted. It has to fuel white-hot rage and resistance.