Even as COVID-19 continues to smother every other headline under the weight of its toll in human lives with every passing day, an entire swath of Americans still keep their heads tucked deeply into their sandy posteriors, as convinced that it’s an overblown, partisan hoax as they’ve ever been.

Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no way to convince them otherwise, and I write this after the taped recordings made by Bob Woodward of his interviews with Donald Trump have been made public. You know the tapes where our dishonest president openly admits to downplaying the danger posed by the virus from day one.

Despite their vehement claims to the contrary, Trump’s supporters have demonstrated that they are totally incapable of a rational examination of any fact that doesn’t already conform to their fanatically held and desperately ignorant preconceptions of the world, because hysteria, free of either reason or logic, drives American politics and infests both parties.

The politics of hysteria has become the norm of politics in the cursed age of mass media and universal suffrage, because hysteria is the easiest of all emotions to appeal.

The politicians of the left have convinced their sycophants that the world is going to end because the mean temperature of the Earth is literally a couple degree or so warmer than it was a century ago, even though human civilizations have existed during warmer periods for literally thousands of years without the benefit of technology or the sciences.

Meanwhile, the right has deluded themselves into believing that their lives and livelihoods are in danger, because a progressive politician might come into power for a few years and institute socialism, all while unwittingly support progressive/socialist policies and bankrupting federal budgets signed by Trump, year after year.

And Trump is on the record for knowingly spreading falsehoods about COVID-19, choosing instead to play on the fears of the right of the media while Americans die of the disease, and his supporters still believe everything he says. Why? Because they are ignorant, small minded, and easily provoked to fear.

Together we’re standing at the graveside of the American political system, watching as the coffin of truth is lowered into the lifeless soil of electoral expediency and partisan propaganda. The only way to exorcise ourselves of political grifters like Trump is to stop being afraid to realize that what other people have to say might be true.

Based on the last ten years or so, it’s abundantly clear that we’re a long way from getting to that point.

Liberty is For The Win!