WHAT IT IS

 "It is what it is." Spoken with a shrug of powerlessness. It is appalling that an American president could exhibit such callousness and claim such powerlessness in the face of the death of now more than 160,000 of the people he was elected to serve. One of his other go-to pronouncements, also uttered with a shrug, is this: "We'll see." 

The office of the President of the United States is often cited as the most powerful in the world. The current occupant of the office has a distorted understanding of his power. He uses it as a bully does, to offend others and torture those less powerful than himself. He uses it to surround himself with sycophants prepared to enact his slightest whim. He uses it to puff himself up, to boast and glorify his own ego.

But when it comes to the significant use of power to act in the interest of his fellow-Americans, he shrugs as though he were powerless. He seems incapable of action. Even when he decides to dismiss a person who has earned his displeasure, he typically leaves it to others to sort out the problem for him. He appears to have no policy, but allows himself to be used by corporate heads, lobbyists, and Republican Senators to enact their will. He submits to strong men throughout the world, and his country submits with him. Believing himself to be stronger than them, he treats even powerful women with contempt.

This man has consistently claimed powerlessness when confronted with the relentless pandemic that afflicts us all. Where other leaders throughout the world have shown that it not an invincible enemy, he has simply capitulated and allowed--even contributed to its spread. He is a man entrusted with a vast amount of power that he has no idea how to use, an idle, supine Colossus, a Gulliver disempowered by Lilliputians, the last man this country needs as it faces one of the direst crises in its history.