BY MARTIN KICH

When Donald Trump began to form his Cabinet, it became clear almost immediately that one of the main criteria for leading a department would be a history of publicly expressed antipathy toward that department. Thus, Rick Perry became the Energy Secretary. Ben Carson was named the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Rex Tillerson became the Secretary of State. Alexander Acosta and Eugene Scalia have headed the Labor Department. And Betsy DeVos has been entrusted with overseeing and preserving public education.

Little wonder that these department heads have aggressively reduced the personnel and persistently constrained the functioning of the departments that they head. Even less wonder that the departments’ ability to meet their standard responsibilities—never mind any sort of crisis such as the current one created by the pandemic—has been so seriously eroded that they are close to dysfunctional.

The longstanding Republican skepticism about the efficacy of the public sector has been embraced very simple-mindedly by Trump, who has seem determined to escalate governmental dysfunction so that it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling accusation and a reflection of his own self-declared conception of himself as a “chaos creator.”

It is helpful to view the following series of recent events within the framework of that Trumpian conception of government.

Less than a month ago, the Trump administration released and endorsed a three-stage plan for reopening state economies as the states meet certain medical benchmarks, one of which is that they show a decline in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths that extends over two weeks. Ten days later, Trump declared that it was time to re-open the economy immediately. At that time almost no states had met the benchmarks for re-opening—not even those states that had never “closed” to begin with.

Mike Pence visited the Mayo Clinic and refused to wear a mask when meeting with the medical staff and patients. He explained that he is tested daily, is not infected, and does not pose a risk. Shortly afterwards, his communications director tested positive, and Pence self-quarantined for two days instead of the recommended two weeks. On the third day, he was filmed walking into the White House, still not wearing a mask but being trailed by a staff member who was wearing one.

Trump declared “victory” over the pandemic the day before Dr. Fauci and the heads of the CDC and FDA all entered two-week self-quarantines.

Trump reportedly berated his staff for allowing anyone who had been infected to come into contact with him, and the next day he admonished the nation, “We all need to be warriors.”

Trump visited a facility manufacturing masks and refused to wear a mask, even though everyone else was wearing—and required to wear–a mask, which were, of course, available in abundance.

Today, Trump led a press conference on the progress being made toward the development of a COVID-19 vaccine and declared, “Vaccine or no vaccine, we are back!”

The Trump administration has encouraged protesters and state legislatures to pressure governors to “re-open” the state economies. Then after almost all of the states have at least partially opened, the administration has produced “guidance” from the CDC on how to re-open safely. Never mind that the document is literally more than a day late and a dollar short, it is also so watered down as to be essentially useless to anyone except for the people who, long after Trump himself abandoned the talking point, are morel convinced than ever that the pandemic is a hoax.

Little wonder, then, that immediately after the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared that the governor’s extension of the state’s stay-at-home order was unconstitutional, some bars in the state opened and were full of customers—none practicing any social distancing, never mind wearing masks. I wonder if anyone will follow up to see how many of those in the bar are ill with the virus in three or four weeks—or, worse, how many of their family members, friends and acquaintances, co-workers, or casual contacts have become ill.

I wonder about these things because this virus is like having a bad car accident, walking away from it, and dying of a resulting aneurysm several weeks later.

And/or it is like finding out that the car accident is suddenly killing people who are close to you and who have any passing contact with you but weren’t even in the car.

One of the people in one of the bars in Wisconsin featured in the cable coverage revealed that she is a nurse. Imagine that you have seen that interview, become ill, and are assigned to the “care” of that nurse. I wonder whether you could insist that another nurse, who could somehow be certified not to have had any contact with that nurse, could be assigned to your care.

Ironically, if there is a sudden resurgence in cases because of the careless “re-opening” of our communities, patients will be much less likely to have or to be able to exercise that right.

One final observation: taken together, “ungovernment” and “denialism” seem to amount to nihilism.

I wonder if the Far Right is willing to argue that nihilism is in some inexplicable way actually consistent with American values.

Or that resorting to nihilism in defense of American values is justifiable.

Or even that, however objectionable nihilism is, it is still preferable to “socialism.”