Twitter has been called “hell on earth” and too fast to follow, yet is exciting and addictive for many. The opportunity to vent without a filter and gain some kind of digital revenge surfaced last night when POTUS and FLOTUS announced that they had tested positive for covid-19.
The outpouring of every emotion, slant and convolution of logic or fantasy has been epic, monumental and, well, big, very big.
There are so many intense, shocking reactions, as if the initial news they are reacting to is not extreme enough, many took it to the next level. Where to start?
Without measuring scientifically, the “anti-Trump” category was huge. Running the gamut from the Ghanaian Pall Bearer faction to the dead-Trump happy dancers, this grim and tasteless group hit hard and fast.
Not to be outdone the Right & GOP got to work, in a familiar manner
Next came the right-wing wackos and conspiracy nuts. It didn’t take long for a Republican Senator to decide that this was a Chinese conspiracy, and hell, it’s a “chinese virus” anyway, etc. Followed up by the not-to-be-outdone Republican that decided, instantly, that the Democrats supposedly in charge of his microphone planted the virus on it in order to intentionally infect the president. I kid you not.
Next: out of the woodwork crawled even more tasteless observations – welcome to Twitter
Then, on the “independent” political side there was the wannabe lawmaker who repeatedly tweeted that he hopes both trump and biden will die. His logic is that they are equally bad and beholden to corporate bribes. wow.
Finally a form of sanity appears to be emerging, if you can call it that
Starting Friday there have been more measured and thoughtful tweets. An illuminating thread is one started by Rachel Maddow when she tweeted “civil” condolences and singled out the disease itself as the enemy. This was countered by a series of replies, pointing out all the clear and irrefutable reasons why Trump has not earned that kind of kindness or sympathy, not even in this extreme case.
Before sanity could prevail, however, the left-style conspiracies exploded
Finally, in the last couple of hours, a new theme has emerged from the more liberal side: why should we believe that Trump really does have the virus? Well, if he tweets in a week or so from Moscow, sitting in a room with Putin and Snowden, then you’ll know it was, to use Trumpian phraseology: “a hoax”.