The Boy Who Didn't Cry Wolf

 The sad truth is that for the past four years President Trump has operated within such a cloud of lies that the response of many yesterday, myself included, when the news was announced that the president had tested positive for COVID-19 was one of instant doubt. Immediately, we began looking for a motive, a ruse. Was this to avoid another disastrous debate? Did it have something to do with trying to delay the election? Was the plan to pop back on the scene in a short period of time, therefore demonstrating that the virus is not really very dangerous? Or could this be simply a sympathy play in order to avoid negative press or to influence the feelings of voters? 

How sad it is that he, and his enablers, have brought us all to this point of suspicion and uncertainty. We may as well call this particular affliction 'the Trump virus'. 

I am reminded of the story of the boy who cried wolf, rewritten for our times. The Boy Who Didn't Cry Wolf. So many times, in fact, did he fail to cry wolf--so many times, that is, did he deny the threat of the virus, declare it to be a hoax, object to reasonable measures and precautions--that at last when the wolf came for him, people didn't believe him. Or rather, they believed, as he had always said before, that there really was no wolf. 

Of course, other theories, from other quarters, have begun to appear as well. It was suggested, for instance, that Trump had somehow been secretly infected by some unknown means by far left extremists. And as the days pass, many more of these fictions will arise. 

Nonetheless, reality, for many of us, remains a compelling witness. As it becomes clear that the president's illness could not possibly be a 'hoax', given the army of non-partisan healthcare professionals that will be interacting with him, as one after another of the people he has been in close contact with also test positive and contact tracing focuses on this or that super spreader event, we will see that there is nothing of mystery whatsoever in what has happened, that it was in fact fairly perfectly predictable. 

Aside from fairytales, it is biblical too, isn't it? You reap what you sow. 

Here in Hindu Bali, they call it karma. 

In more modern terminology, we might simply say 'It is what it is.'