He Won’t Concede, but He’ll Pack His Bags All evidence suggests that the president would run from the responsibility of overseeing the violent fracture of America. ......... The presidency is a burden, he said, and Trump is “incredibly lazy” and unsuited to physically and cognitively demanding work. .......... Not only has Trump not resigned—he has signaled that he’s willing to plunge America into chaos in an effort to remain in the White House. .......... we should remember that Trump had a vision of the presidency that began with extreme laziness, and that the end of his presidency could go roughly the same way. .......... Trump asked Kasich to be his running mate and, in the event of a Trump victory, to be “in charge of domestic and foreign policy.” What, Kasich’s team asked, would Trump be in charge of? The answer, delivered seriously: “Making America great again.” This is not the offer of a man fanatically devoted to the collection of power. It is the offer of a man too lazy to reach for the remote. ....... Trump thought that the presidency is like many large organizations: capable of running itself, with the president a public figurehead, no more necessary to the United States’ daily operation than the guy who plays Ronald McDonald is to the McDonald’s corporation. The deep state—a permanent bureaucracy that runs things in its own interests, irrespective of who is president—was not his villain. It was his fantasy. ........... the ridiculous absentee governing, especially in Trump’s first year. It turns out you can refuse to make hard decisions, and that is exactly what Trump did ......... an executive branch swiss-cheesed with vacant positions, run in practice by appointees with wildly diverse levels of competence who botch things while preserving the president’s ability to watch copious amounts of cable news. ...... The president who sleeps away a year in office does not awake to find his ship on course for safe harbor. He finds it run aground and ripped apart, leaking its contents all over the country like the Exxon Valdez. The second was impeachment, the Russia investigation, and other accusations of criminality against Trump and his associates. Being much poorer than he claimed to be, then hiring cut-rate criminals to run his affairs, made honorable departure from office ahead of schedule—and without permanent taint—impossible. ......... staying in office is the surest way to evade investigation, prosecution, and conviction. ......... just as there was an indolent way into the presidency, there is an indolent way out ......... As for the prospect of civil war: Trump is a coward, and all evidence suggests that he would run from the responsibility ....... A civil war sounds like a lot of work. ........... The easiest path is also the most lucrative. Get on Marine One, protesting all the way, and spend the rest of your days fleecing the 40 percent of Americans who still think you are the Messiah, and who will watch you on cable news, spend their money on whatever hypoallergenic pillow you endorse, and come to see you whenever you visit their town. ............. That seems to be what Trump is preparing now: insurance against a loss, so he can skate past criminal charges and live out the playboy post-presidency he has longed for since taking office.
Medieval Europeans didn’t understand how the plague spread. Their response wasn’t so different from ours now. When the new disease first arrived, little was clear beyond the fact that it killed with terrifying speed. Near-certain death trailed the first symptoms by four days or less. The doctors were helpless. This city was soon overwhelmed with corpses. Workers in church yards dug pits down to the water table, layering bodies and dirt, more bodies and dirt. ........... Seven centuries later, the plague in Europe stands as an example of a pandemic at its worst — .............. in both cases, the first instinct was to close borders to try to keep the disease at bay. When that didn’t work, officials called for strict rules — but only some people paid attention. All the while, there was a proliferation of conspiracy theories. Many tried to blame the disease on outsiders or minorities — in medieval Europe, often Jews. ............. “Much has changed since the 1340s ... but not human nature.” ............. daring dinner parties in which a host would gather 10 friends, with plans to reconvene again the next night. At the next dinner, Stefani said, sometimes “two or three were missing.” ........... many faced their last moments cut off from everybody else ........... People, after the onset of symptoms, were a mortal danger to those around them. So in some cases, family members abandoned sick loved ones, even children. Their deaths were noticed only when neighbors smelled the rotting corpses. ........... In 1348, she said, the city was in its own state of near-lockdown. The inns were closed. .......... People were panicked. It was unclear how the disease spread — but there was no doubt that proximity to others was a risk. Animals — oxen, dogs, pigs — were dying, as well. ............. They prayed and disavowed sin. They obsessed about the air and used scents and fires to ward off perceived deadly vapors. They were mostly guessing; scientists wouldn’t know what actually caused the plague — how the bacteria was spread by rats and fleas — until 500 years later. .................. At a time when people were trying to avoid the disease with trial-and-error strategies, only one thing seemed to work: If the plague arrived in your city, drop everything, flee the crowds and take refuge in the countryside. ............... All through the coronavirus pandemic, there have been accounts of people taking their own countryside flights to safety — New Yorkers decamping to the Hamptons, British urbanites seeking out holiday cottages. .................. But Cerrina Feroni said his ex-wife had already heard all of his stories many times over, and he had likewise heard all of hers. So instead, during pandemic lockdown in Fiesole, they watched Netflix.
