The fish rots from the head down, and that putrid head is Trump.
The President’s so-called health officials – buffoons all, such as HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who looks more like the melting face of the Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark with each passing day, and Mehmet Oz, the flaccid wizard behind the curtain at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – are following the arc of cruelty that is now the staple, the brand, if you will, of the Trump administration and its intentional plan to destroy public health and render their own constituents sicker, poorer, and far more likely to die of diseases that are perfectly avoidable.
And now the Trump administration has directed public health officials not to promote or sanction World AIDS Day events. Yeah, really.
“It just seems petty and hostile, frankly,” iconic HIV activist Peter Staley told The New York Times about the slight, in a remark surely requiring restraint of Olympic proportions. “It just felt very reminiscent of the Reagan administration.”
I’ll go one further. Reagan ignored a gathering health hurricane, when too little was known and he had little interest in finding out more.
The Trump administration knows how to prevent HIV transmission. It knows medications save lives. It knows that global disease management reaps benefits back here at home. And yet they willfully ignore all of this because AIDS, as far as they are concerned, kills all the right people. Queers, trans folks, Black people, both here and abroad. We are nothing more than the kindling for a bonfire of hatred and neglect.
Trump policies, from stripping PEPFAR funding to withdrawing from the World Health Organization to freezing global HIV/AIDS monies, will lead to millions of new HIV infections and the death of untold numbers.
They do not know who they are dealing with. Older survivors like myself are reaching into the toolkit of resistance and activism that we may have stowed away, thinking the worst was behind us, and sharpening the blades of our advocacy. And younger people, well, the GOP can gaze at the results from the recent election and weep. Younger voters and activists are kicking ass.
Not without you, though. The World AIDS Day insult is only the latest outrage. There will be many, many more.
We need you in this fight. Get involved and stay involved. Contact your local Democratic chapter. Find a candidate you like and volunteer. Make it to the next nationwide protest. Sign up to make calls.
It may get worse before it gets better. Do not despair. The midterms are coming.
Mark
