Always remember

Successful politicians1 do not care about you: they care about themselves. Boris Johnson cares about Boris Johnson, and that's the only person he cares about; Donald Trump cares about Donald Trump & that's the only person he cares about.

Smarter politicians are better at pretending that they care about other people: Johnson might fool you that he cares about the splendid people of England2 in their fight against the fiendish foreign European foreigners with their dangerous elite liberal ways, but it's all just a story he is telling you to further the great cause of Johnson. Trump is not smart enough even to pretend he cares.

If they can gain more power and more wealth by killing a lot of people or by letting a lot of people die, they'll do that. They don't particularly want large numbers of people to die: they just do not care if they do or they don't, and if they think that, by easing restrictions on social distancing they can improve their chances of keeping power by improving the economy, regardless of the cost in other people's lives, they will do that. They simply do not care how many other people die because, for them, other people do not really exist in any real sense: the world of Boris Johnson consists of Boris Johnson and some lesser beings surrounding him which serve to increase his glory. In the world of Donald Trump, only shades of the lesser beings remain: once, perhaps, in dimly-remembered history3 there were lesser beings surrounding him, now there is only Trump, surrounded by shadows.

It does not matter to your leaders how many people die in the current pandemic, so long as those deaths further the cause of their own self-glorification.


  1. And many unsuccessful ones of course. The difference is only that some unsuccessful politicians do care about other people: no successful ones do. 

  2. Wales & Scotland? not so much. Northern Ireland? he's not even going to try to pretend he cares. 

  3. For Trump all history – all the past – is only dimly-remembered: only the present really exists. 


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