linnposts.com

Nancy Pelosi has taken to calling COVID-19 the “Trump virus.” I get her point, but I did some research and discovered that she has misdiagnosed what the Trump virus is.

It’s not COVID-19. It’s a virus that is distinct from the coronavirus, related only by the fact that it contributes indirectly to the coronavirus spreading.

The actual virus Trump has is called the stunted moral character development syndrome.

It attacks a person’s moral development early in life by restricting blood flow to brain cells during conscience development that results in a stunted moral awareness of right and wrong.

By the time the effects of the virus become obvious, it’s too late to do anything about it.

The good news, though, is that stunted moral character development syndrome affects a minority of children growing up. The bad news is that it can actually infect adults whose own moral development was mildly stunted, making them susceptible to developing symptoms of the syndrome without actually having it.

Curiously, studies have found that two types of people are more likely than others to be infected with the Trump virus – religiously and/or politically conservatives.

I read the studies and they make a persuasive case for this conclusion.

Millions of evangelical Christians, for example, have unmistakable symptoms of the stunted moral development syndrome. There is no other explanation for how their moral conscience could be so damaged that not even taking babies and children from their mother’s arms and putting them in cages bothers them enough to reject his leadership.

What is more, evangelical Christians have also proven to be among the most resistant of all Americans to accepting doses of truth proven to have a mitigating effect on the extent to which the Trump virus infects someone.

Congregational Republicans also have symptoms of the Trump virus, and are just as resistant to doses of truth as evangelicals.

We also know that the Trump virus has spread among large numbers of Republican voters who have refused to wear stunted moral character development syndrome masks or to practice social distancing from people known to suffer from it.

The most visible symptom they show is an addiction to watching Fix News shows such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, and others, all of whom distort news stories and at times tell outright lies.

The studies describe this symptom as an “addiction” because there is no other reasonable explanation as to why someone would listen to television personalities who openly defend themselves in court as Tucker Carlson did recently by insisting that due to the commentary nature of his show, he is under no obligation to tell the truth to his viewers.

Only an addiction would lead someone to humiliate themselves like that, experts conclude.

This also points to one of the enigmas about the Trump virus health officials have not yet solved, why some people are susceptible to it and others aren’t. They have discovered, as I noted at the beginning, that religious and political conservatives are affected by the virus more than anyone else, but thus far that is as far as they have gotten.

But there are signs of hope, experts say.

Because the Trump virus is no longer spreading and the infection rate is actually in decline, it is possible that it will cease to be a threat to the country by the end of the year or certainly by the middle of January 2021.