Hail to the Virus!

I'm sure that. like me, your thoughts and prayers are with the coronavirus currently bravely battling Donald Trump. Sometimes things like this happen which make you start to believe in Karma.  Because, generally speaking, I don't believe in this idea of some great cosmic balance which ensures that, eventually, one's actions eventually rebound on you for good or ill.  In my experience, the bad usually do profit from their misdeeds and rarely get punished for them, whereas those who follow the rules and try to avoid hurting others still get dumped on from a great height.  The problem is that the bad are, more often than not, insulated from justice by power, wealth and privilege.  But just occasionally, something like this happens, whereby the bad guys encounter something that all their wealth and power can't protect them from.  That's one of the few things one can say in favour of viruses: they are indiscriminate in who they infect.  Wealth and power do not impress them.  In the end, all of Trump's bluster and mocking of coronavirus protection measures, such as mask wearing, couldn't stop the virus from catching up with him.  It's a bit like the Martians in War of the Worlds, I suppose - all their advanced technologies couldn't protect them from earth viruses.  (Although, if they were that advanced, surely they would have taken the possibility of infection from terrestrial viruses into consideration when invading the earth?)

If we're lucky, perhaps this virus will stop Trump the same way the fictional one did the Martians.  Certainly Trump is responsible for similar levels of chaos and destruction as a Martian invasion.  But, to get back to the point, apart from rare instances like this, the universe doesn't balance itself.  The scumbags always have an advantage because they don't care about rules, they don't fight fair and experience teaches them that they'll rarely, if ever, get caught.  Even when they are caught out, they'll just brazen it all out, just like Trump or Boris Johnson do - piling more lies upon lies, muddying the waters until the truth is forgotten about or at least obfuscated so much that it becomes near impossible to see anymore.  Institutions - into which the scumbags worm their way, as they are unscrupulous and utterly ruthless when it comes to climbing the career ladder - will usually protect these bastards if you try to complain against them, closing ranks as they all fear that if one of them falls, then the rest become vulnerable.  Ways are found not to apply standards to behaviour and avoid sanctions.  Rules are bent and reinterpreted to suit.  Complaint procedures are designed to deflect the aggrieved parties rather than offer them genuine redress.  Basically, the world is a shitty place where the odds are stacked against us, unless we are prepared to be utter bastards.  So, enjoy Trump's comeuppance while you can, for it is a rare victory in the constant cosmic struggle between scumbaggery and moderately decent behaviour.