For some strange and unknowable reason here in the depth of a global pandemic I have started re-watching HBOs Chernobyl mini-series. Brainchild of show runner and writer Craig Mazin the five-episode series follows the historical disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant following the explosion that ruptured the core and endangered million with its radioactive contamination. The series has won a number of awards around the globe and garnered praise for its acting, direction, and writing.

Mazin centers the themes of truth and lies at the heart of his scripts for Chernobyl opening the series with the question, ‘What is the cost of lies?’Given the lengthy time for writing, pre-production, and production Mazin’s work was not a direct comment on the Trump presidency but the applicability of those themes and questions are unavoidable.

The Chernobyl nuclear reactor number 4 exploded because of lies and because of the reliance of the system upon not only lies but that the lies of the authorities were never to be questioned. Lies hampered the recognition of the disaster and hampered attempts to mitigate its lethal consequences.

And yet dozens of scientists and engineers and bureaucrats managed to evade the lies and with the dangerous work of hundreds of thousands more and the sacrifice of millions more confront and contain the contamination. The Soviet system when confronted with the awful truth of the explosion and what it imperiled spent vast amounts of treasure and resources doing what was required. Mikhail Gorbachev the final General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has expressed the belief that the economic cost of the Chernobyl disaster was a critical factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Which brings me to the global COVID-19 Pandemic.

The government of the United States, the world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation/state, under the presidency of Donald Trump, aided and abetted by support from his governing party the Republicans, has lacked the courage shown by the brutal communist government of the former USSR.

The Administration has failed to spend the treasure necessary, has failed to muster the resources required, has left its citizenry to face the crisis alone and instead has continually counseled with lies resulting in a count of 150,000 thousand dead, a count that continue to rise.

Trump and his GOP enablers have plugged their ears, squeezed their eyes shut and like children pretended that the mess simply doesn’t exist.

This is not to praise the Soviet System. It was a brutal, monstrous, and evil empire responsible for the murder of millions. It subjugated and enslaved its own citizenry and that of its neighbors the world is better off with its collapse.

It is shocking however that a system so utterly reliant upon lies and the denial of truth rose to a crisis while a party that prides itself on virtual signaling its patriotism leaves its country to burn.