Welcome to Trump’s Grand Wet Market

By Donna Buckbee

Rushford, MN

Chinese Americans and Asian Americans, in general, are being scapegoated for the COVID-19 pandemic. We all know where this could go and I want it to stop. 

Those “wet markets” — the open air meat markets where raw meat and fish are sold alongside live, wild animals, including bats and snakes. We like to call that type of meat exotic to stress the “eew” factor and to separate our supposedly civilized selves from the rest of the world. 

You’ll find “wet markets” wherever people don’t have supermarkets and refrigeration. What do we expect them to do?

I don’t know if bats are considered a delicacy. I doubt it. Maybe bats and other “bush meats” are simply what’s left after globalization destroyed traditional farming practices and replaced it with industrialized factory farming.  Or after capitalists, foreign or domestic, tore down the forests and polluted the rivers and the soil and the air. Maybe bats are what’s left for poor people to hunt, sell at market and to eat.

There are over a billion Hindus who think eating cows is worse than exotic.  Jewish people and Muslims think eating pork is disgusting. And many vegetarians think eating any animal is wrong. I’m leaning more that vegetarian way myself when I think of the utter cruelty with which we treat animals. Layer chickens so crammed in together they can’t turn around. Pigs and cattle so crowded together we have to feed them antibiotics to keep them alive. 

Do we think our overuse of antibiotics in this country isn’t rendering antibiotics useless? We will pay for that. 

The United States is a main contributor of climate change.  That will kill a lot of people, our children and grandchildren, the very people we profess to love so much. All of them “pain-sensitive” too.

If wet markets are disease-spreaders, our game show host president is running a grand wet market. His stupidity, his lies, his procrastination, his delusions, even his press conferences all promote the spread of virus. His sycophants, his “yes” men. They who hollowed out the very parts of government meant to keep us safe. Republicans whose mantra is “government is the problem” make sure that nightmare comes true whenever they gain power. 

I see that Murdoch Empire and Fox News is lawyering up. They deserve to be sued and they will be sued for lying about this pandemic.

Their lies are getting people killed. And our game show host in the Oval Office? Just a few weeks ago he spewed, “The Democrat Hoax!  The Media Hoax!” 

And we want to blame Asians? Let’s take a long look in the mirror.