If the psychology that addresses collective trauma were charitable towards humanity, the coronavirus would emerge as the vaccine against presidents who are so because of their ability to deceive, without having completed the transition from barbarism to civilization. Widespread calamities can alter victims' perceptions of themselves, of the world, and reconvert their beliefs, according to experts who investigated the effects. The bubonic plague, cholera and the Spanish flu changed the way of living and dying; the post-traumatic stress of the Covid-19 could well transfigure the medieval man who lives in the White House, enemy of consensus and agreement. Not everything is lost.
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Clinical trials will indicate whether the death caused by unknown bacterial populations has positively influenced the conceptual schemes of the ideologues of the Government and of the United States' arms budget: $ 738 billion against the small change in public health. It would be good if iodine, respirators and solidarity compete with missiles in the prefrontal cortex of Trump and the Pentagon; It will be miraculous when games to heal defeat those assigned to kill.
Although the epidemic has become a factor of policies, accounting and calendars, not all studies in social psychology attribute to the virus the power to change the basic beliefs of individuals, guessed by Janoff-Bulman in Theory of the destroyed assumptions. Speculations contrary to the professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts indicate that the thoughts and judgments that we suppose to be true will remain the same after the pathogen, ergo Trump and his followers will not change.
The plague that before Christ killed a third of the population of Athens and brought down the prosperous and just state conceived by Pericles, did not forever bury the foundations of the first documented democracy in history but damaged its joints; The Covid-19 will not bring down contemporary democracies and dictatorships but will likely incorporate adjustments in its gears. The outbreaks of Justinian's plague did not shed the Byzantine empire; they generated instability and revolutions and the emperor never regained the lost splendor.
If the coronavirus as a transformer of dogmas does not alter the self-esteem of the American president, it will be necessary to trust that, at least, it influences the logic of its voters and leads them towards healthier candidates in the November elections. The ruler has recommended educating children without leaving home. More complete was the recommendation of a Spanish murderer to the children of a friend, fascinated by their misdeeds. They asked me for his autograph. The criminal sent it to him from his cell in Bolivia. "For Iñaki and Javi. Don't be like me. " Trump should have advised American children to study and reflect a lot, and not be like him. It's still on time. The plague could humanize you; otherwise, to be struck down in the ballot box.
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