So Trump Is Going to Win the GOP Nomination

But, Hey — at Least It’s Not Hepatitis C

A month and a half left before the primaries are over, at a rate of 49%, Donald Trump has been nabbing delegates right and, well, further right. He’s sexist, misogynistic, racist, and Islamophobic, but unfortunately — and man, is it disheartening and downright scary to say this—Donald Trump is not the worst case scenario. Ted Cruz is far, far more dangerous.

Here’s the analogy:

It starts with an innocent, little scratch in the back of your throat. Less than 12-hours later, there’s no denying it and you can’t ignore it. It hits you mercilessly with cold sweats, a headache, fever, chills, and body aches — and you think, surely, this is what it feels like to die. But in all likelihood, you’re probably not going to die. Every year, 20% of Americans come down with the flu, and 70% of these cases are mild, requiring no more than some ibuprofen and a hot toddy. For the majority, the flu is just a temporary annoyance consuming time better spent at work.

This year, there’s a new influenza in town. Its name is not H1N1 or H3N2 or any other combination of Hs and digits. Its name is Donald Trump. Like the flu, Trump has come upon us fast and furious. He’s loud, he’s ugly, he’s making a lot of people feel like shit. But like the flu, Trump is merely a palpable, temporary affliction, and he isn’t going to permanently damage most of us. He’s just wasting our time — his bark worse than his bite.

Take abortion for example. In August, 2015, Trump said he would defund Planned Parenthood, but earlier that year, he stated the nonprofit organization does “great work on women’s health.” In fact, up until 2011, Trump favored abortion rights, stating in 1999, “I believe it is a personal decision that should be left to the women and their doctors.” As politics go, it would seem as though Trump flip-flopped in order to nab the support of certain constituents. And as flip-floppers do, once in office, they usually revert to a stance closer to their original.

Let’s look at another example, environmental concerns. In October, 2015, Trump called eminent domain “a very useful tool,” and in February of this year, he went on to say that it’s something we “need very strongly.” But back in 2010, he said we must “partner with environmentalists when undertaking projects,” which is pretty much exactly the opposite of how eminent domain functions.

How about gun control? Today, Trumps says, “people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice,” and there should be “no limits on guns” because they “save lives.” He proposes that the process to purchase a gun should be “instant,” stating in October, 2015, “gun violence is inevitable” and “regulations won’t help.” But back in 2000, he was for the ban on assault weapons, supporting background checks and a mandatory waiting period.

The rhetoric on Trump’s campaign website is peculiarly unclear. It reads first, “very few criminals are stupid enough to try and pass a background check,” but just before that, it reads “the overwhelming majority of all gun purchases” are through “a federally licensed gun dealer.” Working under one incoherent platform, Trump says that the “system’s only going to be as effective as the records that are put into it. What we need to do is fix the system we have and make it work as intended.” But the very next sentence? “What we don’t need to do is expand a broken system.” Could it be that Trump’s rhetoric is confusing on purpose? So that later he can defend himself when he doesn’t even remotely observe the promises he made to his voters?

What about all those hurtful, polarizing statements about Muslims? In March of this year, Trump said, “I think Islam hates us,” and in December, he recommended a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” But just three-months earlier, Trump said our problem is with “radical Muslims,” and that “radical violent Islam must be feared, not Islam itself.” Here again, we have obscene pandering versus practical statements of prominent thinking. Trump makes big talk directed at the voters he knows he can grab — as no one else is willing to jeopardize their reputation and professionalism for them.

Trump’s history tells us that his severity is inconsistent and it will most likely decline, just like the common flu, if he is elected to office. So if Donald Trump is an influenza, a temporary nuisance that just makes you feel icky, what does that make his opponent? Ted Cruz has years upon years of unwavering, injurious policy initiatives that have been working, largely unnoticed, underneath the surface. In this light, Ted Cruz is hepatitis C.

Commonly referenced as the “silent killer,” most of the 400 million people living with hepatitis C don’t even know they have it. It can lie dormant for years as 80% of its cases show no symptoms until far too late. When symptoms do arise, they are minor and ambiguous, such as feeling tired and “blah.” Likewise, Cruz’s volume is softer, his rhetoric less conspicuous compared to that of Trump’s, but if Cruz takes control, the outcome will be detrimental. Ted Cruz, like hepatitis C, will flat out kill you whether it’s recognized now or not.

Let’s begin, again, with abortion. Although Trump has flip-flopped his stance, he currently maintains three exceptions in the case of abortion, the health and life of the mother, rape, and incest. Cruz, on the other hand, opposes exceptions for rape and incest, stating he doesn’t “believe it’s the child’s fault,” that we should “do everything we can to prevent the crime,” and “to punish the criminal,” but Cruz doesn’t “believe it makes sense to blame the child.” Furthermore, Cruz has consistently stood with employers who deny insurance coverage of birth control to their female employees.

Cruz’s stances on issues like gun control and the environment are hardly surprising, and according to inside.gov, he scores more conservatively than Trump on every single issue. But perhaps the most distressing of these are Cruz’s views on economic issues and his ideas for reform. While Trump has flip-flopped on whether or not the use of a nationwide flat tax on the country’s wealthiest would be advantageous, Cruz has upheld a proposal to flat-tax all incomes over $36,000 for families of four.

One look at a country like Pakistan will show meddling in the business of securing revenue is ruinous and downright stupid, nevertheless, Ted Cruz says that he would abolish the IRS. Yes, you read that right. The agency whose purpose it is to collect taxes for our nation’s income would be abolished under a Cruz presidency. But the task would have to be performed somehow, which means it would be delegated to another department, one that would be inexperienced in tax collection. Or an entirely new agency would have to be created, which would merely be the IRS operating under a different, Cruz-approved name. And if Cruz were somehow unable to obliterate the IRS, he would at minimum “prohibit its auditing of Tea Party political groups,” some pretty facetious and preferential treatment to say the least.

As Cruz is a major proponent of government reform, the IRS isn’t the only department that would get nixed. The Department of Education would also be abolished under a Cruz administration. According to Cruz, decisions regarding education are “best made at the local level,” a view strongly opposed by experts. While Common Core is debated at large, the fact that America’s schools are lagging behind the rest of the world is a notion unchallenged. Trump has said he would cut funding to the Department of Education — an arguably terrible initiative in itself — eliminating the department as a whole is far, far more stupid.

A Cruz presidency is most dangerous to the civil rights of anyone who is not a white, straight man. In 2013, Cruz voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act because it extended its coverage to legally protect immigrants, and gays and lesbians against domestic violence. And in October, 2015, Cruz stated that a demand for equal pay would only enable more lawsuits. By that logic, to eliminate all crime, we should just legalize it. Because lawsuits are exactly how victims of injustice get justice.

And finally, Cruz would threaten progress made for gays and lesbians. The ultimate judge and authority regarding all laws, including the most paramount, fundamental law of all, i.e., the constitution, is the Supreme Court. But in March, 2015, Cruz said that “most states can ignore Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage,” a rather interesting recommendation, considering Cruz’s obsession with restoring and upholding the constitution. Although Trump backed same-sex marriage as a state’s issue, and was against same-sex partner benefits back in 2011, he simply said, “gay marriage is [now] a reality” after the court’s ruling.

Just as no one is hoping to catch a cold, a Donald Trump presidency is certainly not the best case scenario. Every year, a little over 5% of people infected with influenza die. That’s 36,000 people, most of which are 65-years and older and have preexisting medical conditions. But the outcomes involving a contraction of hepatitis C are much worse.

Over 90% of people infected with hepatitis C face chronic liver disease, the liver damage alone killing nearly 500,000 people a year. That number doesn’t include the deaths caused by other hep-C complications, like the havoc wreaked upon the circulatory system and its subsequential internal bleeding. Or deadly comas resulting from damage to the central nervous system. Or that hepatitis C destroys the stomach and digestive systems and how many people die simply by choking on their own vomit. And considering the acute nausea Ted Cruz stirs in nearly all of us, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance of that happening.