If Trump doesn't care about our health, why should we care about his?

No, Mr. Trump, your life is not worth more than mine. It’s not worth more than the 210,000 lives that have been lost to COVID-19 on your watch.

You occupy the office of the presidency. The office is important. You are not. You can be replaced, and you will be, either by Joe Biden or by someone else — perhaps a Democrat, perhaps a Republican — further down the road.

You boast about telling people what you really feel, regardless of whether it’s rude or false or hurtful. You say you hate “political correctness”? Well, I’m going to give you some political incorrectness you’re not going to like.

I’m not going to sugarcoat this by pretending that I give a damn about you or wishing you a “full and speedy recovery.” I don’t.

I don’t care if you live or die.

Honestly.

That’s not the same as wishing you dead (sorry, Twitter). I wish you something else entirely: I wish you irrelevance. In fact, I’d rather you be alive to experience that, because the selfish part of me would love you to know what that feels like.

Do you think that’s cruel?

If so, please stop to consider: It’s merely a reflection of your own callous attitude toward those 210,000 people who have died — people whose lives didn’t matter to you.

Not enough, even, for you to accept the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask.

Not enough to do anything more than cross your fingers and insist that the virus would “miraculously” go away through the power of positive thinking.

Not enough to stop massaging your ego with rallies and celebrations packed with people glad-handing, hugging, and shouting their virus-filled lungs out.

And if all that negligence weren’t bad enough, you want to take away our health care, too.

With all that, you want people to feel sorry for you because you got the virus you called a “hoax”? To wish you well? Seriously? What delusional excuse for a universe are you living in?

People like me — people with preexisting conditions — are too busy trying to shield ourselves from the disease you’re continually unleashing on us to give a damn. We’re too busy trying to find a way to make ends meet. Heaven forbid we should get sick. We don’t have access to Walter Reed Hospital, nor do we have the means to pay for health care at our local hospital. If it has beds available.

Thanks to you.

Oh, I know you love to blame China for all of it. But even if China mishandled the initial outbreak, it doesn’t matter now. What matters now is your response to it, and your role in spreading the virus — on promoting the very conditions under which it thrives. You’re like the coach on the quarterback who blames his teammate for fumbling the opening kickoff, even though he’s thrown one interception after another in a game his team is losing 58-0.

No quarterback on any team would ever do that. But then, you’re not on a team. You’re out for yourself, period. The rest of us are irrelevant to you.

So that’s what your health is to me: irrelevant.

I have enough confidence in our system of government — the same system you’ve tried to undermine at every turn — to know that someone else can act as president if you can’t. You’ve bungled things so badly, I’m sure almost anyone else would do a better job. That doesn’t mean I wish you ill. But it doesn’t mean I wish you well, either.

I don’t care about you, because you don’t care about me.

My intentional indifference is me “punching back,” to use that term you seem to love.

Why should I care about someone who doesn’t care about his fellow human beings? Or only cares about the service some of them perform by licking his filthy, blood-stained boots? Why should I care about the health of someone who doesn’t care about mine? About 7 million-plus people in this country who’ve contracted this “plague,” as you call it? Or even about your own followers, whom you’ve guilt-tripped and ridiculed if they dare to wear masks in your holy presence?

You’re not holy. You’re wholly corrupt.

But you’re still a human being. Your egotistical, narcissistic, cruel, virus-spreading, pathetic excuse for a life isn’t worth less than mine or anybody else’s. But 210,000 lives are worth a lot more than yours, and so are the lives of millions more that remain at risk. As of now, those lives are in danger because of your incompetence and your narcissism. They’re being subordinated, not to your needs, but to your ego — to your self-absorbed obsession.

Because in your mind, you’re relevant and we’re not.

That’s why I wish you irrelevance.

That’s not cruelty, Mr. Trump. It’s an exercise in self-defense.