In every American crisis there’s a moment like the one after the 2018 Parkland High School slaughter. A woman found her way into an exclusive Republican fund-raising event on toney Key Biscayne across the water from downtown Miami. She wheedled her way through the crowd of politicians and big ticket donors until she found Paul Ryan, then Speaker of the House.

Polite and deferential to start, she eventually asked Ryan if he was, “Here celebrating the death of 17 children.” At this point the silver-tongued Ryan waved her off saying that despite being the star attraction at a political fund-raiser he, “didn’t want to talk politics”. The line is a variation on the tried and true, “Now is not the time to talk [insert whatever the crisis of the moment is all about.]” (Here’s a few more examples of the same thing.)

There’s an amusing but deadly dark tussle going on amid the torrent of COVID-19 news. This, in case you’ve been distracted by the rapidly escalating death toll, the administration ordering thousands of body bags and dodging basic questions like when will it produce enough tests to moderate the near total lockdown of American society, is the matter of suing FoxNews and other key members of the right-wing disinformation network. For what? For their culpability in the spread of the contagion.

Sharp-witted and sharp-elbowed tech columnist Kara Swisher launched into Sean Hannity in her Tuesday column, using her 80 year-old mother, a Hannity super-fan as an example of the very high cost of the crap (a polite word) regularly spewed by Hannity to his millions of credulous listeners and viewers.

“Facebook was not my mother’s source of misinformation (in fact, the company has been trying to improve in this area). It was not the fault of Dr. Google, which has at least pushed out more good information than bad. And my mom doesn’t use Twitter. Instead, it was Fox, the whole Fox and nothing but the Fox. Many children of older parents have come to know this news diet as the equivalent of extreme senior sugar addiction mixed with a series of truly unpleasant and conspiracy-laden doughnuts.”

While a lawsuit over Fox’s role in feeding Donald Trump and TrumpNation ludicrously erroneous and arguably lethal misinformation, to the point that Fox-Trumpers continued on with activities that led to the infection and deaths of god knows how many others is a delicious thing to imagine. A kind of Scopes Trial for the Trump era. Another sweaty courthouse lawn somewhere. Perhaps Palm Beach in July. A trial of not just Trump, but the larger network of astonishingly cynical interests that have enabled and invested in him.

But that, as Swisher writes, isn’t going to happen. Modern America doesn’t work that way. Nevertheless, Hannity has gone ballistic, calling Swisher every name he can use on air (and Twitter) while – of course – failing to disprove any of the accusations of naked mendacity she posed against him.

He’s sweating. He can feel the first draft of history’s dim view of what he’s done.

TrumpNation is up on its arthritic hind legs, snarling and hissing through the few good incisors they have left that liberals are exploiting the pandemic to undermine Trump. It’s a more personalized, cultish variation on, “Now is not the time … to assess blame for how bad this pandemic has become in the richest and most technologically advanced society on the planet.”

But it very much is. Now is the time to make damn certain there is no doubt in a fat majority of Americans’ minds why this is as bad as it is, and why it could have been much less worse. Fewer infected. Fewer dead. Fewer livelihoods destroyed.

Given everything that is known and provable — just at this point in the crisis — of what Trump knew, what he was told by our intelligence agencies, by the likes of the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonier and what he then failed to do, what diametrically opposed “untruths” he told his gullible, credulous fan base about the likelihood and lethality of what was coming is nothing less than a catastrophic failure of character and duty.

And as much as I wish I could say that is hyperbolic. It’s not. Look around you.

Among the Usual Sage Heads of punditry and establishment media there’s this attitude that it’s est to wait. “This will all get sorted out once the crisis is over,” and “there will government hearings.” Please. As with any meaningful response to our weekly gun slaughter, “Now is not the time … ” is the all-important first step to … doing nothing. To letting the perps skate, and enduring the same tragedy all over again.

If you’re out there rattling your phone lines, your e-mail, your Facebook postings, your Zoom meet-ups, your Twitter accounts and your socially distant dog walks with your neighbors pounding the point that this is, verifiably and conclusively, the worst failure of an American president in the country’s history and that it is still failing, good on you. That’s informed citizenship. That’s a sonic wave with potentially critical vibrations.

In order to defeat the virus, fraud and incompetence have to be brought under control … now. Not a year from now in some musty D.C. hearing room with Devin Nunes cross-examining Anthony Fauci.

Governors and mayors and first responders have their hands (too) full because of Trump (and FoxNew’s) malfeasance and mendacity. Support them every way you can. But don’t mistake the importance, right now and for weeks and months to come, of seizing this moment.

What moment? The moment to write history. To establish beyond any doubt who fcked up and how badly. As you may have heard, history is written by the victors.