On a summer day before the 2020 election, we were on our way to get coffee and were assaulted by a parade of cars, uniformly blasting a Trump rap song, American flags, Trump flags, gathering the clouds. The parade wrapped around the block, as far as I could see and just kept coming. My stomach lurched. The rap song pounded alpha male like an assault rifle, revering their warlord. People walked out onto their porches, shouting, some cheering, some shouting rage.
“Four more years!”
A woman with a Black Lives Matter sign on her front lawn and purple hair, spat into the wind, “Over 220,000 dead!” As of this writing, the number of people who have died from Covid is way over a million. Ari Melber did an interview with Bob Woodward, regarding Woodward's taped interviews with Trump, where Trump's responses to questions about his actions, or lack of actions, regarding Covid were startling. He revealed that, to this day, he does not see Covid as a challenge of his leadership. A failed challenge. "It's China's fault. I didn't have anything to do with it."
In 2016 when he was elected, my first thought was this: he’s going to get us all killed. It’s now 2023, and Trump lost the election in 2020 but he is still taking actions that could end us all.
We elected Joe Biden as our President. He has worked hard to heal this country, to put things right. With more experience than any president in history, the biggest criticism democrats have about him is his age. I think it’s his biggest asset. He spent decades in Congress, knows more about foreign affairs than any president, with the possible exception of George HW Bush. He understands that we are still suffering from Reaganomics and is trying desperately to restore us to values of equality, building the middle class, making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. He has forgiven student loans, reduced the price of prescription drugs, addressed price gouging, reduced unemployment to under 5%, restored the United States status with NATO and other international organizations, supported the Ukraine against the attack by Putin to support democracy against the onslaught of authoritarianism.
Biden's first action was to organize our battle against the Covid virus. He did everything he could to make the vaccine accessible to all of us, to promote safe practices, even as Trump did everything in his power to scare people into rebelling against those measures. Biden mobilized the country to get everyone vaccinated. He took office in January, and by March, anyone who wanted could go to a nearby place and obtain a vaccination. That's when I knew. For the first time in over four years, the country had a leader who understood who we are and how to support us.
Biden’s accomplishments are even more remarkable when considering that Trump’s efforts continue to plague us. Trump stacked the Supreme Court, which is attempting to throw us back into the 1950s. Roe v Wade is gone. Affirmative Action has been reversed. So much more. And Trump, himself, continues to bellow lies and hatred at every turn. He’s running for president again…for the 2024 election. And he still has followers, even after inciting the January 6 riot, even after being indicted for over 70 felonies, even after sharing our most secret documents with anyone he wanted to impress.
Interesting times, and painful ones for our country. We are poised on the edge of a knife that threatens to split us apart.
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