So in the interest of my own sanity, these will be my closing thoughts on the choice we as a nation are making.
As we approach the actual day of the 2020 election, it is very hard to be excited about it. Mostly I, like the majority of Americans just want this to be over. Yet we all know that this will not be the case. Donald Trump will drag this out as long and as painfully as he can, regardless of the electoral outcome. November 2020 will make November 2000 look like a walk in the park.
Pundits and historians will be debating and discussing for decades to come, the question of just how did we get here? Entire textbooks will be written to study the dynamics of racial and economic disaffection combined with foreign interference, and disinformation, that enabled Donald Trump in 2016 to win the electoral college by a mere 77,000 votes while losing the actual election by nearly three million votes to Hillary Clinton.
The record of the Trump administration is and will always be a story of the numbers.
The millions of tax dollars funneled directly into his own pockets and that of his children. The tens of millions of jobs destroyed by Trump’s inability to stop running for President and actually DO the job of President. The number of farms and businesses pushed over the cliff of bankruptcy by Trump’s inept and reckless trade war. The numbers of a skyrocketing Federal Budget Deficit and National Debt thanks to Trump’s “robin hood in reverse” tax cuts for the very wealthy and corporations.
But most all it will forever be a story of the body count. The hundreds of thousands of dead Americans from a pandemic that Trump, knew about, and did nothing to stop. Other than deny its existence, dispute its severity, and when that didn’t work; tweet out wild conspiracy theories and dangerous misinformation in hopes of muddying the waters of public understanding. All in a desperate attempt to avoid his own responsibility as President.
Late 21st Century students of American history will, much like late 20th Century students of German history, struggle to understand how a rational nation that had contributed so much of what is good and great to world, could have allowed itself to fall into a sewer of mindless, racist populism and gleefully wallow in it for years. While embracing a dangerous and aggressive ignorance, to deny the reality unfolding right in front of them.
To run through the horrific catalogue of reasons Donald Trump and those who enabled and supported the damage he has done must be consigned to the dumpster of American history, would take another 4 years. Just as repairing that damage will take far longer than the span of a Joe Biden Presidency.
So two weeks out from election day I will simply say this:
By every conceivable metric the Presidency of Donald John Trump has been a colossal failure. To say otherwise is, to be completely divorced from reality. To advocate for, or to embrace four more years of this is, either delusion to the point of self-harm, or to knowingly and willingly support the destruction of our nation and the end of the great American experiment in representative democracy as we have known it for over 230 years.
This isn’t about Liberal or Conservative. This isn’t about Republican or Democrat. This is about Right and Wrong. This is about who we are as Americans and who we are not.
If you love your country, you must vote for Joe Biden. It’s that simple.
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