So today, Saturday January 9, 2021, ends a week I could once never have imagined. Wednesday evening I sat in front of my TV transfixed, watching scenes of our National Capitol being overrun and trashed by rioters. Then video clips of national leaders speaking out. Then a clip of Pres*dent trump telling the rioters “Go home, I love you all.” Then more clips of rioters and a woman shot.
What a painful week for anyone who continues to love this country.
We are now thirty-four days past our last Presidential election. In normal times all eyes would be on our incoming president. All news stories would be on the transition of power and how the opposing party is nominally cooperating with the incoming President. In normal times, most people would hardly be paying any attention and life would go on.
Regretfully, these are not normal times. In these times, about one half of our nation’s citizens are holding our collective breaths that trump finally leaves office peacefully. The other half is loudly screaming “VOTE FRAUD” and going so far as proposing a military-led coup to keep trump in office.
“We think that voting actually is not just a private vote for the person who gets the vote, but a public good, and that the more people who vote, the more legitimate the elected officials are, and that they represent the actual values of the electorate.”
former Colorado Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon (D-Denver), Colorado Statesman, 7/27/12
I’ve been observing the tumultuous final stages of this 2020 Presidential campaign through my pandemic-imposed lockdown. From my vantage point the evolving trends of the campaign form a pattern rising into view through the mists of chaos.
And the patterns tell me that no matter what happens on Tuesday, trump and his power-drunk brownnosing groupies have already lost.
So yesterday news broke that one scourge of America was afflicted by the other scourge of America; President trump tested positive for the coronavirus. Not only has trump tested positive, so has his current wife and a handful of senior aids and Republican doormats executives closely aligned with trump.
It’s almost like this coronavirus suddenly isn’t a Democratic hoax. Or that just maybe, this virus isn’t going to just go away all by itself. Who knew – other than all of us with no political agenda to push.
Yesterday was another “9/11 Remembrance” day. I saw a considerable amount of flag-waving yesterday and a lot of “Never Forget.” The appropriate people paid appropriate amounts of attention to the nineteenth anniversary of our day of ignominy. All-in-all, another day to remember when a group of Really Bad People attacked Our Greatest City and killed Three Thousand People. Never Forget.
I have a different take on yet another remembrance of 9/11 Day.
Yesterday we had the extraordinary privilege of one great man praising another great man. The man doing the praising was former President Barrack Obama. The man being praised was the late Congressman John Lewis, who sadly passed July 17, 2020.
One adage I use often is “Careful What You Wish For.” It has a lot of significance for me, a reminder that too often the one thing a person thinks they really want, really need, and work hard to obtain turns out to be the curse that keeps on giving.
In this case, I think the adage applies to the Republican Party as a whole. It applies to the 2016 election as they collectively worked hard to get trump “elected” to office. It applies to the years since, as one after another key republican officials have sworn undying loyalty to trump as the far better 2016 presidential candidate over the She-Devil BENGAZI! email-abusing tyrant-in-waiting Hillary Clinton. It just seems to me; the Republican party would be far better off right now if Clinton had become president.
Not to mention, the entire country.
“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
Mending Wall – by Robert Frost
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”
Something I’ve been thinking about these past few days is how walls don’t necessarily work out all that well. At least, people always seem to find ways of making walls do things that weren’t planned for.
The End of An Error
Four years ago today, I penned a post titled “The Last Week of Obama’s Presidency.” In that post I reflected on the eight years of the Obama administration as it came to an end, his successes and his misses. I also discussed my admiration for then-President Barak Obama as a person. In particular, I commented on how President Obama never once gave in and reacted spitefully to republican-led attacks against him no matter how vile and personal.
I continue to admire former President Obama and his family. I cannot say the same about Twice Impeached Pres*dent trump. The nicest thing I can say about trump is that Wednesday will mark the end of an error in American History.
Opinions & Commentary
state of our union trump