Fools

 On behalf of April Fools’ Day, we welcome all Fools to the table.

I have been wondering lately, given that I have been vaccinated, why each day I still experience this sense of darkness, almost impending doom. First, I began blaming it on the weather.  When it darkens and then rains seemingly every other day, I get depressed. Partly, it’s because our basement has a habit of flooding when we get too much of the wet stuff. Partly, it’s just gloomy to look outside.

And then I thought, well No, you are feeling the effects of this never ending Pandemic. See, I have been vaccinated, so I should be feeling better, right? Yeah, except there are all those people not vaccinated, some by choice and some simply because they cannot maneuver their way through the thicket that is the official Vaccination Lottery.  Yeah, even people who desperately want to get vaccinated are often unable to get through the systems set up to confuse folks about how to get an appointment.  First, the Feds under Trump, punted that ball to the States, so that if there were screw-ups, Trump could point to the states. And then the States seem to have punted to the counties and maybe even localities. And now it’s just not very clear. There are all kinds of web URLs that purport to lead people to vaccination appointments, but many folks have been unable to get into those sites.

Now maybe it will eventually begin working and everyone who wants one will get a vaccination.  But until then, we live under this cloud, with people dying unnecessarily, over 550,000 by one count.  And often they are folks who were entering that last stage of their lives anyway, but still hopeful of living a few more years in peace and happiness. But no, Mister COVID had other plans.

So, the Pandemic maintains its presence as the Dark Cloud over all our lives. Ever threatening. Now if that isn’t depressing enough, then how about them Republicans??

Yeah, it would seem that Donald Trump didn’t just lose an election. No, he worked hard, perhaps harder than ever in his dim life, to totally destroy the American system of Government.  Never in my now fairly long life have I ever observed a more destructive political period.  It is as though Donald Trump is still playing a real life game of Apprentice with America as the ultimate contestant, and he keeps firing her.

See I have lived under and even worked for some of the many presidents this nation has seen fit to elect. I begin with FDR who took office after a disastrous stock market crash and an even worse republican administration under Mr. Hoover. The country was fairly reeling on the edge of collapse when FDR took over. He immediately began working hard to put America back to work. And then of course that World War II thingie occurred and we really had no other choice but to begin working our asses off to defeat that Fascist regime over across the big pond. So FDR helped us to climb out of our Great Depression and begin acting like that Great Nation once again. And the parade continued. Harry took over from FDR and he wasn’t bad. He at least avoided another war.  And then that war hero Eisenhower took over. He defeated the intellectual Adlai Stevenson. And yeah Ike was a republican, but he was a war hero folks. And guess what, he began investing our national treasure into Infrastructure. He built us a national highway system. Imagine that, a republican investing taxpayer dollars into infrastructure instead of tax breaks for the wealthy.

And the parade continued. First that lovely JFK. Remember him? “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”. Oh and then some asshat shot and killed him.  Apparently America was not ready for a truly good man. And so LBJ had to take over the job.  And while LBJ is sort of officially recognized as the big boogie man who began that nasty Vietnam War, that really began during Truman and Eisenhower’s administrations, by overseeing the division of Vietnam and then supplying arms and equipment to the South. By the time LBJ took over, war seemed a near certainty.

And the Vietnam conflict was perhaps the first time I had noticed a serious division amongst the American people. Part of it was that many folks simply did not wish to get drafted to fight in a war with which they fundamentally disagreed. See, there had been no disagreement during WW II. I suppose all of our latent Nazi’s and KKKers decided to just shut up, unlike today.  And even Korea sparked little dissent. But then came Vietnam. I guess the real disagreement was over that Cold War thing, you know, the rhetoric about the potentially cascading effects of allowing one country to turn Commie, followed by the next and the next and so on.

There were protests and more protests. Nixon finally won his presidency on the idea of ending that war. Instead of course, he vastly expanded it before acknowledging that we had in fact lost, allowing him to withdraw our troops. And again, the parade continued . . . Nixon, Ford, Carter, and then Reagan. And something seemed to change within the country under Reagan.  He seemed to me to be the first president who had run as a sort of racist. Remember all that talk about “Welfare Queens driving to the store in their Cadillacs”? Ronnie seemed to exude racism, and, as a result, he let our racists out of their respective closets.  Ronnie also seemed to embody a kind of “dodginess”.  Remember that business of selling arms to a terrorist regime (Iran) and then using that money to finance terrorists in Central America?  Again, that seemed a change from the past, and perhaps created greater schisms within the American populace.

And then we bounced around a lot, until George W. Bush took over the reins. He began setting new standards of behavior, and perhaps that was when serious Truthiness began appearing within our government. Lies upon lies is sort of the definition of Bush’s Iraq war policy. While we survived that mess, it may well be that the country was not quite the same thereafter.

Now the election of Barack Obama began a far more serious internal conflict. Obama, our first Black president. He was bright, informed, and humane. But he was also Black. Remember all those lies about his birthplace?  They were generated by the right wing republicans in hopes of stopping his presidency. Those efforts failed and he won two terms. But, among other things, he left behind some seriously deranged racist elements within our country.

Just in time for our first overtly racist president, Donald J. Trump.

And I think that is when the Darkness descended on America, and that Darkness has never left us. Remember all those racists let out of their closets by Reagan? Well, now, under Trump, they began yelling even louder and, they became his Administration.  And then, because so many American racists began yelling their approval of Trump’s racist demagoguery, it apparently became clear to the other republicans in our government—you know the Mitch McConnell's of that world, that racism was the new norm for America. But Donald didn’t just bring racism to the table.  No, he brought misogyny, he brought ignorance of almost everything. And then his corruption kicked in. He had been arguably one of the most corrupt humans on our planet.  And now he brought corruption to our National Table.

He lied almost every time he spoke. It became clear to all . . . “How does one know Donald Trump is lying? Well, whenever he opens his mouth and words come tumbling out, he is lying”. By some official counts, Trump told 30,573 lies during his four years, or over 20 lies per day. Quite astonishing really. I imagine none of our other presidents was even in the same league.

And so, now we have a new president who doesn’t speak in that same Truthiness tongue. He actually uses facts and stuff, and his press spokespeople actually seem to be truthful.  What an amazing thing after that parade of fools Trump brought before us.

And so the Dark curtain is beginning to lift?? Well, no, it isn’t. And why you might ask? Well, because while Trump was in office, he actually destroyed the entire republican party. And that party represents about half of our government (well half of our elected government). And ignoring days of Olde, when Truman and Ike, and JBJ, and Nixon and Reagan led our government, we apparently no longer just agree to disagree and then get on with the business of government. No, instead our current republican leadership has decided that they will oppose everything and anything proposed by President Biden, or in fact by any Democrat. Yeah, now it’s a world of ZERO cooperation from Republicans.  But more, they will try to destroy any and all Democratic legislature. So, slowly, over time, our government is being destroyed day by day by the likes of Mitch McConnell & Co.

And that I have never really seen before. So, Joe Biden seems to be living in a world of Trump-Zombies intent on killing him figuratively if not literally.  And that describes my current view of the Pandemicataclysm in which our country now resides. And that, frankly depresses me. And if it doesn’t depress you, then clearly you are not paying attention. Maybe 2022 voting will move the curtain one way or another—either we complete the destruction of our nation by electing more republicans, or we begin to lift the cloud by removing any and all power from the republicans and they begin to see the errors of their ways.  And maybe then all our racists will go back into their closets.

We’ll see. And hopefully, I will still be alive to see which way we decide to move.