If Only We Had a Leader, Not a Whiner

Pouty McPouterson, pouting.

“Oh, you libtards! You blame Trump for the pandemic!”

No. The pandemic is not his fault (not the fault of China either, but that’s another post), no, we blame him for his response to the pandemic.  The fact he wasn’t ready hasn’t helped much. I mean, firing the people responsible for dealing with a global pandemic, cutting funds and eliminating the programs that were set up to deal with a major health crisis didn’t help when one actually hit (as he was warned it might) all pretty damn stupid, and thoughtless.

Now, 165,000+ dead. Virus is burning though the country uncontrolled. Double digit unemployment, economy cratered and not coming back any time soon. Ugliness reigns.

No matter how you look it (unless you just want to lie about it), Trump has screwed this up, big time.

Simply no other way to look at it. He didn’t act fast enough; almost all of his actions have been reluctant, half-hearted, like a kid told to clean their room and after an hour they’ve picked up one sock. He ignored his own experts, he undermined their advice and when guidelines were actually put out, he immediately ignored them, recommending the opposite. Trump is so focused on his reelection that he just doesn’t care about anything, or anyone, else. And this is for a job he didn’t want in the first place….

He just doesn’t give a damn.

I was making this very argument on the Book of Face yesterday while deep in the enemy territory of a Trumper’s post, and I got one of those smarmy replies; ‘well, what would you do, it you were President? With the laws and powers available and not overstepping them.”

You see the trick here is that he would consider anything Trump did within the ‘law’ and anything done by a Democratic president to be far, far outside it (see Obama, Barack). I see this smug little game all the time, if we talk facts to Trump supporters we all see it. But, we’re in lockdown, I ain’t doin’ nutin’, so why not?

The First Week of the Tom Stewart Presidency,: (What I would do if I ran the zoo)

I would put out national guidelines based on science AND FOLLOW THEM. Weird, huh? I do this because Trump immediately undermined his own recommendations, and his doctors. He never took it seriously, at all. It was like he was trying to 'will' the pandemic away, hoping if he ignored it, it would all just ‘blow over’. My mom used to try this with the light bill. She was soon sitting in darkness.

I would have a national testing and tracing plan in place, relieving some of the burden on the states, and I would work with the affected states, making sure they had what they needed, you know, instead of pissing, moaning and complaining about them, as Trump did. Trumpy’s way really worked well for all involved, especially the 165,000+ dead.

I would also use my power to order more ventilators and PPE manufactured (Trump threatened this, but didn't do it, because of many, many reasons… I’m sure) and then I would ensure the equipment got where it was needed through FEMA and the CDC. This is instead of walking away and letting all 50 states fight it out like a pack of hungry dogs over a bone.

I would reach out to our allies, ask for assistance and offer ours in return. I would learn from them (look at S Korea and New Zealand, they could have told us a lot, if we had leadership prepared to listen). I would have used my national platform to inform the people, stepping back to let the doctors give real, unvarnished information, (not get up, lie about the efforts, undermine what they just said, push phony cures, whine about how mean people are to me, etc…)

…and I would talk about the lives lost. The people, the friends, family, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters lost to the awful pandemic, and offer my empathy and prayers to the ones left behind.

No finger pointing, no crying about the election, no name calling other countries, none of that bullshit. There’s no time for nonsense while people are suffering, and people are dying. I would try my best to be a leader. 

We don't any of that right now. In case you haven’t noticed.

Now I’m going to sort my comic book collection and pray for better times, better leaders, and better hope than the tattered one I have left in my broken heart.

Worse Than Watergate, Nixon, and Vietnam

Former White House aide John Dean III is sworn in by Senate Watergate Committee Chairman Sam Ervin, in this June 25, 1973, file photo. About to drop serious dime on Nixon. (AP)

I am not the only person fascinated by Watergate. We are a hardy band of brothers, sisters and others who want the truth. We read it all, the doorstop books, the Sunday magazine retrospectives, the documentaries that have fewer and fewer original participants each time. We devour it, and then regurgitate it to devour again. Burt back in 1973, I was a resentful kid when the original hearings were going on (they took off reruns of Gilligan's Isle to play the hearings, yes, I'm old) the hearings occupying a bewildering space of my childhood. Hated them. I wanted to watch Dawn Welles, dammit!

Later, I got heavily involved, reading everything I could on the break-in, the cover-up, the immense crap that had gone on for years before, (oh yes, it started years before the actual break-in, with Vietnam and the Pentagon papers), the 'enemies lists', the people to watch (Carol Channing!), and the people to be paid off with CREEP funds. Amazing. The GOP has tired hard to hide and degrade this part of their history ever since, but it’s kinda hard to do. Anyone interested in the truth can find it in books and those documentaries. They need only look past their own prejudices.

I now watch what is going on in the Trump White House, the corruption, the incompetence, the arrogance, the lying that they know no one believes, but they know the MSM will report anyway without bothering to call it what it actually is (you know, lies) which gives it the impression of truth (the problem isn't 'bias' which is BS, but false 'objectivity'), and the grotesque, cynical attitude that the MAGA 'suckers' will believe and stand by them no matter what. This is not me saying this, it was Trump himself (''I can shoot someone in the middle of 5th Ave...”) Yeah...

Nixon was a traitor. He undermined the Paris peace talks as a private citizen (in 1968, during the presidential election), this led to thousands of Americans dying (not to mention the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians) just so the Republicans could win an election. That's kinda it, isn't it? As long as the GOP wins, anything is okay, anything is justified.

The Trump administration is criminal, it's as simple as that. Trump has committed several impeachable offenses (simply the truth) and if he were anyone else, he'd be gone (especially if he was a democrat), and would probably in prison for years. Anyone who values this country, and its laws and norms could not in good conscience vote for someone who ignores laws in pursuit his own enrichment, and his own power.

Nixon had his Watergate, but Trump has had several. Nixon had a GOP that still cared, to a certain degree, about the law and running an effective government, Trump... has neither. Trump need to go, but so does the institution that has supported him, encouraged him, who looked the other way and stood watch while he filled his pocked and smashed things. He's not an aberration, he's the he's the end of the long road the GOP has been traveling since they decided to go all in with the racists abandoned by the Democrats, go all in with the grievances of the far right Christians, so far in that both of these factions were not absorbed by the party, the party absorbed them. They became the GOP.

Nixon learned nothing from Watergate, he just made his lies more subtle, and in book form. He gave expensive speeches to people who thought he was poorly treated and became a 'grand of man of foreign policy', writing his books and giving advice to power. The GOP itself learned little, and worked hard to overturn the limits that Watergate had imposed on them, to shore up their base, gathering as many angry white people who remembered the 'good old days' as they could and making sure those who weren't pissed and white couldn't (or wouldn't) vote. The GOP became the gatekeepers to white power, and all that entails.

Trump is Destiny, the messiah the GOP has longed for, has deserved. He was come to save/ruin the party, they deserve it… and him. Nixon was never really punished for his crimes, and the GOP lost power for four years, but they were back in the 80s, using the power of White anger to fuel them until today, to get them to their shining 'Trump' on a hill. And here we are; criminals in the government, 155,000+ Americans dead, the economy in a shamble, people in the streets, a party in power that refuses to do anything that might effect that power... and the whole world watching in horror.

We need to tear the whole thing out, and throw it away. We had the chance with Nixon, and took the easy way out. This time, they all need to go to jail, they need the most public, transparent trials possible, before the entire world, and then fairly sentenced and punished. We need this, but so does the world. Otherwise we will never regain the credibility we have lost over the past four years.

We missed our chance with Watergate, we now have another chance in November. Trumpism must be finally rooted out and thrown in the dustbin of history. Vote, just vote.