To Fix the Problem, You Must Acknowledge the Truth

For non-Fox news consumers, it has been clear for a long time that the problem with our government is the Republican Party. When a Democratic president is in office, the Republicans spend all their time complaining about the deficit, demanding that every program the Democrats put in place to help the population must be offset by taking benefits from somewhere else. When there’s a Republican in the White House, not only do the Republicans stop talking about the deficit, they actually do everything they can to make it worse, cheering when huge tax cuts for the wealthy are passed. They do everything possible to undo regulations that protect our environment and our health in order to appease their corporate sponsors while withholding money for the social safety net that helps the poorest and most at risk among us. Republican governors throughout the country, with a few notable exceptions, waited longer (some are still waiting!) than their Democratic counterparts to order their citizens to quarantine themselves at home to slow the spread of the virus. And then there’s Trump, whose rank incompetence and magical thinking has allowed this contagion to spread, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of thousands, with tens of thousands more expected in the near future. The Republicans knew for months how dangerous this pandemic was going to be yet did nothing to prepare for it, lying to the country about how bad things could get. State television on Fox and other right-wing outlets continue to lie to their viewers, which makes them culpable in the deaths of thousands of Americans who for reasons I fail to understand insisted on getting their “news” from these propagandists.

With the coronavirus now disrupting our primary elections, Republicans are now doing everything they can to use the pandemic to advance their main agenda – retaining their white, male, minority power under any and all circumstances. In order to achieve this, they have exposed their true intentions only recently by saying the quiet parts out loud. Sure, we’ve all known that their voter suppression efforts have been specifically directed at those who demographically are most likely to vote Democratic in order to prevent Democrats from winning elections, but the Republicans for years were thwarted in their efforts by the Voting Rights Act. Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, however, it has become much easier for them to enact laws designed to prevent those voters most likely to vote Democrat from exercising their right to vote. Voter ID laws were enacted while gerrymandering allowed representatives to choose their voters. Now, when physical distancing is our only effective weapon to slow the spread of Covid-19, the Republicans are refusing to make it safer and easier for everyone to vote by mail because they believe Democrats will benefit electorally. Trump has admitted that allowing every eligible voter to vote means “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again”.

How is it that paper ballots signed by each voter and mailed back to the counties where the signatures are verified are less secure than the computerized ones (some without any paper backup!) commonly used throughout the country? How exactly does Trump think “thousands of ballots” are fraudulently submitted? Who is getting the ballots together? Is there someone going house to house, stealing mail-in ballots out of every mailbox? How would this scale up to manage “thousands of ballots”? Seriously, this makes even less sense than “millions of illegal immigrants” voting in 2016, but the Republicans are completely fixated on doing everything they can to prevent people from voting, and this should make everyone furious. This is even more ridiculous when you recall that the only mass mail-in ballot fraud was in South Carolina by a Republican operative in 2018 that resulted in a redo of the election.

How is this okay with the citizens of this country? There is no legitimate reason for anyone who is legally eligible to vote to not be sent a mail-in ballot for every election from here on out. The Democrats have tried for years to have Election Day become a national holiday in order to make it easier for everyone to vote, and the Republicans have stood in the way. The Republicans believe that they are going to be disadvantaged if everyone eligible to vote could do so, but rather than change their platform and policies to attract more voters to their side they resort to cheating. This will eventually backfire on them despite the long game they’ve played for judges because of simple demographics. The Republican Party’s demise is inevitable and will only be hastened by their callous disregard for their own constituents when they do things like forcing voters to choose between a possible fatal virus and casting their vote.

I am waiting for my mail-in ballot for the New Jersey primary election to arrive in the near future. I signed up for mail-in voting in 2018, when I was on my cross-country trailer trip, and I decided then that having my ballot mailed to me for every election would guarantee my ability to vote from home for the rest of my life. I had no idea how much it would benefit me just two years later, and I’m encouraging everyone I know to do the same to make sure that they too can exercise their franchise without fear of Covid-19 or any other unforeseen future event.

In order to advance our society to a more egalitarian one, it is absolutely necessary that everyone who is legally eligible to vote be enabled to do so as easily and securely as possible. Providing each and every registered voter in the country with a postage-paid mail-in ballot is the very least we can do. Although I’ve always thought that voting should be mandatory rather than voluntary (it is one of the few things I think every citizen should be required to do as their civic duty), making it easier for all who can vote to vote is the closest we can get. If that results in Republicans being voted out of office, then so be it. However, Republican Senators Cory Gardner, Mitt Romney, Mike Lee would disagree with the premise that mail-in ballots favor Democrats, as they represent states with all mail-in ballots, along with members of the House from Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Utah.

Therefore, it is time for the Democrats to do everything they can to protect our health as well as our ability to vote in November, because Trump will do whatever he can to remain in office, including preventing the election from happening and regardless of the threat to the citizenry from the novel coronavirus. Laws are just norms that everyone agrees to follow that under normal circumstances are upheld by the Justice Department. Without an Attorney General who believes in upholding the law, there is a very high likelihood that Trump will do something illegal about which William Barr will do nothing. We have to do whatever is necessary to prevent this from happening.

My Covid-19 Distraction

In 1984, we moved from a 3-bedroom row home in southwest Philadelphia into a 4-bedroom single home in South Jersey, and I thought that there was no way I would ever have enough stuff to fill all the square footage we’d acquired. Apparently, I didn’t know how much crap I would eventually manage to squeeze into my house over 36 years.

My 6’ x 11’ laundry room seemed small even back in 1984, when laundry appliances were nowhere near the size of the new ones now. When I had to replace my washer and dryer, I found that the larger ones wouldn’t fit along the six foot wall where the previous ones had been, requiring me to relocate the plumbing for the washer and the sink. I found that the subfloor under the old washer had essentially disintegrated – I assume from a washer leaking on it – requiring that a portion of the subfloor be replaced before I was able to install a new tile floor. The renovation took a week, and I think I started to develop claustrophobia while I was doing the work!

I had to add lots of wire shelving around the walls in the laundry room, because the Rubbermaid closet I’d previously used to store stuff in there was way too big to fit with the new appliances. I did get a smaller Rubbermaid cabinet that I put in the laundry room, thinking it would be manageable even though it was really too big for the space I had to work with, and I’ve tried unsuccessfully for all these years to declutter the top of it while arranging things inside it. Last week, I decided that the Covid-19 quarantine was the time to finally and for real tackle the mess that was my laundry room.

Since then, I’ve been amazed at the amount of stuff I managed to shoehorn into that 66 square foot space – and mortified by how much of it I should have gotten out of there years ago! I remembered why I kept procrastinating about organizing everything I keep in there, but I was determined that this time, no matter what, I was going to finally finish putting everything I had to keep in there in a designated place to help me keep it organized in the future.

Now it’s almost finished. I have several boxes of assorted cleaners, insect repellants/attractants, bird feeders and other miscellaneous crap that are being relocated down the basement. I’m sure that I could probably give away or toss most of that stuff, but not yet. When I was telling my daughter Anna a few days ago about the facemasks I’m making out of assorted items I have around the house, she actually admitted that my house is a great place to be if there’s an apocalypse! Covid-19 isn’t exactly the end of the world, but it has made me glad that I take after my grandmother, who also didn’t like to throw out things that were still good.

Anna has told her friends that I’m a pre-hoarder, but I disagree. I have no interest in collecting other people’s discards, nor do I see any value in saving trash or other useless, unsanitary items. When my kids were younger, my house was clean enough to be healthy and messy enough to be happy (to quote a cross-stitch I have hanging in my house!), but that was when there were others here to help with the cleaning, yardwork and general upkeep. In the years that I’ve been the only one here in this giant house on more than an acre of ground, I’ve had to focus on some things while ignoring others. My kitchen table becomes a workspace for doing projects, my computer desk, and my place for meals. It means that I’m the only one who can sit here and eat, but that’s okay since I live here alone (except for Libby my cat and Frankie my bird, neither of whom sit at a table to eat!). Maybe now that the laundry room is organized, I’ll be inspired to carry it on through other rooms – if I can find the time, now that spring has sprung and the grass is growing.

I have to get rolling now – the birdcage needs cleaning, and without opposable thumbs, Frankie is of no help – and those boxes from the laundry room aren’t going to take themselves to the basement, so I’m going to see how much more I can accomplish today. At least doing these things helps distract from the craziness going on around me, like how 2 weeks ago I noticed a $500 charge on my Visa debit card from Wayfair that I knew wasn’t mine. Since I caught the first bogus charge, I was able to cancel the card before someone not me was able to completely empty my checking account. You just can’t let your guard down for a minute! Some people, I have found, are assholes.

Covid-19 Should Destroy Trump’s Presidency

The lack of a response from the Trump Administration to this pandemic is going to cost thousands of Americans their lives, and demographically this could disproportionately affect Trump’s base. Fox News has been completely in step with the disinformation and outright lies being disseminated by the right, and they too are culpable for lying to the most vulnerable of their viewers. Listening to numerous Republican senior citizens saying that they’re willing to sacrifice the lives of their fellow citizens in order to save their 401ks is unbelievable and beyond disturbing. Yet still none of their ranks will stand up and speak out.

We are in uncharted waters, and letting this incompetent president continue to pretend he’s in charge and doing a good job by the American people is unacceptable. I don’t know how we can put someone with a functioning brain in charge of things before November, but we have to come up with something.

Our hospitals cannot handle the anticipated number of patients that an unchecked pandemic will bring to their doors, and our healthcare providers will be overwhelmed by the stampede. We have to do everything we can to limit the spread, and it should be done world-wide. Since we can’t control the rest of the world, it’s imperative that there be a country-wide stay-at-home requirement for the immediate future. Before rescinding these policies, there must be measurable and reasonable requirements to meet regarding the rate of infection, number of ICU beds available, the number of infected healthcare providers and how to ensure those known to have recovered are both immune and noninfectious.

We will forever have the “before” and “after” of this pandemic, and I hope we are able to remember this long enough to make sure we’re better prepared when it happens again.

Open Letter to Senator Sanders

Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America

Dear Senator Sanders:

First, let me thank you for your decades of public service for the people of your home state of Vermont as well as for those of us who live elsewhere in the country. Your unique perspective and populist vision have helped to push the Democratic Party towards a more liberal agenda that would have taken years longer if not for your input. Your laser focus on universal healthcare and income inequality has influenced a younger generation to become more involved in our politics, something so necessary to reach our goals of holding our majority in the House while flipping the Senate and winning the White House.

I feel the need to ask that you now do what is best for our country and the party given the unprecedented situation we are facing. The coronavirus pandemic, which has for eight weeks been mismanaged, dismissed, downplayed and lied about by Trump and his minions, is so highly contagious that there is nothing else to do for the foreseeable future but to isolate ourselves from everyone we don’t live with to slow the spread. The virus is going to continue to migrate through the population regardless of what we do until there is a viable vaccine, but we can manage the effects on our healthcare system by spreading out the sickest patients over the longest period of time possible, thereby reducing overall mortality. This is only going to be possible by maintaining our social isolation, which is not helped by insisting that people leave their homes to congregate in order to cast votes. The primary is already underway, with little time to switch to mail-in ballots, but the general in November still has the lead time to get such a change in place. Given the rank incompetence of this entire administration, it has fallen to others in government such as yourself and your cohorts to do what you can to ensure that nothing prevents us from voting Trump out of office in November. As a US Senator, that should now be your number one focus.

I know that you believe that the good of the many outweighs the good of the one, or the few (Spock). As a retired nurse with friends in the system, I hope you will seriously consider ending your campaign for the Democratic nomination as soon as possible, not only to protect the primary voters who dare to vote in person and the (generally) elderly poll workers most at risk of the worst outcome from Covid-19, but to also enable you to put your considerable influence behind both the party and your supporters so we can unite behind Joe Biden to end this nightmare Trump presidency. The threat is real, and you have the power to do now what you waited too long to do in 2016 and rally your supporters to join you in fully supporting Joe Biden’s campaign for the presidency. The “Bernie or Bust” folks who say they won’t vote for anyone else need you to explain to them that supporting the Democratic nominee is the only viable option if they want to see progressive changes in their lifetimes. Four more years with Trump’s corruption, racism, xenophobia and misogyny unchecked by the Republican Senate (that will continue to approve lifetime appointments for ‘judges’ deemed as unqualified by the ABA) while his cronies continue to undo regulations and protections for the public and the planet in order to benefit fossil fuel donors may take decades to recover from, if indeed we are able to recover at all. Cutting off your nose to spite your face is pointless and honestly, not a good look for anyone. We are now in a pandemic that for eight weeks Trump tried to lie out of existence, with a recession on the horizon. There has never been more proof of the existential threat we face as a result of Trump being president.

It is now clear that the number of votes you received during the 2016 primary were in part due to anti-Hillary sentiment within the primary electorate. With a much less divisive opponent in Joe Biden, you haven’t reached anywhere near the proportion of pledged delegates necessary to win the nomination, and now, you would need win around 67% of all the votes in the remaining primary states. There is no realistic path to accomplish this, barring something catastrophic.

The Democratic voters are speaking loudly and clearly, Senator Sanders. Please do not take their voices as a rebuke of you or your policies. They are clear-eyed and recognize that, at this pivotal moment in our democratic experiment, we cannot enact the progressive policies so many of us want to see unless and until we remove Trump and the Republican Party from their current positions of power. Your particularly brand of Democratic Socialism and personal way of communicating have their drawbacks, and the majority of voters don’t believe you can beat Trump in November. Your coalition of young voters hasn’t materialized in sufficient numbers to matter to your candidacy, a poorer reflection on them than on you, but the outcome is what it is. This is not the national party manipulating things to impede your campaign; these are the grassroots voters, casting their ballots for Joe Biden. Coloring these election results as anything except the actual wishes of the voters should cease immediately.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke

Trump’s Ineptitude is on Full Display

How can the people who are supposed to be leading the fight against Covid-19 make the ridiculous statements about how wonderful Trump has been during this crisis out loud and in public? Have these idiots really gotten so far into the cult of Trump that they think that their bullshit won’t be called out as this virus does what viruses do – spreads to as many human hosts as it can no matter how many lies this administration disseminates to the contrary? Trump is so fixated on keeping the number of reported cases as low as possible as a means of protecting his re-election that the truth of what is going on is being kept from the rest of us. The inability of anyone within the executive branch to make Trump understand the reality of the situation as it is right now is stunning, yet there is no interest from the Republicans to do anything that could prevent the unmitigated catastrophe that is looming over the country because of the unprecedented incompetence of the Trump administration from top to bottom.

If there was anyone in the Republican Party that hasn’t drunk the Kool aid, they’re too intimidated by Trump’s bullying to do the right thing during a real crisis that will have lasting repercussions for a significant portion of our population. Trump lacks any ability to acknowledge that his refusal to listen to the experts about Covid-19 prevented us from preparing for this pandemic, and he never interests himself in learning anything. Somehow, he has been allowed to think that knows all he needs to know about everything there is, period. This may be acceptable behavior when you own your own company, but it really sucks for the rest of us when it’s our president who is never able to admit his ignorance about any subject.

“Who knew healthcare could be so complicated?”

“Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

Seriously???

The frightening thing is that I’m afraid he believes it when he says things like that, which is what makes him so much more dangerous, especially with the Republicans choosing Dear Leader Trump over their oath to uphold the constitution. We have never had an entire political party make the decision that supporting their president no matter what he does was their number one priority, and the founders never even considered this a possibility. I suspect, however, they would have been vehemently opposed to the power that the office has accumulated since WWII in no small part by the legislative branch’s acquiescence to having its powers eroded by presidents of both parties. Now, the federal government is under the direction of the most incompetent person ever to win the presidency and we are being put at significant risk by the lack of anyone capable of knowing the right action right now. Trump’s fragile ego has somehow become the most important thing to Trump’s appointees in charge of our federal government.

It is of no benefit to the country for us to have to hear these lackeys while they sing their obligatory praise of the Donald. Unfortunately for all of them, we will not forget these repeated scenes of their fealty to this idiot in chief they continue to protect. I can only hope that the Republican Party as a politically influential organization ceases to exist.

We expect our federal government to step in to protect us in times of crisis like the current Covid-19 pandemic, but Trump and his administration have so severely gutted our preparedness out of a mistaken belief that the experts fired earlier in his term would be happy to return immediately in the event of a problem. There is no reasonable expectation that this lack of foresight will ever be acknowledged, as Trump has already said he “has no responsibility” for any of the failures of his administration’s handling of the coronavirus. Trump is clearly incapable of empathy because he fails at it every time he’s been called on to offer comfort to the country. He keeps giving speeches that include multiple easily-verifiable errors because his insistence on placing total loyalty at the top of the job requirements for every position in his administration could not have resulted in anything else.

But none of this has caused anyone in the Republican Party to stand up and say the quiet part out loud – that Trump’s refusal to employ experts in numerous vital areas in the federal government has resulted in the most bungled response to a highly contagious disease since 1918. Their continued silence will be directly responsible for many of their own followers contracting the disease because they think it’s a “democrat hoax”. The thing is that the virus is apolitical, and it’s going to infect people regardless of whether or not they ‘believe’ it’s really a problem. This is where the Fox ‘News’ bubble becomes downright dangerous. It’s time for all the right-wing media, particularly Rupert Murdoch, to insist that that all their media outlets immediately cease spreading disinformation and outright lies about the pandemic while simultaneously providing actionable facts to their viewers. The viewers who think they are being informed actual facts by these and similar outlets believe these fools, and are the people most likely to discount the facts and ignore recommendations to limit public interactions that can ‘flatten the curve’ & keep our healthcare system from being overloaded by the very sick.

I’ve never seen my local Wegmans or Whole Foods stores with empty shelves and produce bins. Apparently people in Cherry Hill buy tons of root vegetables during a crisis, and I wonder if there’s an underground spinach thing I haven’t heard about yet??? I don’t understand the stocking up of fresh dairy products, either, since by virtue of its freshness it has a limited shelf life. I have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday before I head to a different Whole Foods and Wegmans to locate the rest of my weekly groceries. That’s the problem when people are uncertain about what to do – they do what they can think of to do instead of doing what would be most useful for the times.

Why it’s going to take a pandemic to finally burst the Fox ‘News” bubble.

Prior to 2016, I don’t think I donated to any political campaign; since then, I’ve sent money to several, with the majority of my contributions going to Elizabeth Warren’s presidential run. I was so hopeful that she could get the nomination – she had real plans to address issues that matter to lots of people and she didn’t have the baggage that plagued Hillary Clinton’s last attempt – that I let myself really hope it could happen. I’ve once again been reminded that here, in America, women still have to be twice as good as men to get half the credit the men do, and it makes me so frustrated that things are still like this in what I used to think was one of the more advanced countries in the world. I cried when Senator Warren suspended her campaign, the second time in my life that the results of an election have reduced me to tears of frustration and fear.

I don’t doubt that Senator Warren’s poor showing on Super Tuesday was driven by the older voters, those in my own age group who were raised by stay-at-home moms and working dads who reinforced the accepted gender stereotypes of their day in their children. Little boys were taught from an early age that they had to hide their feelings and be tough, while little girls were encouraged to be nurturing and submissive. Boys were encouraged to pursue careers, while girls were expected to get married, have babies, and perform domestic duties to support their working husbands. Women were not seen as competent to be in charge of anything more involved than the household budget, and their opinions were often not even considered when decisions were made. Any expressions of dissent were attributed to “hormones” and dismissed or blatantly ignored altogether. Women who exhibited any interest in pursuing positions of power were patted on the hand and discouraged from stepping out of their predetermined lanes.

So these voters are the demographic largely responsible for the position we now find ourselves in – two old white men running for the Democratic nomination while a highly capable woman had to step away from the race. Of course there are a large number of young people who support Senator Sanders’ campaign, while the boomers are leaning heavily towards Joe Biden, making it impossible for Senator Warren to earn enough delegates to keep her campaign viable. Many of those boomers believed that a woman couldn’t beat Trump (largely, I feel, because Hillary lost to him in 2016) based on “electability”, which is often used against female candidates as a not-so-hidden form of sex discrimination. Our party has become so laser-focused on choosing a candidate they think can get Trump out of office that I think we are in danger of forgetting the lessons from 2016.

Now the Trump administration is facing a crisis not created by Trump himself that they cannot make go away by lying about it repeatedly on Fox ‘News’. The Covid-19 virus pandemic isn’t going to be stopped by Trump’s claiming it’s a hoax, and his inability to deal with the facts won’t make the facts any less real. Trump’s lack of capacity to understand how vaccines are developed and tested before being available to the public, coupled with his public statements that directly contradict the professionals at the CDC and NIH, are putting his own supporters at significant risk of contracting and spreading the virus. There have been reports of a significant portion of Fox ‘News’ viewers who believe that this virus is no worse than the flu despite the most recent WHO report that the mortality rate of Covid-19 may be as high as 3.5%. Sure, that’s not too high – unless you or one of your loved ones happens to be one of those 3.5 people out of a hundred who dies from it.

Trump even had the gall to blame the lack of sufficient tests on the Obama administration, despite the fact that the virus hadn’t even been identified until last year. Trump repeatedly makes up the number of people currently known to have the virus within the country, while claiming that the virus will miraculously disappear when the weather gets warmer in April. He has no interest in learning anything that does not comport with his preconceived, illogical and uninformed opinions, and his complete ignorance is putting all of us in danger.

The cult of Trump will continue to cover for his incompetence until they are forced by circumstances to change their behavior. I guess that the only thing we can hope for is that Trump or someone in his administration or family will be diagnosed with the virus and be forced to acknowledge that they have no idea what they’re doing. His inability to focus on anything except the stock market, which continues to lose huge amounts of value because of the uncertainty generated by his failure to do the right thing to address the issue, is related to the only thing he cares about – his re-election.

It’s frightening that the thing that is putting so many of us at risk is what may finally break through the Fox ‘News’ bubble to take Trump down, and it’s sad that this is what it’s going to take to convince his followers how awful he is for the country. Whatever else happens, I hope that the people responsible for the propaganda machine propping Trump up are caught up in the pandemic, because the incompetence of the Trump loyalists running the agencies mandated to protect us are why we’re here in the first place. Their complicity in his deconstruction of the federal government cannot be forgotten or forgiven.

We must agree to unite under the nominee….

I’ve been busy living life the last week or so, watching while the Trump administration shows the world further proof of its ineptitude as it faces a crisis of monumental proportions – the coronavirus and the pandemic now in progress.

Trump has made it clear that his number one concern, as always, is himself. He’s so worried about how this will affect his re-election that he cannot see past himself. The fact that he’s spent more time worrying about the status of the stock market than about how many people already in the country are carrying and transmitting the virus should be all the proof needed for all citizens to rise up and demand his removal from office.

Trump’s inability to absorb basic facts about anything not directly affecting him personally are on stark display when he repeatedly insists that vaccines will be available “rapidly”, that there won’t be more cases of the virus here over time, or that belatedly trying to restrict travel to and from countries that have reported the highest number of Covid-19 can make a difference in the worsening spread already happening here. Anonymous sources within his administration have been quoted saying they can’t figure out “what the fuck is going on.”

Trump has designated his lackey Mike Pence, who as governor of Indiana refused to consider needle-exchange programs to reduce the spread of HIV, to head the government’s charge to address the pandemic instead of choosing a healthcare professional because, after all, Pence will keep the election uppermost in his mind. This is a recipe for disaster, and Pence’s requirement that all information released to the public by the CDC and NIH must be funneled through him only serves to further delegitimize anything that the administration says about the pandemic.

The public needs to be able to believe the things that officials say regarding this crisis, and no one who has paid attention to the Trump administration has any reason to expect that they will provide us with real, actionable information or even basic facts. Why would anyone believe they have the ability to put steps in place that will lead to a resolution before thousands have sickened or died as a result? Both Trump and Mick Mulvaney have claimed that there is nothing to worry about, blaming the media for inciting panic or trying to say that it’s a “Democrat hoax”, that Democrats want millions to die to damage Trump’s re-election. Somehow, this is now acceptable political speech in America, at least for Republicans, and it reveals yet again that, for Trump and his minions, nothing matters if it helps keep them in power.

Trump has put Richard Grenell, an unqualified political sycophant in place as his “acting” DNI while nominating another incompetent and (hard to fathom) even less qualified fool, Representative John Ratcliffe again as the official DNI. This is likely a ploy by Trump exploit a loophole in the law governing Cabinet vacancies that would have required Grenell to leave as acting DNI by March 11^th, allowing him to keep Grenell as acting DNI for up to seven extra months while Ratcliffe’s nomination flounders in the Senate. Trump’s previous attempt in 2019 to put this clown in the position was opposed by Senate Democrats and Republicans because he’s not only unqualified for the position, he’s also lied about his prior record. Trump doesn’t find him unqualified, because the only qualification that matters is loyalty to Trump on Fox. That law governing Cabinet vacancies now forces the Senate to choose between two idiots for a position that was created to keep us safe. There is nothing about either of these men that should make any of us feel safe.

I do not know how we as a democracy are going to survive the Trump presidency. The damage done in the first three years of his time in the White House has been so overwhelming that it’s been impossible to keep up with it all. He’s put bad actors in positions of power to successfully roll back wide-ranging regulations to benefit corporate benefactors going back fifty years. His administration’s corruption is truly unprecedented, and the Republican Party is all in on the continued abuse of a system never designed to have someone so totally unethical in the seat of power.

The primaries now underway are concerning, too. Senator Sanders, an Independent who is now running for the second time for the Democratic nomination, has garnered massive numbers of supporters who seem willing once again to throw the presidential election to Trump if Bernie doesn’t win the nomination. If ever there were a time for all of us who recognize the existential threat to both our democracy and the planet of a second Trump term that time is now. Vote with your heart in the primary, but for the sake of the future of all of us and our children and grandchildren, once a nominee has been named, it is imperative that we all get behind whoever that nominee is and vote the ticket.

If we cannot hold the house while taking both the presidency and the Senate to send Mitch McConnell back to Kentucky, the country we will be left with will be unrecognizable. Continuing to leave the Republicans in any position of power will ensure that a generation will be adversely affected by their racist, misogynistic and reprehensible policies designed to keep them in charge while preventing the rest of us from moving forward with policies that the majority of citizens believe should be enacted. No one who really wants things to change for the better should be willing to do anything except vote for the Democratic nominee for president, because the changes that will occur during another four years of Trump include the very real possibility of autocratic rule overtaking democracy completely. The likelihood of the positive changes we all hope for would be none, at least for our lifetimes. That’s something I cannot bear to consider.

So talk to your friends and family, and tell them how important it is for them to do what’s best for our democracy for the long-term. I don’t plan to vote for Bernie in the primary, but I will throw my support behind him one hundred percent if he wins the nomination, because that is what we have to do to take our country back from the Republicans who have gerrymandered and voter suppressed their way into power. We must vote for Democrats up and down the ticket in order to undo their minority grip on the system; only by doing that do we stand a chance at implementing the fundamental changes that we all want to truly make our democracy live up to the “One person, one vote” standard we all want it to be. Minority control was baked into the Constitution to manage the slave population on whose suffering our country was built, the original sin of America. It is past time to make foundational changes that ensure we are no longer forced by that minority to be held down by their repressive and backwards policies.

I can no longer keep this inside.

I’ve made it to 61 years of age through trial and error. I did more things right than not because I had the good fortune of having around me people who cared enough to tell me when I was screwing up.

I am a child of the 70’s, and am still around 25 between my ears. One look in the mirror, though, reminds me that I’m no longer 25 on the outside!

I voted for the first time in 1976, for Jimmy Carter, and have voted in almost every election since then for the Democratic ticket. Until 2016, I was pretty complacent about our politics, paying some attention to what was on the local and national news but not expending any extra effort to get involved in anything remotely political. When Trump won the Republican nomination, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it – why would ANYONE vote for this asshole? It seemed obvious he was unfit for the job – he had a big mouth, but all that came out of it was lies, bullshit and right-wing media conspiracy theories. It was then that my blood pressure, which had been fine until that point, started to go up, and I was started on an antihypertensive to help reduce it to a normal range.

When Trump won, I did something I’d never done after an election – I burst into tears. I cried for the loss of Hillary as the first female president, and for the Trump presidency that promised even then to be a huge threat to our democracy and the rule of law. I had no idea then what an unmitigated disaster Trump’s time in office would be, or how fully the Republicans would participate with the hollowing out of vast swaths of the federal government writ large. In fact, I had no idea how much damage the Republicans had already done, how their unrelenting desire to remain in power despite representing a minority of the population was driving their continued efforts to take over the judiciary and suppress the votes of the majority.

The past three years have opened my eyes. I am no longer able to just sit by and do nothing while our country is being overtaken by a cabal of power-hungry old white men who cannot accept that their time is over. The Republicans have taken control of key aspects of our state, local and federal government by lying about almost everything. They lie about being “fiscally conservative”, because they are only worried about doing whatever makes their donors happy, not what is best for the voters who actually put them in office. They lie when they say that the only way to reduce federal spending is to cut benefits for Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare and other social programs while they continue to increase military spending and fund Trump’s border war year after year. They lie when they claim to believe in the Constitution but refuse to honor their oath to “uphold and protect” it from all enemies, foreign and domestic. They lie about voter fraud, because what they really want is to prevent liberals from voting.

The Republicans refusal to hold Trump accountable has indeed taught him a lesson – that he can do whatever he wants without fear of being held accountable. Trump is now convinced by the Republicans spinelessness that he can commit his crimes boldly, in public and on television – and he’s right. The Republicans have made it their personal crusade to keep Trump in the White House because they want more unqualified, incompetent, life-time appointed right-wing nut jobs in the judiciary to make sure that their agendas carry on even if they somehow lose their next elections. They do not care at all about the damage being done to the reputation of the presidency and the country throughout the world, nor do they concern themselves with the way their regressive policies are hurting millions of Americans. They are concerned with only one thing – keeping their donors happy by any means necessary in order to remain in power.

There are millions of Americans who are eligible to vote but don’t because they think that their votes don’t matter. We have to do whatever we can to get those non-voters to see that their lack of participation in the franchise is no longer tenable. If they cannot be convinced to perform their civic duty in this most consequential election, then there is a frightening chance that Trump will be re-elected for another term. Everyone knows someone who doesn’t bother to vote, and it is up to each and every one of us to connect with those folks to get them involved and registered, then drive them to the polls to get their votes counted.

We vote with our hearts in primary elections, for whichever of the candidates we most believe will address the issues we find most pertinent to our lives. Once a candidate has been chosen, we must unite behind that candidate to win. Trump must be defeated in November, or his lawlessness, narcissism, incompetence, bigotry and misogyny will destroy the country as we know it, leaving our children and grandchildren to pick up the pieces. Trump’s inability to acknowledge that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or to accept that there are experts who do know, has decimated our science-based system of understanding the world around us, and his refusal to agree to the facts as accepted by the majority of the world reveals his complete lack of capacity to perform the duties he’s required to do as president. He insists that his “beliefs” are all that matter, and the complicity of those around him to support his disordered and deranged opinions must be stopped. He is a useless idiot.

The Republicans have managed to convince their base to vote against their own best interests with the help of the pundits on Fox ‘News’, Brietbart, Sinclair, and other right-wing, opinion-based outlets. These outlets are intent on flooding their airwaves with the Russian propaganda that was so successful in getting Trump and his cronies into the White House in the first place. They are destroying the regulations put into place to protect our environment, air, water and food supply to benefit themselves and their donors, and they will continue to do so unless they are removed permanently from power. There is no longer any options left that makes it acceptable to have Republicans in charge of anything. Period.

The climate is being destroyed by the continued spewing of massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but they refuse to publicly acknowledge that this has been caused by the burning of fossil fuels. They refuse to consider how their public denial of the science and facts is hurting their constituents, the country, and the world, and they are not able to admit what they know is true because they fear the tweeter in chief will say something nasty about them.

I would love to not have to fear what awful thing Trump is going to do today, or tomorrow, or next week, but Trump and his minions make that impossible. I want to have days go by without even thinking about what the president or his administration have been doing because whatever it is, it’s not illegal, immoral, or lining their own pockets using our money. I am unable to fathom how the people he has surrounded himself with can pretend what is happening is okay or normal. What I do know, however, is that it is up to each and every one of us to do what the Republicans in the House and the Senate refused to do.

We must remove Trump from office now – not in 2024. Our nation and the world will not be able to withstand another four years of Trump’s assaults on the rule of law, the international order, and the world as a whole. If we do not, we will have to look our children and grandchildren in the eyes and explain to them why their future didn’t matter more to us than tax cuts and judges did.