Holy Sh*t - Notes on 2020, Vol. 14
Undermining the post office and threatening to eliminate mail-in ballot opportunity? What on earth is going on? If there ever was a time to align President Cheeto Dust with fascist-type thinking, it was undoubtedly August 2020.
I think he is fully aware of what he is up against, as the recent inclusion of veep candidate Kamala Harris was an astute move to make at this stage of the election year. But really, what the hell? He mentioned something last week about how the world is going to laugh at us if we choose to operate on a mail-in style basis during election time. And what I have to say to that is: sir, the laughter has long since commenced. The world has been laughing at you for years. At a buffoon. Whose lack of scruples and knowledge is leading us into a thicker shit show by the day.
Oftentimes I wonder how my grandfather would have felt about Cheeto-in-Chief. A Republican in his lifetime, he devoted thirty-seven years working within the corporate pharma domain. I knew him to be a driver of exclusively American cars, and a reader of books by historians like Chernow and McCullough. I grew up watching him read biographies on Jefferson, Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, among other past presidents. My grandfather loved America, and in his free time devoted himself to the reading and analyses of such political figures, as well as the historical events, wars, and movements that existed alongside them. It is because of this exposure and foundational knowledge that I feel he would have delivered an apt critique on the current political landscape of the United States of America.
Whether I would have agreed with everything he felt is something I’m unsure about, but the thread of curiosity that brings me to relate him to the current state of things relates to his breadth of character. He was a man of scruples, whose moral compass and compassion might’ve only been surpassed by good humor, work ethic, and pragmatism. His lifetime fell just short of the economic downturn that dominated late 2008 and the subsequent couple years.
Had he been still alive, it is possible his intake of the economic climates of the previous decade, in addition to the Obama presidency, might’ve caused him to lean more to the right. But I’m inclined to believe the news of late would make his head turn. It’s my belief he’d shake his head at Trump’s untoward comments regarding the USPS, the voting process, as well as COVID. It would be Trump’s misinformation—his persistent lean toward ignorance—that would have made him unhappy. This is not the kind of president he would be able to compare to anyone he’d read or learned about.
Character prevails before party, if you’re going to take one thing away from all of this. The man writing this blog once voted as a Republican. Twice actually. But, mercifully, we as human beings have every capability to assess wrong from right, reorganize our thought process, and make different decisions down the road.
Hang in there, all.
