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Happy Birthday and Get Well Soon
On this date in 2018, I posted a blog entry which bears repeating:
I saw a cartoon recently in the form of a card saying “Get well soon,” addressed to the GOP, and signed by John McCain.
Get well soon, dear country. Please recover from your infatuation with a demagogue and buffoon. He isn’t good enough for you, dear country. He doesn’t really love you, or appreciate what makes you special, even though he says he’ll make you great again. He’s likely to hurt you badly if you let him. And it’s not just him: even after he dies, or loses an election, or is exposed, impeached, and removed from office, there will be others like him, trying to follow in his footsteps. There will also be radicals of the left, claiming to be the alternative to him and his pack of sycophants, fascists, and alt-right cockroaches.
I’d like to say you’re better than that, but let’s face it: sometimes you haven’t been. Sometimes you’ve given your affections to demagogues, Klanscum, and fools before. And yet, you have ideals and worthy traditions, even if you haven’t always lived up to them. Sometimes you have listened to the better angels of your nature, elected wise and decent men, even if they were flawed as all mortals are flawed, set injustices to right, and left the demagogues of the left and right to harangue supporters gathered in telephone booths.
Nonetheless, I have hope for you. Happy Birthday, many happy returns, and may better birthdays come. May you come to reject the yahoos, give ear to the wise, and address your real problems.
Thus I wrote seven years ago. I don’t think that I imagined at the time that Donald Trump, after losing the 2020 election, attempting an autogolpe, and failing to cling to power, would become the second man in American history to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms as President, and bring with him a worse gang of “sycophants, fascists, and alt-right cockroaches” than he had the first time. As has been said, truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense. I still have the hope I expressed in the final paragraph of my earlier post, but I find the situation grimmer than before.
My optimistic scenario is that the real estate bubble bursts on schedule (2026), whereupon the huge national debt and persistent deficits combine with the real estate crash to give us a financial crisis and a really major recession, discrediting the administration in power. (People tend to blame the current president for whatever goes wrong with the economy, whether or not he actually bears much responsibility.) People who don’t care that Trump lacks respect for the Constitution, and think that he’s a brilliant businessman and self-made billionaire, rather than a complete phony and grifter who inherited a pile of money, and is now senile, may change their minds about him when they’re thrown out of work, inflation skyrockets, and he and his lackeys prove unable to fix anything. Even then, our problems won’t be over, because the Democrats mostly don’t have good economic policies either. And then there are Russia and China . . .
Pessimistically, Trump and his handlers might use a crisis as an opportunity to crush the political opposition, impose martial law, and cancel elections.
People have endured and survived worse conditions than we’re suffering now, and sometimes triumphed over adversity and grave evils. We should face our serious dangers with awareness, but we should try to keep stout hearts, and accomplish what we can.
I saw a cartoon recently in the form of a card saying “Get well soon,” addressed to the GOP, and signed by John McCain.
Get well soon, dear country. Please recover from your infatuation with a demagogue and buffoon. He isn’t good enough for you, dear country. He doesn’t really love you, or appreciate what makes you special, even though he says he’ll make you great again. He’s likely to hurt you badly if you let him. And it’s not just him: even after he dies, or loses an election, or is exposed, impeached, and removed from office, there will be others like him, trying to follow in his footsteps. There will also be radicals of the left, claiming to be the alternative to him and his pack of sycophants, fascists, and alt-right cockroaches.
I’d like to say you’re better than that, but let’s face it: sometimes you haven’t been. Sometimes you’ve given your affections to demagogues, Klanscum, and fools before. And yet, you have ideals and worthy traditions, even if you haven’t always lived up to them. Sometimes you have listened to the better angels of your nature, elected wise and decent men, even if they were flawed as all mortals are flawed, set injustices to right, and left the demagogues of the left and right to harangue supporters gathered in telephone booths.
Nonetheless, I have hope for you. Happy Birthday, many happy returns, and may better birthdays come. May you come to reject the yahoos, give ear to the wise, and address your real problems.
Thus I wrote seven years ago. I don’t think that I imagined at the time that Donald Trump, after losing the 2020 election, attempting an autogolpe, and failing to cling to power, would become the second man in American history to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms as President, and bring with him a worse gang of “sycophants, fascists, and alt-right cockroaches” than he had the first time. As has been said, truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense. I still have the hope I expressed in the final paragraph of my earlier post, but I find the situation grimmer than before.
My optimistic scenario is that the real estate bubble bursts on schedule (2026), whereupon the huge national debt and persistent deficits combine with the real estate crash to give us a financial crisis and a really major recession, discrediting the administration in power. (People tend to blame the current president for whatever goes wrong with the economy, whether or not he actually bears much responsibility.) People who don’t care that Trump lacks respect for the Constitution, and think that he’s a brilliant businessman and self-made billionaire, rather than a complete phony and grifter who inherited a pile of money, and is now senile, may change their minds about him when they’re thrown out of work, inflation skyrockets, and he and his lackeys prove unable to fix anything. Even then, our problems won’t be over, because the Democrats mostly don’t have good economic policies either. And then there are Russia and China . . .
Pessimistically, Trump and his handlers might use a crisis as an opportunity to crush the political opposition, impose martial law, and cancel elections.
People have endured and survived worse conditions than we’re suffering now, and sometimes triumphed over adversity and grave evils. We should face our serious dangers with awareness, but we should try to keep stout hearts, and accomplish what we can.