Is America Great Yet ?
In the middle of a pandemic and other episodes of complete chaos and madness all across our country, yesterday Trump spoke at the Space Launch praising his “great accomplishments” as 100,000 are dead and millions are unemployed and a pandemic that continues on while we have race riots and fires in over 30 of our cities.
Let this sink in. We have 1.8 million infected with the Coronavirus, close to 40-million without jobs, racism, shootings, race riots in dozens of our cities, and we are more divided than we have ever been and Trump stands there at the SpaceX Launch gloating about all of his so-called accomplishments, in the midst of all of this chaos.
I just have one question. Is America great yet?
I mean, it is a legitimate question, given his campaign slogan of making America great again. I would like to know and I am sure you would like to know too, just when America will be great. I mean, how long does it take and what does this greatness look like?
I am sure inquiring minds would love to know. I also have another question and that is where are we at? Trump and his supporters go back and forth and say “Make America Great Again” and “Keep America Great” and can never tell us which it is and they cannot tell us how he has made America great or how he will keep it great.
Can they honestly say that the current state of our country is great or good or even livable?
Can they?
I know from where I sit, it certainly does not appear to be any of those things and things do not appear to be getting any better anytime soon. The public health crisis and racial division that has gave us riots and mayhem over the last week for sure give us a bleak peek into our future. I would like to say that there is hope, but as long as this man is in charge, that will not be the case and we will not be great.
Let us take a deeper look at the facts.
COVID-19 Pandemic
100,000+ dead, 1.8 million infected, and millions unemployed. Those are the facts of the pandemic in America as we stand. These numbers grow by the day and do not appear to be dropping anytime soon as the virus continues to rage through the country. The pandemic response by Trump for sure has not made us great and has caused the virus to spread throughout the country at a record pace and in an uncontrollable fashion.
The daily briefings by this president have made this entire situation much worse and have not solved any of the issues at hand in regard to this virus that is out of control. Trump has attacked reporters in these briefings and has been belittling them for simply asking legitimate questions and wanting answers as to why things are the way they are and why his response in so many ways has been inadequate.
Trump will call these questions “nasty” and call the reporters “fake” in the midst of the pandemic that has been the worst public health crisis that our nation has seen in nearly a hundred years. He has not shown any leadership at a time when we need a leader the most, but instead has raged and ranted at everyone and everything and accomplishing nothing for the country.
The virus could have been contained at the start of the crisis if Trump had acted right away instead of ignoring the problem and calling it a “harmless flu” and a “hoax” like he did for weeks. I just do not see how his campaign can push the slogan “Keep America Great” when we have these problems that he either created or made worse by his words and actions, especially the virus that his administration had the opportunity to contain and failed to do so.
There are other issues with the virus situation that Trump failed at in the midst of all the chaos. Like, how our testing system is inadequate as well as inaccurate while he falsely claims that we have the best testing system in the world. Americans cannot get tests and the ones who do get them get false negative results much of the time.
There are so many mistakes that this president made with this virus and pandemic and none of his actions have been “great”. His inaction cost so many lives and his failure to take action back in January and February put us in this position. A position where millions of Americans are out of work and our hospitals are beyond overwhelmed by the cases that they get and so much more day after day in this public health crisis.
A “great” country would have acted right away, like New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, and others did. These nations took decisive action when they first found out that they had positive cases of the virus and as a result they were able to contain the spread and save lives. The Trump administration did the exact opposite, they downplayed the virus and did not take it seriously and still do not and because of that massive loss of life has come upon us through this.
The bottom line is that the pandemic response by Trump was far from great and continues to be weak. The truth of the matter is that this president and those around him did not act and continue to ignore the grave nature of this threat that we face and our public health crisis and because of that, people die and people are suffering.
Race Riots and Mayhem
The riots that are happening in dozens of American cities and the theft and destruction may be blamed on “leftists” by Trump and his supporters and the right-wing media, but the issues goes much deeper than that and can be traced back to Trump himself. I know, people will accuse me of blaming Trump for something that he had nothing to do with but the issue as I said, goes much deeper.
The riots I speak of started after a gentleman named George Floyd was choked and murdered by a police officer in Minnesota almost a week ago and ensuing outrage that has transpired every day since. This event has sparked the most extensive set of protests and riots that our nation has seen in some time, but it goes much deeper than that one event.
It comes down to two things.
- Decades of systematic racism
- Four years of racism and hate from Trump
These two reasons are why the riots are happening, combined with the pent up anger at the weak response to the virus and the lockdowns that we must be under because of his weak leadership not only on this virus, but overall on every issue over the last several years and everything that has come with that since he took office.
People are fed up and angry.
The riots are bad enough but Trump is making it much worse by his racist tweets and how he encourages violence. During a time of crisis we need a president a country needs a leader who leads and does not call the news “fake” and attack those trying to get the facts while inciting violence like how he called for the military to shoot our own people and calling groups like AntiFa a “terrorist organization” all while he supports groups like the National Rifle Association who profit from violence.
The riots are just another way for us to see that we are not winning and our nation has not become great under him. For Trump and his base to say that we are great while we have a pandemic with tens of thousands of Americans dead and millions more infected and race riots in our streets is clearly the absolute most insane thing I have ever heard.
Division, Hate, and Lies
Even before our current national events of crisis, Trump has caused a colossal blunder of inadequacy and incompetence as president. His daily words and actions have put us on a path of embarrassment and destruction as a nation and as a society. This country was in a lot of trouble even before we had the pandemic and race riots and everything that comes with those horrible and devastating trials we are experiencing.
This is what he does. He lies and divides and those who support him are right there to eat it all up like a Sunday brunch buffet. He knows that he has a base that buys into his propaganda and who will continue with the divisiveness that he starts and that is a sad reason why we are so deeply divided to begin with on his watch.
We will get more into his very scary and prevalent racism in a later chapter, but it should be noted that one of the biggest ways he divides the country is through racial lines and using racism and Xenophobia.
He built his campaign on being Xenophobic and dividing. After all, he wants to build a wall to literally divide people and separate them from their children and his immigration policies alone are some of the most divisive we have ever seen in this nation.
Dividing people is who Donald Trump is. It is all he has ever been and likely it is all he ever will be.
The problem that is greater than that is the same with any of these issues and that is how his supporters carry out his agenda and in mass numbers turn our country into a place that we have not seen and many of us thought that we would never see.
The issue we must deal with is how to stop him and them from continuing to divide us even further. This is where we find ourselves and we know what we must do to correct our divisions that he and others have put in place, but we must act swiftly as time is of the utmost importance when dealing with issues like we are dealing with.
When Trump takes to the podium and gives a speech or gives an interview the first thing he does is divide and blame. That is what he is good at and what he does so well as president. He loves to deflect, and his supporters have learned these tactics from him because anytime they are engaged in a debate with those on the other side, they use the very same tactics that he does.
In his speeches and interviews Trump likes to start out with a single divisive statement that is aimed at a specific group to create a division in our country that gets his supporters riled up and excited. Many times, these divisive statements have zero truth to them whatsoever, but that never stops him from continuing to make them.
Divisiveness is the essence of who Trump is and what he does. He uses the issue of racial and other types of division to create gaps in our country and also, he does it to put people in little groups and subgroups. It is how tyrants and those who want to be tyrants create their sheep and control the masses and if you happen to look at his supporters you will see it working.
The divisions that currently exist in our nation are deeply rooted in racism and hatred and they likely will take many decades to overcome and it is because of the divisiveness of the current American president that we find ourselves and our country in such a predicament and that the culture and political landscape continues to become shaky at best.
Trump never tells the truth. He has told over 18,000 lies since taking office and his supporters love to repeat his lies. With the pandemic they have done an awful lot of that. They love to blame Obama and everyone else for the lies and hate that comes from Trump and the deflection that comes from Trump and his press secretaries.
Lying is what Trump does best and he passes on the trait to his staff and then to his supporters. I call it the “Trump Trifecta” of lies, division, and hate and these people do it very well. I refer to these things that they do as the “Trump Playbook” — deny, blame, lie, and deflect.
This is what these people do best and this is who Trump is and what Trumpism without a doubt is.
How Can We Be Great ?
I will tell you. Get RID of Donald Trump!
This is the simplest way for us to be great again. We were great under Barack Obama and we can be great again if we choose Joe Biden and get us to a place where we have competence and morals once again, we for sure do not have those things now.
The negligent response to this pandemic that has caused so many to die who did not have to die, lack in testing, lack of PPE, and all that goes with the biggest failure of a crisis in American history as well as all the lies, hate , inciting violence, racism, and embarrassment that comes from Trump and his administration are all reasons why we must move on from this man come this November.
The list goes on and on of how he has NOT made us great.
I can list them for days .. literally.
Locking up kids in cages
Insulting immigrants, the disabled, our military
Taking food stamps and healthcare away from the poor
Disrespecting our allies
Holding hate rallies
Golfing and spending tens of millions of our tax dollars
Cozying up to brutal dictators
Siding with homophobes and racists
Committing criminal acts and even .. treason
Attacking our freedoms and rights (Freedom of the press, women’s rights, etc)
The list is endless.
Donald Trump has NOT and WILL not “Make America Great” and because he has not made us great, he will not “Keep America Great” and these are the facts that his supporters and all Americans must accept and come to terms with as this is the truth.
The way to make us great is to vote him OUT and return our nation to a place of sanity and serenity.
This is what we must do. We must vote for Joe Biden in November because like him or not, Joe Biden is our only choice and chance when it comes to our future and how we get out of this mess. The mess is Donald Trump and his “movement”, a movement that was built on hate, division, and racism from the very start and a movement that will never make us great!
