The Life in My Years

Call this a memory jogger. Or call it a cautionary tale. Call it both. This is a look back to that period between June 15th, 2015 and, well, now. It’s also a peek into what America’s future might look like.

The way we were

We didn’t know it at the time, but that June day in 2015 kicked off what was one of the darkest periods in the history of the world, certainly of the United States. That was the day that Donald Trump announced his candidacy in what was not so much a speech as it was an angry, racist rant. It was also a warning of what was to come. A warning that wasn’t heeded in November of 2016 and what might be ignored again this coming November.

There was no ambiguity at all. Trump laid his filthy cards on the table for all to see. In the best known riff from his speech, Trump put his racism out for the world to see as he blamed Mexico for willfully consigning criminals to the U.S. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump’s announcement warned us all that he and the truth are not on speaking terms. Hell, they’re barely acquainted – if at all. Among his lies that first day, Trump claimed that the Islamic State had built a hotel in Syria. Well, they didn’t build a hotel, they appropriated the Ninawa International Hotel after it was closed down in the middle of a war. And they didn’t run it as a hotel. And, it isn’t in Syria, it’s in Mosul.

With his boorish behavior on that day in June, Trump flashed a bright yellow warning light that told the world he’s a lowbrow, no class, asshole.

In those early days, most Republican office holders saw the impending iceberg and started heading for the lifeboats. Over the successive days, weeks, and months to come, when it appeared that Trump’s populist snake oil was being bought by the electorate in giant, economy sized jugs, that iceberg started looking more and more like an ice cube to far too many of those Republicans and they decided to take a ride on Trump’s ship of fools. (My apologies for the mixed metaphors. Sometimes I can’t help myself.)

Trump showed everyone exactly who he was when he publicly humiliated his opponents. He called Marco Rubio, “little Marco;” Jeb Bush “an embarrassment to the Bush family;” and called Ted Cruz’s wife ugly and his father an accessory in the JFK assassination. And all of those individuals showed just how cowardly and feckless they could be when they all folded like cards and ended up as disgraceful, whimpering lap dogs to Trump.

The whole world witnessed the mayhem that characterized Trump’s term. His foreign policy, if you could call it that, was an abject disgrace. He cozied up to Kim Jong Un while North Korea bloated its nuclear stockpile. He lionized Putin. He withdrew the U.S. from international agreements and institutions. He nearly broke up the NATO alliance.

At home? The list is long and undistinguished. He botched the COVID response that left millions to die when they probably didn’t have to (remember the dark comedy about injecting bleach?). He passed a tax cut for the rich that was supposed to benefit the middle class, but was just a game of three card monty that screwed the people who needed the relief the most. He packed the Supreme Court with two conservative hacks who likely perjured themselves, and one religious zealot. It’s a court that has done more to take away rights than any previous court in history.

And of course there was the boorishness, the misogyny (“grab them by the pussy”), the racism (fine people at Charlottesville, and the mingling with known racists), the meanness (remarking about a trip to a WWI cemetery that contained American dead, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”), the autocratic leanings, and the countless episodes of turning on people who weren’t reverent enough for his liking. The wretched cur that bites the hand that feeds him.

He was an absolute disgrace. He refused to hang Obama’s presidential portrait in the White House. When he invited the National Champion Clemson University football team to the White House he feted them with stacks of McDonald’s hamburgers (who in the fuck does that?). There were the temper tantrums that left ketchup on the White House walls. There was the violent removal of peaceful protesters at Lafayette Square, done just so that he could pose in front of a church, while holding a Bible (a book he’s never read).

After criticizing President Obama for taking a few golf trips (98 over four years) and promising he would be too busy, Trump spent all, or part of, over 260 days on the golf course at a taxpayer expense of over $144,000,000 (in his first term, Obama played 113 rounds of golf).

And then there were the lies. Donald Trump proved to be a world class liar. During a mere four years, Trump tallied an estimated 30,373 lies, from little stretchers to colossal whoppers. That comes out to an eye popping 20.9 prevarication per day. And that only accounts for the ones that could be reported. It’s actually a truly marvelous feat that could be worthy of a spot in The Guinness Book of World Records.

And it all culminated on January 6th, 2021 with an insurrection. That, after he damaged American’s faith in the legitimacy of elections.

For nearly four years, Trump has been throwing a nationwide, oh woe is me, pity party. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear, “treated unfairly,” “treated badly,” “persecuted,” and his all-time favorite, “witch hunt.” All of this from a pathetic snowflake who has made a career out of bullying people. Any parent would send such a petulant child to timeout, if not a trip to the woodshed.

Trump’s reckless, self-centered behavior has caused destruction that will likely not be repaired for years if not decades. As my wife often says, “He’s ruined this country.”

And maybe the most maddening part is that the ruination was caused, not by a man with a political philosophy or a cogent world view, but by a mean spirited two bit con-man; a narcissistic charlatan without a cause.

But that was then.

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