Unprecedented

The papers and media are filled with individual examples of the damage being done to our country every day.  It is a death by a thousand cuts.  We are a country that is being badly governed.

As we hold our breaths until we have the opportunity to vote the destroyers out of office in November, there seems to be nothing we can do to mitigate each of the injuries that have piled up in the past 4 years.  As I think back on Trump and his stooges’ actions over that time, the following is just the beginning of a list that chronicles their ‘unprecedented’ misdeeds and destruction :

-the White House has shut down the transparency website Open.gov and open.whitehouse.gov

-the White House has removed 40,000+ data sites from data.gov

-Trump has removed our participation in the World Health Organization, The World Climate

Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership.  He has insulted and decried most of our overseas allies.

-Trump has removed regulations on clean air, clean water, drilling for oil and coal

-Trump has stopped releasing all records of visitors to the White House

-Trump has systematically removed inspectors general from key governmental agencies, creating a cloak of secrecy on his stooges’ actions.

-Trump has stopped collecting information on energy efficiency, police weaponry, labor-law violations, lending discrimination and discrimination in school discipline

 -Trump has refused to disclose his tax returns, and has illegally withheld documents and witnesses from Congress during his impeachment.

-Trump has illegally subverted funds from Congressional appropriations for building his ‘Wall’

-Trump is doubling the annual budget deficit and running up federal debt to the highest levels since World War II

-Trump has systematically made a mockery of the Rule of Law

-Trump has failed to lead a national effort to mitigate the pandemic; has in fact de-legitimized the CDC.

-Trump is still attempting to assassinate the Affordable Care Act and leave millions unprotected.  He has provided no replacement plan.

…and the list goes on and on.

During the past three or four months we have seen the incompetence laid bare. Trump is gaslighting and misleading us in full view without reservation.  Even now as he pushes relentlessly ahead with his ‘rally’ in Tulsa, he lies to us that the pandemic is over, even as Tulsa statistics on Covid-19 show a surge in cases and hospitalizations!  His VP Pence extolls Trump’s ‘leadership’ during the pandemic.  A leadership that has earned us the notorious distinction of having the most cases worldwide with the most deaths per capita of any nation.  Pence says we should celebrate!  Celebrate what—the 200,000 dead Americans the virus will have killed as of October 1? 

Even yesterday, Trump stated again that the virus will ‘just disappear’.   Do you believe that?

I hate the word ‘unprecedented’.  We have used it endlessly to describe the actions taken by our leaders over the past 4 years.  However, we have an unprecedented situation in our country right now.  Over the past 242 years we have suffered through bad actors in the White House, but at least the other branches of government have been able to mitigate the damage through our system of checks and balances written into our Constitution.

Not today.

We have a Congress that is neutered because of a Republican majority that is unwilling to act responsibly, violating their oaths of office in the Senate.  They have simply sat there for the past 4 years—mute—as their party standard bearer has violated his oath of office and cowered them into paralysis with fear of opposing them in their primaries if they don’t show blind allegiance to his dictates.  We have a Supreme Court that has been stacked with 2 Trump appointed judges, one of them confirmed illegally by Moscow Mitch and his legions in the Senate. 

The Founders of our country probably never imagined the scenario we have now.  They believed that the fundamental motive of fairness and the Rule of Law would guide our republic in its growth and development.  Because they were so damaged and raw from their experience winning independence from the British in 1776, they couldn’t even imagine a Congress filled with the people’s representatives who did nothing to represent their constituencies.  They couldn’t see the effect that 200 years of allegiance to money and power would have on their ‘experiment’.  Our current Republican legislators have forgotten why they are there.  They apparently only exist to be re-elected.  Why else would so little get done by so many?

If we can hold out, just endure while we mitigate the damage just a little longer, maybe we can reclaim our legacy.  Our elections are the ultimate safety valve in the American people’s ability to self-govern.  See now how important it is to preserve that right unfettered?  See now how there are those who will stop at nothing to corrupt that right and deny us the power as citizens to choose our own government?  See now how essential it is that we do all we can to make sure that this upcoming election is fair and true?

If we don’t, we will have re-defined the word ‘unprecedented’ in a new and ‘unprecedented’ way.