I was going to write this for Winter Solstice, then for New Years, now it is getting past the time of year to look back. Still, even as the Trump Presidency and 2020 fade into the past, the tidal pull and drama of the daily headlines continue to pull me away from contemplation. I want to think about the arc and influence of this strange year but the urgency of what we were told was the most important presidential election since the Civil War has now morphed into, what we are told, is the most important Senate election in this century, is still crowding out almost everything but the present.
When I first started writing this, President Trump had gone to Mar-Largo for Christmas just like Michael Cohan predicted a month ago. Cohen, who does know Donald Trump pretty well, also said that Trump will not return to the White House but continue to play president from Florida – while he plays golf, I guess – but Trump now says he will be coming back to Washington in time for the protests over his being unable to change the election results. But, really, who knows what is future faking and what is real with Trump. BTW, Ivanka and Jared Kushner also seem to be moving to Florida, they bought a lot on a high-security island near Miami for 30 million. As an aside, the island’s elevation is five feet above sea level so I’m inclined to believe that they really don’t believe in Climate Change (although I read that the storm sewers are already running backward during king tides in the City of Miami Beach so some people must have noticed something is happening).
Watching the Trump Administration collapse into itself like a dying nova, I am shocked, almost on a daily basis, how rickety our governmental system is. Most of the structure that supports our government, I thought were laws; they’re not, they are only agreed-upon norms. Norms that Trump violated with impunity with the support of the Republican Party and well over seventy-four million people. Well, that last half of the sentence is a little disingenuous, lots of people who voted for him are probably appalled at this blatant power grab and some might not have voted for him if they had known what would happen. The fear is that that’s often how dictators come into power, that’s how both Putin or Erdoğan came into power, after all, the wanna-be dictators push the norms until they snap but then it is too late. What saved us this time around is that Donald Trump and his family – and it was by and large a family affair – are almost unbelievably inept. But the next guy – and it most likely will be a guy, a white guy – that tries to be dictator might not be as amateurish. We are going to have to write a shitpot full of real laws to guard against a repeat and, somehow, put teeth into the 25th Amendment.
I was going to say Trump has monetized the presidency but it has been monetized for a long time – nobody leaves the White House poor anymore – still, Trump took away all pretense of Public Service. He weaponized the Presidency as a money-making Office. Joe Biden – soon to be President Joe Biden, I dearly hope – says that he will normalize things but it will not be the normal of Jimmy Carter.
One thing I’ve learned during the last year and don’t want to forget in 2021 – maybe not exactly learned, but got a deeper understanding of – is how much effort and money our society has put into putting keeping Black people down. And yet, they keep rising (to sort of quote Lewis Hamilton’s helmet which features the quote from Maya Angelou). It has occurred to me several times that maybe all we need to do to help Black people is get our knees off their necks. I know we should be doing more to live up to our ideals, but treating Black people equally and getting cops to stop killing them is a place to start.
How 2020 will carry over into 2021 and how it will be different is a prediction(s) I really don’t want to make other than having a President Biden will be different than a President Trump. I do think Joe Biden, unlike Trump, believes in the Federal Government as an agency for good. He has been in the Federal Government most of his adult life and I think he would define that as being in Public Service. His appointments, so far – with a couple of exceptions such as Larry Summers who has gotten very rich going back and forth between working in the financial sector and governing that same financial sector – show serious concern for Global Climate Change; Biden choose Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm for Secretary of the Department of Energy rather than the likes of Trump’s pick of Texas Governor Rick Perry. Granholm is a promoter of electric vehicle technology and Perry thought the Department of Energy should be abolished.
I don’t think the Proud Boys, Neo-Nazis, et al, are going away on January 7th and that is a bad thing. We are a racist country all the way back to our founding but from the late sixties to the start of the Trump presidency, being racist increasingly became unfashionable. Senator George Allen, during his 2006 re-election campaign, calls somebody a Macaca, and it ended his campaign. We thought, I thought, that meant that racism was slowly disappearing, but it wasn’t, it was just being pushed underground. There racism festered, resenting our Liberal superiority, and now racism and xenophobia have been given permission to resurface with groups that the President, at least, seems to acknowledge as legit, like the Proud Boys.
I don’t think the Proud Boys, Neo-Nazis, et al, are going away on January 7th and that may be a good thing. During the 60s, the raging trouble makers that scared the populous were on the left, like the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Black Panthers, and that ended up pushing the country right, however, now, the scary ones are on the right and are probably pushing the country to the left. Let’s hope that push trumps racism in Georgia.
Happy New Year and Happy 2021.
These are indeed exciting times. Covid and Brexit are huge stories involving much suffering and many millions of people. Yet, purely in the context of thrilling news, they are outweighed by the imminent departure from presidential power of the vile Trump and the implications of the upcoming Georgia vote. Which I’d like to bet the Democrat candidates will win. How’s that for 2021 optimism? Heroes of the here and now: Stacey Adams and Brad Raffensburger. Apropos, down with racism, up with integrity. And to you, Steve and Michele, thanks for a thoughtful blog and good health and happiness in this New Year.