Sometimes it does. The early parts of the Covid epidemic, isolating though they were, felt that way to me – there was a great deal, at least around here, of ‘how do we as a community deal with this’, of people helping each other figure out how to manage, how to get necessities to those who couldn’t go out at all, making and giving away masks, networks of people helping each other find vaccination appointments when the vaccines first came out, and so on.
Then the Divisive Politics people got into it, and to a large extent that all fell apart. That was partly because it went on so long – it’s easier to revamp one’s life for a short time than to keep doing it for years – but a lot of it was entirely deliberate division brought about for political advantage.
Yes, that’s how it was at first. Remember the videos of people in Italy coming out on their apartment balconies to sing together during lockdown? But then, as you say, in this country the forces of division and crazy conspiracies, aided and abetted by the Dunce-in-Chief, tore us apart,
The whole Trump thing is such a mixed bag in that, had he done a good, responsible and effective job leading the US through the pandemic (which would have required him basically just to shut his trap and let the experts speak), he would have emerged as something of a hero and probably been reelected. But at an appalling cost he blatantly showed the world how spectacularly incompetent, corrupt and stupid he is. How does one even square that circle?
What is incredible to me is that I have heard from his supporters (seemingly intelligent and well educated people) that “it’s not fair to judge him on the last year of his presidency” because the pandemic “wasn’t his fault.”
As if any president can be absolved of responsibility for what happens on his watch. These same people, for example, love to quote distorted facts about the huge deficits under Obama, neglecting to mention that these were during the first years when he inherited a huge recession.
What a crock of shit, yet for donald they say - with a straight face- that somehow the bad shit that he’s fucked up is not his responsibility.
‘What Trump presidency? We had two years recovering from the 0bama disaster and two preparing for the Biden disaster! Those fours year don’t count AT ALL!’
~ Too many ‘’‘conservatives’‘’
My response is always to retort that a plague sent during Trump’s reign could only be interpreted as Trump losing God’s favor so badly that God effectively treated Trump like the Exodus-era Pharaoh.
To each and every retort I merely respond “your argument rests on the assumption that God was in error. Are you sure you want to go there?” Or “Why do you deny God’s ability to shape the world given the Bible shows him repeatedly doing just that?”
I overslept one night a couple of years ago and wrote to the above theme, lol, which makes Trumper’s froth at the mouth.
Of course, if your Trump supporters aren’t Christian, Moriarity, then the above won’t work. But sheer Trump fatigue is definitely working, many of his supporters are just tiring of the effort it takes to be a Trumpy, to support the guy, financially and socially. Hell, I’d feel under attack too.
Whenever I see that idol, I imagine it being pulled into some pavilion on a hoverboard 50 years from now for an Antiques Roadshow, and the owner being told that while it is a interesting part of our political history, it isn’t worth very much, since there isn’t very much demand for those items.
Minuta said he was “misled and naïve” about the purpose of the Oath Keepers, thinking its purpose was to protect people and businesses against leftist protesters, and that the “deranged leadership” of Rhodes “turned the organization into a political rah-rah disaster.”
“I thought that marching into Congress, destroying public property, attacking police, and trying to get to legislators to harm them was protecting people and businesses against leftist protesters. It ain’t my fault someone told me it was.”
