Month: February 2024

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I love Joe Biden, but

I thought he was only running as a one-term president, that all he wanted was to “turn down the temperature” after the tumultuous Trump presidency. So what happened to the sensible Biden plan? After all, we gave him a major chance electing him U.S. President in his late 70s, our oldest president ever.

Biden’s been holding an elected DC office since the 1970s. He was vice president for Barack Obama for eight years. And now, well, he’s in his 80s and … not getting any younger.

Under Biden’s leadership, our country moved through the Covid pandemic with drastically reduced number of deaths, ended the Afghanistan war, held off a recession, saw remarkable increases in jobs and salaries, additional health benefits, and stayed clear of getting into another war.

However, I would have appreciated President Biden more if through a nationally televised speech he would have declared his work for our great country done and now it’s time for him to retire from political office. Something like: “My fellow Americans, I will not run nor will I accept the nomination of President of the United States.”

But no. That’s not the logical path that President Biden chose. It’s not what most Democrats wanted. It’s not what the country wants either. The country really wants more names to choose from than Biden and Trump and Trump and Biden. We haven’t been this sick of names since Bush and Clinton. No old names. We want new national leaders. At least Nikki Haley is a refreshing change.

What would have been exciting was for all those who vied for the Democratic nomination back in 2020 to run again. That was an impressive list of ready leaders with formidable backgrounds: Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris and even Bernie Sanders. But Biden perhaps feels the wisdom gained by age plus decades of his own successful diplomatic experience are still warranted, his opinion and ability still matters especially on the world stage given the wars in Ukraine and now Gaza. The truth is President Biden more than any of us really knows exactly what’s going on in the world and how to avoid a world war. He’s carried the weight of the presidency with aplomb. We knew he would (even though we were …

holding our collective breath)

This is a man who’s survived a brain aneurism while in office and was dealt a lifelong battle with stuttering—all that along with the emotional devastation of the deaths of his first wife and little girl and much later the death of his heroic son and dealing with the other son who’s been an addict with all the irresponsibility and shame to the family that goes with it. All the while, the Old Man keeps a-going, even running for the presidency in 2020 with leg cast and cane.

Makes you wonder how he’s lasted this long.

And while we’re on the subject of elderly national leaders, what’s going on with Mitch McConnell? Several of our elderly statesmen in Congress—who cling to power like it’s what’s keeping them alive—look like death warmed over. All of them: Pasty. Old. White. Men.

God, MOVE ON and let a new generation lead already.

Look, when it comes to worrying about folks over 80, all we have to go on is what doctors advise. Geriatric doctors warn us that age 80 is when the body starts to wind down (and prepare for death) … which could take a few or many years. Biden could last to age 100. Look at Jimmy Carter, whose family genetics was all cancer until he got it himself, survived, yet is now in hospice care.

Geriatric doctors tell families to talk with our loved ones when they reach 80, to broach the very difficult conversation of their final wishes and to help them with tying up loose ends involving finances, insurance, power of attorney, and DNR directives.

Back to politics, why the National Democratic Party is just going along with a second Biden term needs to be a national conversation. Elderly people of 80 and beyond run the gamut of health from active to slowed down, some memory loss to dementia, or bedridden. Biden seems to have been blessed in his old age. Enviable, really, let’s face it.

By now Americans know what the U.S. presidency does to the men who’ve achieved it. The presidency ages them. Check out their pictures upon winning the office to the day they leave. All of them, save Trump, appear to have grown older than their years. It is sad the price paid for Leader of the Free World.

We can continue to hold our breath while hoping and praying for President Biden, that God grant him the strength and stamina necessary to remain a dutiful and thoughtful leader. But the American people should never be put in this situation. We know people die young or old. But it’s very realistic to think the elderly soon will decline, die and pass on—leaving their legacy to guide us: confidence, good humor, candor, bravery, patriotism, and not many but a few errors in judgement.

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Why do good people still support Trump?

All these years later, I still don’t get it: the continuous adulation by my fellow Americans of former President Donald Trump. It’s called Trumpism. They’re called Trumpers. They number a solid third of all Americans. Some speculate there’s a real possibility that half the country or slightly more will vote him back in office later this year.

Just about every person I know loves him still. He’s got their vote. But I live in Texas. He’s got our state, too.

For years I’ve pondered the Trump phenomena—why millions, maybe a hundred million, of Americans young and old believe in him. Believe is the right word. It’s an emotional (or rational) bond. His followers (and that’s the right word, too) especially the poor truly feel that Trump represents them. Did they all watch his show The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice and chuckle at his gruffness when saying his trademark line, “Yah fired?” Doubt it.

Weren’t we all aware of his once handsome looks; three marriages with children; constant celebrity; magazine covers; enviable wealth and success; and his name stamped on his plane, NYC golden tower, assorted buildings (hotels, casinos) and many other products (books, board game, business institute, bottled water, steaks) and even international projects (state-of-the-art golf courses)? Doubt it.

All of us who disapprove of Trump and a second Trump presidency—and we’re a comfortable majority of Americans—are on the same wavelength. We’re not all Democrats or liberals but also Independents (what Trump claimed to be during his earliest presidential attempt) and a number of real-deal Republicans like Mitt Romney—patriotic Americans who think about character, intelligence and ability when choosing a U.S. President.

Four years later, why Trump?

Knowing so many people in my life—I’d say 95% of all family, acquaintances, and colleagues—who absolutely will vote for Trump, I stand back and ponder, incredulously, “Why?” Why don’t others see Trump, the subject of serious jail-time felonies and defendant in assorted federal and state trials, as the other half of our country does? We think he should never be President of the United Stages again.

Is it really our media divide, deciding to hear only what we each accept as truth from ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ journalism? [Psst. There’s no such a-thing.] Perhaps that is part of the problem. I won’t watch Fox—not after all their shameful wrongdoing following the 2020 election. I won’t forget that dead serious judgement against Fox, just under a billion dollars. What they did—maintaining 24/7 that Trump won and our country’s election was rigged—will be the greatest media scam and sham of my lifetime. Then there’s the 90 or so lawsuits against the former president for alleged illegal activities, one by one going to court practically every week. And the verdicts are guilty so far.

Decency is a character trait we should consider when choosing a person to vote for as U.S. President. And yet decency does not matter to those who support Trump for President. From the moment he started making campaign speeches, Trump mouthed on about his assumption that our government, the USA, was as corrupt as all others—that no American has a right to say or think that we (our form of government) are better than other countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and North Korea.

AND millions of Americans said Amen.

Not able to capture the Independent voters, Trump, a lifelong Democrat, ran as a Republican in the last election. Back then the Republican convention had a knock-down drag-out fight over handing the party to Trump. Yet he won their wholehearted support. Then he won the national election, by electoral college not by popular vote. It was so shocking to half the country that network reporters wept on the air and a million or so women marched in DC to protest the election of Trump. They did this because of his misogynist attitude toward women (the p word tape) and that he intended to overturn Roe v Wade. And he surely did.

Next thing we knew, it was four years of happy-pappy Republicans and assorted daily domestic and foreign political chaos while the rest of us managed to live low key if not ashamed in Bizarro America.

And now a third to half of Americans want to go back to all that … drama?

Which brings me back to my ponderance: Why Trump? Why him? His own native city and state can’t stand him & won’t vote for him. That alone should tell the rest of us something. Don’t any of us know Trump. Nevertheless, it’s ignored by residents in the ‘fly-over’ states.

I’ve always thought people like Trump because he says what they wish they could say—without admonitions of shame due to political correctness or something called wokism. People that like Trump love first his big mouth, that he says whatever the hell he wants, and they’re entertained by his televised speeches.

Since the vast majority of his supporters are white and older white people, I always thought his fans (and that’s the right word) would like to go back to the old days in America’s history when whites freely called Blacks the n word and called Hispanics the s word and women the b word and w word and c word. And they think people who are offended by racial epithets are the ones with the problem. I know what I’m talking about here.

No, the folks who support Trump, warts and all the alleged illegal shenanigans, follow him in a way that is beyond what makes sense politically and culturally. But they do have something in common: a collective pessimism about politics in general. They think or have grown to believe that it really doesn’t matter who’s the U.S. President. They think, like Trump proclaims, our country is just as dirty and corrupt as our enemies—all nations that are not free societies. They have forgotten—because Trump isn’t about to remind them—that Democracy is messy … but compared to all the other governments on earth, it’s the best choice for all humanity.

Instead, the American pessimists maintain a “Get real” and “Grow up” cynicism that binds together followers of Trump. They’ve lost faith in America as the greatest country that has ever existed (ironic given their MAGA caps). And they no longer believe in what made the U.S. great: a nation of immigrants, a mix of cultures, a free public education, a country where a poor person could work up to a good-paying job and middle-class life, where free press and free speech and no sanctioned state religion were considered sacred, where more sects of our society have been provided equality through constitutional amendments, where the people rule and not the elected officials including the President himself—and accepting and fully understanding and supporting the Balance of Power.

The support of Trump is not just a practical choice by his flock. It’s much deeper and personal—more like a religious movement. Trump always reminded me of Jim Jones. Still does. And his opponents say his followers have ‘drunk the Kool Aid,’ referring to the mass suicide by Rev. Jones’ religious followers or fanatics. ‘Drinking the Kool Aid’ means the followers gave up thinking for themselves. For some reason, they want someone to lead them and do all their thinking for them.

And in this country, that’s very dangerous thinking.

In coming to terms with our nation’s political crisis whereby millions would choose to support Trump over anyone else, I know most of his supporters are at heart good moral people, even church-going Christians, who cast their vote for Trump after praying to God for guidance—the same God I pray to.