Why or why not? –

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

To find the roots of this most basic of questions in American politics, go back 40 years.

Georgia peanut farmer Jimmy Carter was president, and while he was a good man and turned out to be the best of ex-presidents, he had his troubles as president. The Iranian Hostage Crisis. Gas lines and shortages. Inflation.

Enter California actor Ronald Reagan, who posed this simple question in a presidential debate with Carter. It was politically brilliant.

“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

As the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is happening Tuesday night, it might be worth revisiting this question in the current context.

Here’s my answer.

Hell No!

Not just no, but hell no.

Four years ago at this very time of year I was traveling around the American West in a media camper van on a 28 day, 6,000 mile tour. Facebook likes to remind people of memories, but that archive is nothing compared to a news website archive, which is linkable and searchable. Exactly four years ago today, I was camping along the Missouri River with the Standing Rock Sioux Red Warriors in Cannonball, North Dakota.

Expedition of Rediscovery Western Journey Timeline

Barack Obama was president and I was sleeping fine and having fun. Obama eventually killed the Dakota Access Pipeline the Lakota Native Americans were protesting, on the advice of Secretary of State John Kerry.

Die-hard supporters of Bernie Sanders still like to try to point out to me on a regular basis that Obama was not perfect. Obama may not have accomplished everything he could have — mainly due to the obstruction of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — but at least he was behaving honorably with character and class and not ensconced in scandal. Sometimes that might be the best thing we can hope for in a president. At least he was showing up every day and trying to make the government and democracy work.

Since Trump somehow managed to fool the establishment and the disgruntled and get elected president, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. Trump really is the Murphy’s Law president. He has proved the theory that everything that can go wrong probably will.

Trump is yet to show up for work and do anything to make the government and democracy work. He just watches Fox News all morning every day and tweets every destructive thought that pops into his head to break the American government and undermine democracy at every turn.

He doesn’t read anything to find out what’s really going on in the world, no newspapers, magazines or books, not even online. He looks at a few tweets. He doesn’t even listen to the people he hired who try to read things to him, like intelligence reports. He has no time for intelligence. The little voice in his head is all he needs.

Because of this, and his selfish approach to everything, millions of people are dead and dying here and around the world, not just from COVID. Millions of people still have no access to health care, and he wants to take away what coverage some do have by pressuring the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.

What kind of cruel person or president would do such a thing?

Not Ronald Reagan, not even George W. Bush. Only Trump wants more people to die on his watch than he saves.

Trump’s bragging about the economy before the coronavirus hit was just as much of a sham and a hoax as his false claims about his own financial success, which we now know in no uncertain terms was drastically overblown. His outstanding debt to foreign actors is a major national security threat and a threat to our own health and financial security going forward.

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Yet many of those losers and suckers who he fooled into voting for him in 2016 are still on the hook.

They can’t believe what’s going on right before their very eyes. Trump is the circus master and the Wizard of Oz all in one, the man behind the curtain who pretends to be a god.

Who or what, if anyone or anything, can pull back the curtain? Can Joe Biden do it?

Let’s hope so. He is the chosen one by a majority of Democrats.

As for my life and situation today compared to four years ago, I am barely hanging on for dear life. I thought I was near the end back in March and April, when I was on the run from the coronavirus in a camper van.

I found what I thought was a manageable place to escape and hide in North Carolina, and planted a garden to have fresh vegetables to eat all summer. But Trump even ruined that.

The partisan divide is to blame for why I am back out on the road again now, facing death threats and economic disaster.

Some of my best friends keep telling me that Democrats are not the answer. But how can we even begin to talk about a third party or any other solution, like democratic socialism, when we now sit right on the very edge of a cliff called fascism, or if you prefer, authoritarianism?

I am not genetically or culturally predisposed to bow down to kiss any king’s ring. If survival means bowing down to Trump, count me out.