I’ve been self-isolated in my home for the past three months, avoiding a malevolent, unstoppable virus that can destroy my lungs in days. I watch on the news as our cities are being destroyed, while police and protestors fight each other with rocks and tear gas and rubber bullets and AR-15’s. I watch as 40 million Americans have been thrown out of work, and even if we get past the COVID-19 pandemic, their jobs and businesses may not return. I see our doctors and nurses and first responders all trying to stay alive, trying to assist those with COVID-19, knowing that it’s unlikely that once a person is intubated, the only time they will be extubated is at the funeral.
This is America. This is the America of Donald Trump.
This is the America where children are thrown in cages at the border, or are wrested away from their parents who were fleeing harsh lives in their home countries. This is the America where those who DID arrive in this country through no choice of their own – as children – are being sent back to countries they never knew, all this by a xenophobic administration who only sees them as an invasive species, suggesting that they’re taking American jobs and leeching off of American entitlement programs. Ugh.
This is America. This is the America of Donald Trump.
This is the America where Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist in 2017. This is the America where George Floyd had a knee on his neck for ten minutes until he could no longer function. This is the America where someone can be arrested and jailed for existing while black. This is the America where people are cursing at those of Asian descent, blaming them for what they’re projecting upon as the “Chinese Virus” or the “Wuhan Virus,” or, if they think they’re being cute, the “Kung Flu.”
This is America. This is the America of Donald Trump.
We are now in the world of the Ku Klux Klan and the Proud Boys. In the world of the Three Percenters and the QAnons. We are watching armed independent militia, all carrying military-grade weaponry, march into statehouses without consequence, all guided by the knowledge that the President of the United States referred to them as “very fine people.” This is where someone can discharge an AR-15 into a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C., based on a spurious claim that child sex slaves are being traded in a non-existent basement.
This is America. This is the America of Donald Trump.
This is an America where over 106,000 people died – so far – from COVID-19. A virus that could have been abated, had the government followed through with an already-existing pandemic strategy. 106,000 people dead. You know what that is? That’s the attendance at two New England Patriots home games, combined. That’s almost twice as many people dead as American soldiers during the entire Vietnam war. That’s over thirty times as many people dead as those who perished in the 9/11 attacks. And this administration failed its citizens.
This is America. This is the America of Donald Trump.
Our current economy is in the shitter. Part of it has to do with COVID-19, the other part has to do with people struggling with two, three, four jobs to make ends meet. To the point when, if you’re sleeping, you’re not working, and if you’re not working, you’re not surviving. So you do what you can, you drive a ride-share, you shop for others, you do everything short of manufacturing blue meth in an RV, just to keep a roof over your family’s heads and keep the wolves at bay. And then you hear that supplemental nutrition programs are being cut or culled, because some political bigwig heard a rumor that someone once bought a lobster with SNAP funds, and now everybody has to suffer for this horrible atrocity.
This is America. This is the America of Donald Trump.
Our President sends messages from his fans and his constituents, messages like “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” And he sends his own personal messages about “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” And he calls us thugs and animals and vermin, he classifies us as an infestation, he says that it’s perfectly acceptable to grab us by the pussy. He calls journalists the “enemy of the people,” unless they fawn over him and kowtow to his wishes and stroke his ego. He calls those who kneel at the National Anthem “sons of bitches,” as if their simple act of protest against police brutality is an affront to his fragile grasp on his world view.
This is America. This is the America of Donald Trump.
Trump has enablers in this, as well. Bill Barr. Mitch McConnell. Lindsey Graham. Mike Pence. KellyAnne Conway. Sean Hannity. Jeannine Pirro. Laura Ingraham. The collective at OANN. The other collective on Fox News. Susan Collins. Steve Mnuchin. Mike Pompeo. Rush Limbaugh. Ann Coulter. Donald Trump Jr. Eric Trump. Ivanka Trump. Jared Kushner. Scott Pruitt. Rob Porter. Matt Gaetz. Devin Nunes. Dinesh D’Souza. Charlie Kirk. Betsy DeVos. All of them. He never drained the swamp, as he claimed in his political campaign. He packed the swamp with more alligators and algae and filth.
This is America. This is the America of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump doesn’t want me on this earth. He said as much. “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat,” he retweeted. I am a Democrat. Therefore, by his logic, I should die.
Or maybe I’ll just continue to live, if for no other reason than to be an ally to Americans who need allyship. Because right now, we all need allyship. We are all Americans. Not African-Americans or Asian-Americans or Jewish-Americans or whatnot. Take the hyphen and the prefix away. We are Americans, no matter what race, creed, color, orientation or culture.
We will find a vaccine for COVID-19. We will rebuild our businesses safely and ethically. We will project our brothers and sisters. We will somehow get past all of this, whether Donald Trump wants us dead or otherwise.
This is America. This may be the America of Donald Trump now …
Yet we will help each other and we will make this better.
Whether Donald Trump want us to or not.
Chuck The Writer 
Chuck:
Trump quoted Miami police chief Walter Headley, circa 1967, with his line about “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, then tried to claim he didn’t know about the reference point like the ignorant man-child he is.
He has Rush Limbaugh’s ditto-heads, two bubble-heads (Kellyanne and Kayleigh), and a legion of the ignorant who think he can do no wrong when he certainly has. Sending in the National Guard in Minneapolis and Washington is fine, but the tone of Trump’s tweets is predictably childish.
“The only good Democrat” line was picked up from a redneck group called “Cowboys For Trump”, and, no, it has nothing to do with the NFL Cowboys. Trump sees something like this, and it registers with his tiny brain. He uses these reference points for the benefit of his legion of disenfranchised goobers in the suburbs who can’t be bothered to actually research anything.
His parting gifts upon leaving the White House should include a lifetime supply of baby bottles, Pampers, or, because of his age, Depends, and the permanent suspension of his Twitter account.
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You are not alone America. The UK is being run by a the repugnant narcissist, Boris Johnson and his obsequious weasel of a man, Dominic Cummings. I fear for the future of the United Kingdom (which probably won’t ever be united again). For years, I was a Conservative Party (Johnson’s party) voter but now I despise everything the Conservatives stand for. I feel especially sorry for the young people in today’s world. What have they got to look forward to. I do believe we are about to see the beginning of the disintegration of the United Kingdom. I never thought that I would view a bloodless military coup in my own country as being a good idea. We are now a banana republic and failed state. They say ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man (or woman!). Where is he or she? We are long overdue for change.
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Well, certainly yes. And he started well before he was in office, trying to delegitimize the 1st black President. Or starting his campaign talking about Mexicans as rapists.
I’m an old poli sci guy, and there are lots of people whose policies I hated: LBJ (on the ar), Nixon for sure, Ronnie, and W (the war). But my collective contempt for those guys does not come close to my loathing of this man.
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Well, President Pampers does is be even worse than Nixon, and makes W look like a Rhodes Scholar.
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AMEN!!!! I look at my grandsons and want to cry. This is the country I so dearly love, and it looks nothing like the place I had envisioned for them.
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Listen to an old campaigner:
The protests will not change anything, only the ballot will. You must vote out every Republican whose seat is up for grabs at whatever level of government. Theirs is not the party of Lincoln anymore, it is the party of Trump. For him only he matters; no one else.
Nor will the demonstrations serve any function of “raising awareness”; they will just be venues for agents provocateurs to instigate violence (and disease as they are the perfect venue to increase the spread of COVID-19) against those who oppose Trumpism, giving the enemy exactly what it wants.
In short, the people of America are being baited. Don’t bite.
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An independent voter, here. There’s much more hate in this blog and in the smug responses from all of you who are riding the I’m-so-outraged bandwagon than I’ve seen in the past 8 days of looting opportunities— excuse me, I meant “peaceful protests.” You use Trump as the convenient reason for everything from coronavirus (it’s racist to say where it came from) to illegals being held at the border (It was OK during the Obama administration) to unemployment (we had the strongest economy ever, until the virus arrived). If you really believe what you have written as a response here, then I suggest you return your check for $1200 (or in some cases, much more) to the federal government. Then, make it known that you no longer want any form of federal assistance, which I’m sure some of you are receiving. That would be the honest way to express your displeasure with the current federal government. In November you will have your chance to vote for Trump or a doddering old groper and accused sexual assaulted with a questionable history of lining up cushy jobs in Russia for his son who had zero experience in the petroleum industry. Let’s not forget that he scathingly criticized Trump for stopping Chinese commercial flights from coming into the country when the pandemic became obvious. Biden said it was racist to do that. Just imagine where we would be today with coronavirus deaths if Trump had not taken that step. And since you’ve gone so low as to mention Pampers, Uncle Joe has been wearing them a lot longer than Trump has. The difference is, Uncle Joe doesn’t remember putting them on. We will make our choice as a nation in November. For now, it’s everyone’s right to express their opinion, but there are quite a few hypocrites weighing in on this blog. So have another cup of Kool-Aid and be sure to tell the National Guard you don’t need them, if and when the peaceful protesters arrive your business or home.
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