In 1992 @BillClinton scored well with audiences across the country with a line that went something like, "There is nothing wrong with this country that what's right with this country can't fix."
And that might have been true, then.
Today? I am not so sure.
We are broken.
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And that might have been true, then.
Today? I am not so sure.
We are broken.
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If we think of the nation as a body, then we are broken in places that should never get broken. Parts of us are plain shattered.
When our bodies break we seek help from doctors and nurses and other trained professionals to help us heal.
But there are no doctors for this.
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When our bodies break we seek help from doctors and nurses and other trained professionals to help us heal.
But there are no doctors for this.
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I have spent my life against the ropes, but I have always understood that it could get and be worse, and I have always understood the subtle, unspoken benefits of being a white man in a world controlled by others like me.
These truths have guided my path through the world.
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These truths have guided my path through the world.
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I guess it made me feel better to believe that we, as a nation, had more than enough good to beat back the bad, and even the truly evil among us. It was something I clung to, tightly.
I wanted Bill Clinton to be right.
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I wanted Bill Clinton to be right.
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More, I wanted to believe that whiteness wanted to be redeemed. That more white people than not, despite their upbringing, could see racism for what it was and recognize it as the acidic force that it always had been.
I still believed in a place called hope.
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I still believed in a place called hope.
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But since 2016 we've watched the facade crumble down in real time. We've watched progress turned back and hate win time and again. We've watched the worst among us, caricatures, move from the fringes to the mainstream.
We have looked into heart of our own darkness.
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We have looked into heart of our own darkness.
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The Presidential elections of 2016 were a watershed moment for this nation. One that extended globally.
Whatever your ideas of and for America on November 8th 2016, you woke up on November 9th to see them changed forever. No matter who you were.
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Whatever your ideas of and for America on November 8th 2016, you woke up on November 9th to see them changed forever. No matter who you were.
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Few seem to be aware of just how much Trump's ascendency has altered the political and social landscape. The list of things he has done, that we have sworn at the time we would never forget, is very long, and almost none of it remains a part of our collective dialog.
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If you tried to narrow it down to a list of the worst thing Trump has done in every month of his illegitimate presidency, you would understand fairly quickly just how significantly different things are.
And anyone seeing Biden or any Democrat as some sort of moral panacea?
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And anyone seeing Biden or any Democrat as some sort of moral panacea?
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Well, be prepared for heartbreak. Even if everything breaks in our favor in November and Biden sails to victory with a democratic majority in both houses and Trump leaves office voluntarily, what he is going to leave behind will be nothing more than a bureaucratic nightmare.
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But it gets more complicated even in this best case scenario. Remember that Trump has several explicit tells/tics that he has never been able to let go of and they are still some of the best barometers of what is really going on in Trumpland and Trump's head.
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The most reliable of these, of course, is Trump's need to accuse others of exactly what he is doing, and one of his earliest/most consistent claims is that President Obama had installed a Deep State matrix that works as a de facto shadow government working to undermine him.
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I have always believed that if Trump does follow the rule of law and permits fair and free elections in 2020 and steps aside as required by the Constitution that he would only do so because, at minimum, he had installed such a system prior to his departure.
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His repeated accusations against Obama in this instance only strengthen that belief. The national security issues that will plague Biden's administration are numerous and daunting.
What kind of access has he given Putin's Russia? NORTH Korea?
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What kind of access has he given Putin's Russia? NORTH Korea?
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When Trump leaves office he will leave behind a government in tatters, and he will do so purposely. He'll leave w/ the same amount of class he entered with, which is to say none.
That's if he leaves willingly.
I'm not at all convinced, as many of you know, that he will.
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That's if he leaves willingly.
I'm not at all convinced, as many of you know, that he will.
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But why am I talking about Trump's grip on power in a thread that began about racism and our present crisis?
Because @realDonaldTrump is the de facto leader of the global white supremacist movement and he has worked everyday to exploit racial animosity.
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Because @realDonaldTrump is the de facto leader of the global white supremacist movement and he has worked everyday to exploit racial animosity.
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Trump understands well the import of race and the power it has over the masses, and he exploits racial divisions as often as possible.
Not even the coronavirus pandemic escaped the racist lens through which he organizes his worldview.
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Not even the coronavirus pandemic escaped the racist lens through which he organizes his worldview.
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Trump's governing philosophy is also built around the belief that America is broken and must be restored. But, and this is significant, its restoration cannot occur under our present system. He believes that to "be great again" requires the near annihilation of our system.
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