"Hold my beer" - Year 2021 to 2020
I thought 2021 would be just a little more "saner" than 2020. Oops, wrong again.
Leave it to Donald Trump to figure out a way to destroy whatever legacy he has. I can't say what history will say about Donald Trump. As Georgia's recently elected Senator said about an actual dictator who tortured his critics, Trump's presidency is complex and it is filled with nuance. However, I feel confident in saying that the people in the universities that write the history books won't put Trump up there with Washington and Lincoln. Mr. Trump, may I introduce you to Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan?
To put it nicely, Trump's behavior has always been boorish, rude, and impolite. He is a builder from Queens, New York. What did we expect?
Since the election, his behavior has been abysmal.
Basically, Trump didn't understand that this election was a flip side of his election in 2016. While he improved in some segment of voters, he got crushed by suburban women, who turn out do not like boorish, rude, and impolite men. Suburban women, am I right?
Instead of taking his defeat like a man, he began propagating a tale that he not only won, but that he won by a landslide!
This enabled a bunch of weird stuff to pop up in social media. For example: Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia was going to be arrested for treason.
By the time January 6th got here, Trump and some of his MAGA buddies have concocted a theory that Mike Pence could somehow do some parliamentarian magic and install Trump for a second term. Forgetting, of course, that he couldn't do that even if he wanted to. You think Richard Nixon or Al Gore would have thought of it first.
Trump holds his rally and sends them to Congress to "protest" the certification of the Electoral College results. Here's where things get a little cloudy.
Do I think Trump sent them to Congress like they were some Flying Monkeys of the Wicked Witch of Mar-a-Lago to do his bidding? Or did he think they would circle the Capitol complex and chant "Stop The Steal" and then look at #stopthesteal Twitter thread?
I can't say.
However, I can say this. Trump has a history of things ending badly. Think of some of his properties, brands, marriages, and friendships. Add to this, the GOP, which he acquired through basically a hostile takeover.
I was re-reading some of my blog posts from 2015 and 2016. My opposition to Trump was that he would lead the GOP to defeat and practically destroy it in the process. I was only off by four years.
I know it was not funny, but I laughed at his taped message to the Flying Monkeys telling them that he loved them. Could you see FDR say, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And I love you"?
Trump apparently gave little thought what would happen when he sent people on their way. Just like he didn't think about the other 74 million that voted for him. Did this empower them? No, it left them ashamed to associated with such a group of trousered apes.
As I always say, things could have been worse. More people could have been killed. We could have fallen into a Civil War. (One side has tanks, the other side has a man wearing a Viking hat).
I don't know who thought this was a good idea. It wasn't. We're going to have to deal with it for the next couple of years. Or decades.
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