And Now It’s 2020

August of 2020. Yesterday’s newscaster made the comment that 84 days remain before Election Day. Politics, yuck! Politics, WTF? Does it say something to voyeurs of random blog sites that after six years of absolute silence from the keyboardist slamming out these words, I almost immediately mention an area of life I know diddly-squat about and, yet, more than I ever (if I lived a thousand x a thousand lifetimes) wanted to know? To illustrate how little I watched the news or anything regarding political events, I swear to all the gods ever mentioned anywhere at anytime that I never once watched or listened to a speech by the former president of the United States, Barrack Obama, until after he had been replaced by Donald Trump’s electoral college win in 2016.

At the time of the win I thought, Wow, people really don’t care for Hilary even one little bit. Here’s what I knew about Donald Trump. My late husband (d. 1988) subscribed to and read Forbes and Inc. and Money magazines.  My late husband did not read articles aloud to me from these various financial offerings of Whose made it big, How they got there, How you can get there too — except on rare occasions. Occasions, for instance, when Donald Trump was mentioned. Then he would read aloud the amount of money (millions) given to him by his father and the soon-to-follow bankruptcy incurred by the son, and the next millions-of-dollars put into the son’s account and the next bankruptcy incurred, and so on. Al Doiron, the aforementioned late husband, was one who invested in the United States by giving the police action/war in Vietnam the lower part of a leg when he served in the USMC, then, after returning home and acclimating to a prosthetic limb, invested in books and courses of study to obtain a degree in Civil Engineering from Cal Poly, Pomona, California, after which he “civil engineered” for day work and read financial magazines and all sorts of books on how to succeed in real estate, how to become a millionaire within a few years, how to sail a catamaran, how to build a log house, etc.

Here’s the point, Al worked at becoming a financial success and succeeded, at least as far as his shortened life allowed. I remember his bitter laughter when he read articles in the financial mags about Donald Trump’s many failures. Mind you, Al died in 1988 from pulmonary thrombosis, a common cause of death among amputees. The history I’m laying down in these lines is way, way previous to Donald Trump’s electoral college win. And I’m laying it down as an underlayment to my astonishment over Donald (the laughable loser as far as Al was concerned) Trump seated in the oval office. But, you give a guy a break, right? Cable news, whether right wing conservative or left wing whatever, was so biased in either direction that it made my head spin. I watched C-Span (it was boring). After the fact, I watched YouTube videos of Donald Trump “on the stump” and listened to his speeches without the interference of news commentators. I did not like what I heard. Name calling wasn’t something my parents allowed. Donald Trump was a bad-mannered man-boy. I watched briefings at the White House. I watched Trump’s interactions with representatives from a Florida High School that got shot to pieces. I watched the NRA squelch any leanings the bad-mannered man/boy might have had toward the tiniest bit of gun licensing or control. I was stunned (and continue to be) daily by his stupidity. Then Covid-19 came along. That was six or seven months ago. It’s a global pandemic.

You can’t know it out there, any of you who may have continued to read to this point, but a longish hesitation ensued a moment ago. The hesitation was not exactly a light-bulb moment, a sudden flash of insight wherein an “Ah Ha!” escaped my lips. It was more like standing outside at the edge of the bluff overlooking the ocean and an upwards draft of salt-cooled air played with the draped looseness of whatever I wore. Al’s bitter laughter in the eighties over Trump’s squandering of riches was/is my bitter laughter in the 20’s over Trump’s squandering of our nation. It’s not a company he bankrupts. It’s a people. Sadly, he doesn’t do it alone. The senate apparently backs him. Whoa! and listen to me, an old woman who knows next to nothing about politics and what they involve. Except, except to say I truly wish some of them would grow a spine and some moral character and kick this A-one loser out of the White House. Companies fire CEO’s don’t they? Isn’t it time? Hasn’t this country lost enough?