It’s doubtful that Nero fiddled while Rome burned (the instrument known as the “fiddle” hadn’t yet been invented), but President Trump is most certainly fiddling with our election process while Americans are still dying of the COVID-19 virus by the thousands and our economy is going to hell.
Make no mistake; turning the election into a potential crisis is just one more of Trump’s diversionary tactics. Trump sent federal officers into American cities in a desperate attempt to convince the American people that protestors supported by the “radical left” were a greater threat to their safety than COVID-19, even as deaths from what has surely become the “Trump virus” were once again climbing. Now, as the COVID outbreak gets worse, the economic data from the second quarter showed GDP decreasing at an annualized rate of a third (32.9%), the sharpest drop in our history, Trump is now trying to distract our attention by threatening the election process—threatening to postpone the November election and raising the prospect of voter fraud posed by voting by mail (supposedly a Democratic scheme to steal the election). Above all, he is threatening not to abide by the election results if he loses—i.e., he won’t get his fat sorry ass out of the White House come January 20th. All his life, Trump has been threatening people to get his way, and the American people are no exception!
Trump is threatening not to get his fat sorry ass out of the White House come January 20th!
In addition to risking a constitutional crisis, our country is being threatened with four more years of an incompetent, ineffectual racist who is good for no one but corporate America and the top 1%, while the rest of us are held hostage and slowly killed by his virus. Almost every country in the world (with the exception of Brazil, whose President Bolsonaro is in a state of hapless denial eerily similar to Trump’s), has done a better job of protecting its citizens than the U.S., and one can’t help but suspect that Trump and his enablers don’t really care how many Americans die. We now know that senior advisor (Trump’s inept, thieving son-in-law!) Jared Kushner’s “plan” to manage the pandemic was aborted back in the spring when it was determined that most of COVID’s victims were people of color clustered in “blue” states, and thus not Trump voters. (If Hilary Clinton had her “deplorables,” Trump definitely has his “expendables.”) Now that the pandemic is making itself felt in the “red” states of the South and Midwest, it may be dramatically impacting Trump’s “base,” but what’s done is done—the Trump virus is long-since out of the bottle!
Trump shamelessly launched his attack on America’s right to vote immediately following the death of Congressman John Lewis, a man who risked his life to help pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As we approach the November election with no sign of the Trump virus abating, it’s clear that many Americans–disproportionately people of color who tend to be Democratic voters—will be afraid to vote in person, no doubt suppressing their vote. The logical solution, of course, is to let them vote by mail, something Trump and his allies adamantly oppose, claiming it will lead to rampant voter fraud, despite there being no evidence to support the claim. If Trump is allowed to stop vote by mail, or successfully challenge its legitimacy, he could very likely steal the election and be in the White House four more years.