In many ways this year’s election goes way beyond politics.
It speaks to who we are as a people - and who we want to become.
What legacy do we leave for future generations of Americans?
If this Republic even continues to exist, that is, which would be very much in doubt if Trump were to be reelected.
Trump is the type of man who would put his own face on dollar bills and declare himself King.
Only to hand the throne over to his daughter or one of his idiot adult sons when the hamburgers and Adderall finally catch up to him.
Ask yourself which family you would entrust your own kids with if your child was going for a sleepover for the weekend?
Would you feel better knowing your kid was at the Biden clan’s or the Trump’s?
The answer is obvious and it speaks to something that perhaps gets overlooked when we speak of policy and politics.
The core tenets of leadership should begin with the mettle of the man or woman who seeks office.
They should be a decent person first and foremost; despite our many disagreements, for the most part our past leaders have at least risen to a baseline of common decency as human beings (with a few obvious exceptions).
We’ve been relatively lucky as Americans that the character of our elected officials, and just importantly, their temperament seemed to match what we came to define as exemplifying our national values.
While I may not have agreed with the politics of a Senator John McCain or a President H.W. Bush, their personal character as citizens, husbands and fathers wasn’t something that I questioned.
For the most part they were fellow passengers on this ship we call a country, navigating seas that both roil and relax depending on the weather.
I never questioned their ability to put American citizens’ needs first should we be forced to deploy the life rafts.
We already have terrifying factual evidence of how Trump and his ilk would react to impending calamity with his self-centered response to the global COVID pandemic.
First he ignored the iceberg all together, then he lied and said it wasn’t even there and when finally forced to confront the impending doom he put his woefully unqualified and avaricious son-in-law in charge of handing out life vests - who he gave only to the highest bidder and those that promised to serve the Trump Administration’s political needs.
Jared Kushner should have gone to jail for his handling of PPE distribution and his withholding of life-saving healthcare equipment - including ventilators to blue states because those states refused to kowtow to his needs electorally or financially.
Never mind the fact that these were also the Northeastern states where both Trump and Kushner were raised, educated and made their relative fortunes in, an example of turning your back on your own that says everything about who you are as a person.
It reminds me of the great Bruce Springsteen line from ‘Highway Patrolman,’ “Man turns his back on his family, well he just ain’t no good.”
They were willing to watch their own cradles burn despite the fact it nurtured their particular brand of elitist incompetence: when it came time to pay back the loan, they felt not an ounce of loyalty.
The same can be said for the country at large; when it comes to their stealing and hoarding of classified documents in exchange for billions of dollars in cash infusions into the Trump Organization’s private clubs and Kushner’s nascent hedge fund from KSA/MBS at the expense of the United States’ national security.
As they watched the ship they once called home sink into the icy waters in the dark of night, they wondered if they had slipped enough silverware into their own pockets.
In a just world the weight of that pilfer and plunder should at the very least make it harder for them to swim. But alas…
Titanic metaphors aside, it is still worth keeping in mind that the mightiest of vessels can be sunk by forces beyond their control.
Captains who seek self-interest over passenger safety rarely have the bearing to bring us safely back to harbor.
From ship to shore is always a perilous journey under the wrong command.
As bad as the Trump Administration was - and make no mistake, it was one-million-Americans-who-voted-in-2016-that-are-not-around-to-vote-in-2024-level bad - it could have in many ways been exponentially worse had it lasted longer, if his violent January 6th coup d’etat been successful.
When you dodge a bullet like that - Trump’s MAGA brand of evil and incompetence - you don’t voluntarily stumble back in front of the firing line.
Yet, here we are, and inexplicably that is what tens of millions of our fellow citizens are preparing to do, for a host of reasons I have covered previously in ‘Noel’s Notes’.
That central fact, as mystifying as it is, cannot and must not be ignored.
So we have to focus on the basic elements at play in our constituency, what is the salt on our meat that is keeping so many hungry for such a foul taste?
Why are they turning their backs on wholesomeness, civic pride, pluralism?
Cheering on the dismantling of the very institutions that made us who we are as a country, from public libraries to public education, labor unions to healthcare and Social Security.
Trump & MAGA seem to want to destroy the very things that set our once proud Nation apart and put us on the path to greatness.
If it comes down to a choice between President Biden and Donald Trump this November, as it increasingly looks like it will, there really is no choice at all.
Vote Blue.
*thank you for reading and please consider signing up for a paid subscription if you can swing it. This will be my main outlet in the coming year. Have a safe and happy 2024!
You write well, sir. Anyone who quotes Springsteen rises to the top in my opinion. Thank you for recalling trump’s “handling” of the Covid crisis. And thanks for underlining the what should be obvious and utmost importance of doing our collective best to elect people of character to head our country.
I can never get as much reading in as I want, I have to prioritize. You go to the top. So glad I found you.