I’m glad the NFL season starts tonight. I have a feeling the games will seem less contrived and artificial than baseball has come off in the Age of Corona. And I need the distraction. Four years is a very long time to put up with having Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Americans elected a complete ignoramus to be the most powerful person in the world, and I’m definitely at the end of my rope.
The people in my life know that I follow politics closely, so they usually want my opinion on the latest outrage. The conversations always end the same way. People listen, and then they throw their hands up and say, “I just don’t know that anyone will care.”
I’m tired of hearing it. I’m tired of having that same question haunt me day after day. I’m ready to have a vote and find out what people care about. I share Jennifer Szalai’s boredom about the revelations in Bob Woodward’s new book Rage, which contains virtually nothing we didn’t already know or, at least, should have easily surmised.
Did he downplay the virus for some misguided political reasons? I must have written as much more than a dozen times. Did his trusted advisers consider him dangerous and unfit to serve? Did they call him a moron with the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader? Well, we’ve known that for several years now. Does his former intelligence chief still have the nagging feeling that Vladimir Putin is blackmailing the president? Welcome to the club, Dan Coats.
I don’t know that hearing all of this once again is going to change a thing just because it’s now Bob Woodward saying it. What I do know is that there are already a lot of ex-Republicans and ex-Trump supporters. Everyone has their own breaking point. With George W. Bush, some people walked away after no weapons of mass destruction turned up in Iraq. Others couldn’t abide the federal response to Hurricane Katrina or the Terri Schiavo affair. It never made sense to me why someone would abide torture and warrantless surveillance but draw a line at how FEMA is being run. But people have their own reasons for how they feel, and maybe some will hear Trump on tape admitting that he deliberately lied about whether young people can get COVID-19 and they’ll think that’s worse than anything that’s come before.
The case against Trump was made before he was elected in the first place. He’s spent four years proving us right. I’m done talking about it. I’m ready to send it all to the jury, and if they give him a bill of good health then I don’t think I’ll have much to say about politics ever again. After all, in that case, it really will be true that no one cared.
I keep going back to the 2013-14 San Antonio Spurs. They’d been ahead by 5 points in game 6 of the 2013 Finals, less than 30 seconds from clinching the title when Ray Allen hit a 3 pointer to send the game into overtime. The Heat won, and then won game 7 to clinch their second title in a row.
The Spurs were shocked and crushed. They spent the next year working to get back to the Finals against the Heat. Coach Popovich’s mantra was “Keep pounding the rock”—a reference to a line by Progressive era reformer Jacob Riis on how change happens. (Like a mason pounding on a rock 99 times with no visible effect…only to have the rock crack on the 100th blow.)
The Spurs demolished the Heat in the 2014 Finals, winning in five games with a record average margin of 14 points per game.
We need the mentality and effort of Popovich and the Spurs. Keep pounding the rock.
I’d say the race is over. People are fed up and ready to vote. There’s been big news stories this year that have never really moved the needle at all. I sense a small movement this week in Biden’s direction, likely due to the military ‘losers” story (check 538 odds) and potentially with Woodward revelations, although it could be noise. Trump has a ceiling that I’d say is 46% in swing states and Biden’s floor in the swing states seems around 50%. The debates will change no one’s minds. If 200,000 deaths cannot, then why would one or three debate performances change anything. But this is actually good for Biden. We just need to turn out our side and this nightmare will be over.
I would say that the nightmare might, at best, be temporarily paused. I don’t believe for one second that the other side will go quietly or peacefully. There is a whole lot more destruction and death to come. They aren’t finished burning down the house. As much as I try to imagine the nightmare scenario that is coming, I simply cannot sufficiently wrap my mind around all of the possible ways the coming months and years will go off the rails. Yes, Trump losing will be a monumentally positive historic event for this country. But it will, by no means, be the end of the insanity. If anything, it will fuel it even more. Even with the best possible outcome in November, there are many, many dark days ahead for this country. I hope those of us who like to feel we are grounded in the “reality based world” are prepared for what will be necessary. My worry is that we are not.
I don’t disagree with that. But it need not be all doom and gloom. If we can predict it, we can take steps to prevent this from happening again. It begins with small steps: first, begin prosecuting all Trump officials for all wrongdoing , small and large. We need to make an example out of them. Next, begin drawing down their political power by admitting new states, expanding the SC and eliminating the filibuster. This will help to limit inevitable backlash. Next, setup a truth and reconciliation commission and begin the healing that needs to take place for the cult members. Some will be unreachable. But there will be more that will see the light at the end of this. Finally, we need to make politics boring again. I really wish I didn’t have to spend time thinking about these things, and can go back to my life. That’s impossible now and for the foreseeable future. I wish it weren’t so.
I agree Mike the future will be “interesting” as the GOP economically anxious accept a Trump defeat and how he chooses to vacate the office. Right now job 1 is getting this current nightmare unemployed. If the nightmare continues with him reelected than we all know where we likely will find ourselves. My interest in politics will end and I’ll find a way to get through my retirement life and help my kids escape and stay optimistic that a future exists for them as adults. Somewhere.