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Date: August 16, 2026 12:51PM

I just came across this post I made on this day in 2020:

I've been an independent my whole life but usually leaned to the political right and with Trump it's not a matter of left and right it's a matter of right and wrong. Biden and the democrats by and large are not the boogieman, they're as concerned about preserving America as anyone else, and it doesn't take the media censoring Trump to show how horrible and self-centered he is; read his tweets and listen to his speeches, his constant childish boasting and name calling. Biden absolutely has his faults as does the left but if anyone thinks Trump is a better, more capable man than Biden they haven't been paying attention over the last 30 or 40 years. Trump has bankrupted business after business and lost a billion dollars in a decade that we know of - bankrupted casinos for goodness sake and says he hires only the best people only to fire them and say how horrible they are.
If it's just the left that wants Trump gone what of all the recent Republican Presidents and Presidential candidates who haven't supported him? What of arch consevatives such as George Will and the late William F. Buckley who called out the glaring flaws and lack of character in Trump during the 2000 campaigns? What of General Kelly, General Mattis, Admiral Mullen, and Ambassador Bolton - are they the left? Then there's this that just occurred to me last night - in my working life I experienced hardships in three recessions, my hours cut in 1983 and jobs lost in 1991 and January of 2009. Who was in the White House when those recessions happened, Republican or Democrat, then who in the White House oversaw the recovery, Republican or Democrat?
Now comes our current travails of COVID-19 and the resultant financial problems we're having. There were warnings, playbooks, and people put in place by previous administrations to deal with pandemics, all tossed out by Trump. He hangs his hat on stopping Chinese citizens from entering the U.S., calling it good, and stopping there for most of a month and claiming the virus would soon disappear, etc., etc., oblivious to how disease spreads, and spreads far and fast in the jet age of travel. Instead of seeing the writing on the wall as things unfolded in the rest of the world he was convinced, we were safe here with the oceans separating us (which didn't even work in 1918) and politicized it by calling it a hoax. Slow to shut down and quick to reopen America now leads the world in per capita deaths from the virus and the scattershot approach to dealing with it is only prolonging it and dragging out the dire financial and mortal effects. Instead of shutting down as a nation for a comparatively brief period and gradually reopening, ripping off the bandaid so to speak, it now drags on here as we slowly, agonizingly pull the bandaid off while in other nations things are improving more quickly. From my parents' generation which endured the hardships and privations of two world wars, another pandemic, and the great depression we've become a nation of whiners throwing tantrums over wearing masks and social distancing for a short time with the chief whiner and tantrum thrower residing in the White House, that is when he's not spending millions of taxpayer dollars on golfing trips, something he claimed in his campaign he'd be too busy to do. And speaking of campaign promises, where's that check from Mexico and the great wall? Where's the replacement for Obamacare that's better? But I digress. As for the virus and the financial crisis caused by shutdowns intended to save lives I have a personal experience that relates. While I was out of work during the recession of 1991 - 1992 (did you look up what party was in the White House when that happened?) it was a struggle, tough times with a young family. In the midst of that my wife died at the age of 29. So when it comes to which is the harder pill to swallow, a short financial crisis or the death of a loved one from COVID, do you even need to ask me what I think about that?
No, Trump doesn't need the media to make him look bad, never has because he speaks for himself in his juvenile and often incoherent manner. What we need instead of calling the media and the left the enemy of the people and dismissing them out of hand (an old, old authoritarian tactic) is for folks to pull their heads out of their asses, clean the shit out of their eyes, and take an honest look at the King wannabe called Trump.