The election is just around the corner, and in this Boomer Opinion piece, Ed Meek of Somerville, Massachusetts, lays out how he thinks we got to where we are… and where he thinks we might be headed.
In the last presidential election, 53% of Americans 65 and older voted for Donald Trump; 45% voted for Hillary Clinton.
There were many reasons why older Americans voted this way. Some were altogether sick of the Clintons. Others were not fans of Hillary. Many wanted a change of direction. Trump, in the eyes of many, a winning personality and successful businessman, promised to clean up the swamp. He addressed Americans’ fears of terrorism and open borders. He appealed to a sense of nostalgia with his slogan, Make America Great Again. He said that he, alone, could fix what was wrong with the country.
To be fair, the pandemic would have been challenging for any leader. Particularly in the United States with our belief in independence and freedom of choice. Trump, who billed himself as a strong leader, was uniquely positioned to assert his authority when he first learned of the pandemic in January. He was told by experts that it would come to the United States and would spread exactly as it had in China.
What is ironic is that had Trump acted like an authority, he could have pulled the country together and controlled the spread of the coronavirus. He could have told us that we needed to stay home and, if we did go out, we had to wear masks. He could have advised all governors to close nonessential businesses and not allow any activities involving crowds. In other words, he could have done what Massachusetts’ Governor Baker and New York’s Governor Cuomo did but sooner, since Trump had the information long before they did.
Yet the president hesitated and, it appears, panicked and went into denial, fearing the economy would take a nosedive. Predictably, it has. Instead of providing strong leadership, Trump turned the decision-making over to the governors. At the same time, he refused to lead by example. Despite his recent shift in position, he wouldn’t wear a mask and ridiculed those who do, and encouraged his followers to open their states for business. Now, those states are paying a price for that.
Trump is hoping that the virus will go away and the economy will come roaring back by November. But at this point, that seems highly unlikely. It should be clear to all Americans by now that Trump is not capable of leading us through difficult times.
In the coming months, the rightwing money machine will fund deceptive attack ads claiming that presumptive Democratic nominee Biden is weak on China or that he wants to defund the police or that he is a socialist or that he wants open borders or that he is senile. Try to keep in mind that as mainstream journalists point out, these are fabrications.
In the 1960s , baby boomers took a moral stance against the war in Vietnam. In general our generation supported women’s rights and civil rights and affirmative action. Because of our actions, the United States withdrew from Vietnam. Women benefitted from affirmative action and succeeded in the workplace. African-Americans became police, firefighters, government workers, and politicians.
When Barack Obama was elected president, it seemed as if the United States had made significant progress overcoming the racial divide that has plagued our country since its inception. But that divide runs deep and President Trump was able to exploit our fears and divisions for his own benefit. It’s a good time to ask the question raised by Ronald Reagan when he ran for his first term against Jimmy Carter: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Is our country heading in the right direction?
Ed, you should know that there is no “mainstream journalist” worthy of the name on either side. They all have an axe to grind, and want to sway you to their side, frothing at the mouth. There is no unbiased reporting, anywhere in the USA.
If you don’t believe Biden is going downhill, watch him give a speech without a teleprompter. “You know, the thing” is getting lots of airplay, and it’s a symptom.
Are we better off today than four years ago? We were much better off than four years ago until the pandemic hit. (Never mind how it was managed, armchair quarterbacking is easy after the fact. Nothing anyone did would have been right; look how badly Italy fared.) Before the pandemic, we had record economic growth and record low unemployment, especially in minorities. We had Obama saying we were in for a recession no matter what, then claiming it was his work when the economy soared.
Neither President Trump nor his detractors have gotten things right on every issue; they can’t, that’s both life and politics. But we, led by the media and politicians, are going further and further away from being able to compromise, and it will be a hard road to get back to where we should be. Make America Great Again? We were, and we can be again, if we get some politicians like JFK and Reagan. The current crop is what you get when you have to settle for the least of two evils. Look at Kamala Harris trying to rip a Supreme Court nominee to shreds, then trying to rip Biden to shreds in the primary, now all cozy with him. Flip-flop, flip-flop. If she believed the accusations against Biden as she said, she should never be running for office as his running mate.
It’s all phonetics: Poli-tics. Poli (poly=many, multiple) tics (ticks=blood-sucking insects). It disgusts me. Washington DC disgusts me.
I completely agree with “Denver.”
I wish Americans would stop writing things like politics “disgusts me” or “Washington disgusts me.” This is not helpful at all, it’s giving up one’s right to judge political candidates and be a responsible citizen who takes voting seriously. Political candidates should NOT be judged on HOW they speak, or even on WHAT they say (like Trump claiming he makes “America Great Again”) but on WHAT THEY DO AND WHAT THEY HAVE ACHIEVED. Take a close hard look at Biden’s government record and Trump’s.
Trump must be judged on what he has achieved, he’s had 4 years to do it. And what Trump has achieved from an American point of view is abysmal: America has, because of him and his trade wars and his irresponsibly clumsy handling of the COVID threat, turned into a pariah among the international community. Its leadership – which had been uncontested since it won World War II – is now highly contested everywhere. And here I speak as a European who loves America. I am so sad to see the country plunging into chaos and all because of an obvious lack of leadership.
Seriously, can anyone entertain the idea of another 4 years of Trump? Frankly, I’m scared. I’m scared for America and scared for the planet. Yes, for all of us, including here on the other side of the Atlantic. Because beyond the matter of the pandemic (and no small matter it is with so many thousands of deaths!!) there is the matter of climate change and environmental pollution.
Trump has already paralyzed the EPA, deregulated the American environment and pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement: in short, he is causing a massive disaster for the planet as a whole…
And to say that there are “no mainstream journalists” we should listen to, none worth his or her salt, is pretty incredible. Who are we supposed to be listening to? These people are, and how, decent people who spend their lives doing research on issues, with one objective in mind, coming up with balanced, credible opinions. Thank God there are people like that, for example, people like Nicolas Kristoff or Boomer Café’s own Greg Dobbs, and the list is long, no need to fill up space here with names!
One last point: I live in Italy and witnessed firsthand how the Italian authorities led by Prime Minister Conte handled the coronavirus. Impeccable! Contrary to what the commentator above said (who obviously hasn’t followed the Italian situation in any detail). Even today, while there is a comeback of the disease here (6 deaths today), it’s still manageable and people are scrupulously following orders to wear masks and practice social distancing and regular hand-washing.
Nobody here thinks that such orders are for the birds or an attempt of the government to limit personal freedom (that very through is universally considered absurd). Italy got out of the crisis in a matter of weeks while the U.S. is still right smack in the middle of it after 6 months, with no end in sight. And if Italy had a relatively high rate of mortality, the reason why is now emerging: it’s a combination of adverse factors, chief among them the high rate of pollution in the industrial North (Lombardy was the worst his region and it is also the heart of Italy’s production machine) and the high rate of obesity among the elderly. Incidentally, those two factors – pollution and obesity – are also emerging as key indicators in the U.S. of exactly where COVOD will hit hardest (and is already hitting). But you won’t hear Trump say that!
So honestly, are Americans really going to vote for Trump again?
Thanks for replying Denver and Claude. I’m happy to see we agree Denver that we need to be wary of mainstream journalists. We’ll soon see in the debates how Biden matches up cognitively with Trump. Although the economy seemed to be strong with virtual full employment, it was a fragile rather than a robust economy built in part on gig work and part time employees and folks in minimum wage jobs with no healthcare and no benefits. With over 200,000 dead Americans as a direct result of the abdication of responsibility by the President who denied the dangers of the virus and then turned the task of dealing with it over to the states, a reckoning is called for. Only one of the two persons running is evil—the one occupying the office now.