your life wasn't better under trump, you just forgot about covid
Well, hey there. It’s been a while.
I’ll be honest, I’ve been wallowing in despair for several weeks now. I have been finding the world more and more disturbing, and for a while, I didn’t feel like adding my noise to the coagulation of exhausting sound would actually amount to anything helpful.
So, why are you reading this now?
I saw an article that very clearly inspired an entire piece of writing just from the headline. I honestly didn’t want to read any more.
“A Mystery $30 Million Wave of Pro-Trump Bets Has Moved a Popular Prediction Market”
In case you’ve been checked out in disgust (I’m more of the “can’t look away from the crash,” mentality), we’ve started betting on elections! And while the legitimate polls continue to place this race as a pure toss-up, with Trump narrowly securing a positive probability in most cases, the election bets are much more clearly in his favor. Aside from how this could easily be interpreted as election interference, the mere fact that the race is this close is terrifying to me. How is it that the number of Americans who trust Donald Trump to be their commander-in-chief again is this close to half and half?
Even more than that, the difference in the attitude of the Harris voters I know versus the Trump voters is stark. While advocating for the importance of voting for her, I see tons of concessions about her support for Israel’s treatment of Palestine, the slide to the right on the border, about how, essentially, the Democratic party serves as the lesser of two evils. I don’t see this pragmatism about Donald Trump, which is concerning given his criminal record, general demeanor, and failing health. If Harris “supporters,” are reproachfully nodding their heads, Trump supporters are screaming with the same vigor they had in 2016 and 2020, if not more.
It’s not that I don’t know their reasons; I’ve heard them for years at this point.
My life was better under Trump.
No one can afford to buy a home and the cost of everything has skyrocketed.
And, my favorite one of all (dripping in disillusion):
COVID was a hoax that the shadowy elites infected the entire world with, purely to strip Americans of their rights. Then, they stole the election.
I used to think “the left,” and “the right,” occupied two very separate worldviews, which was the root of all divisiveness in this country. That is true, to an extent, but given recent developments, stopping at this truth conceals a far more destructive form of delusion that nearly all of us are participating in.
We want to forget about COVID.
“My life was better under Trump,” is probably a true statement. For most of Trump’s term, we hadn’t experienced the devastation of the onset of the global pandemic. We hadn’t spent weeks or months or years (yes, not everyone is going back to normal) isolating ourselves. We didn’t hold the spot as the most deadly country when it came to Covid-19; we enjoyed the companionship of approximately 1,200,000 Americans before they died as a result of this pandemic. 1.2 million Americans means 1.2 million families, 1.2 million communities and churches and workplaces that are missing someone they used to know. It’s not hard to believe that your life was better. Mine was too.
I don’t fault people for minimizing the effect of the pandemic, or for refusing to accurately consider the role of the pandemic in the current problems that we’re facing. I can’t even say it’s something I’m not guilty of. It didn’t feel like much of a choice to forget about COVID. COVID specific sick days are gone, free testing, masks, contact tracing and case tracking in general faded away years ago. To recognize that COVID is still infecting people and, even further, that research is showing that re-infections put people at higher and higher risk for long-term health effects, is a hard reality to live in when public health has virtually dissolved and the voices of reason stopped paying attention a long time ago. Honestly, I can see the appeal of downplaying the severity, blaming it on the Democrats, and hoping for a better 2025.
I sincerely wish I could hold your hand as I say this, but Trump cannot undo the past. There is no future where we move past the damage that occurred in 2020 (and continues to occur today), without frankly confronting it. I remember how much hope I felt in the possibility of a vaccination in 2020. Having a couple years of hindsight regarding its rollout exposed something far less hopeful; it worked like Kool-Aid. The vast majority of us injected our amnesia and eagerly rolled back our clocks a few years with reckless abandon. We bear a striking resemblance to the COVID-deniers of 2020, the vaccination didn’t even leave a distinguishing mark. Did you notice how all of the mechanisms of support built up to respond to Covid faded away with the roll-out of the vaccination? Where are your free Covid tests (real tests administered by health professionals)? Why did the Center for Disease Control defer to airlines when it came to shortening the quarantine period? Why does a “mass disabling event,” occupy virtually none of our consideration anymore?
The most disappointing part of this is that it’s not an endorsement of Kamala Harris. Not only did the erasure of Covid mitigations and case-tracking continue under a Democratic presidency, it’s not going to stop. Even more than that, the assault on our health and safety is not just coming in the form of an infectious disease; the United States is at risk of losing its place in the global hegemony, climate disasters have left millions of Americans displaced, and the government orchestrating a genocide in Gaza using our arms is expanding its destruction into Lebanon. To avoid mincing words, we are headed into World War III, and this is not likely to stay a war an ocean away.
I think it’d be easy to write that off as alarmist, but my question to you is, what is maintaining your sense of security? Is it possible that the history of America’s dominion over the world does not ensure our safety, but rather has been accumulating a wave of retributive action that will cost us our safety? What actions has our government taken for the wellbeing of its citizens? Why is the absence of those actions not more alarming to you? And what do you honestly expect Donald Trump of all people to do about any of it?
I don’t believe we have any formidable candidates for President of the United States. However, I know that Donald Trump is not one, specifically because of the way the landscape of our world has monumentally shifted since his presidency. If you believe your vote for him will ensure a better future, you’ve left the rose colored glasses on so long that the real world will no longer look right. Please squint.