For the past two months—and much longer if I think back when our exchanges began—I have been at loggerheads with a close correspondent about the Trump years and what I refer to as President Biden’s Much Ado about Nothing moment in which “four of his five wits went halting off” (but that may be overgenerous). We are both academics, retired, and reasonably current on events in the news.
My correspondent cannot understand why I cannot grasp the “Trump Scourge,” and why I haven’t denounced my votes for him in 2016 and 2020. I have heard of the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) but never thought I’d encounter it within a close circle. On the one hand, it isn’t that surprising, given that both of us traveled in the flotsam and jettison of academic backwaters. The number of conservatives in academia can fit into the proverbial and now anachronistic phonebooth.
Even in my own family, most of my siblings and one parent (the other was apolitical) are left-of-center. Ostensibly, you don’t even have to drink the Kool-Aid for it to blind you to reality. On the other hand, anyone watching the Biden administration implode surely sees it for what it is: the unraveling of America. Biden is the modern-day Sciron, or Procrustes. After forcing us to kiss his feet, either he feeds us to a human-eating tortoise or hammers us to his Procrustean bed to fit his outsized policies.
The two main charges my correspondent makes revolve around Trump’s “mean tweets” and of course the January 6 episode, that out-of-control crowd at the Capitol. The latter my correspondent contends has jeopardized democracy more than any other event. Seriously?
There can be no denying that the former president was often his own worst enemy. But the vaniloquence surrounding the melee in January strikes me as absurd even from left-leaning Democrats. They place all or most of the blame on the former president. But isn’t that like blaming teachers for what their students later do? If this is the case, every teacher in America should be praised but also jailed!
While I wish the brouhaha at the nation’s Capitol had not occurred, I cannot see how that one event can be weighted more than all others. Comparing the disorganized rabble to the well-orchestrated and exceedingly well-funded arson and vandalism of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, is to compare a candle to the sun, a pool to the ocean. For doubters, the January 6 rabble caused five deaths, lasted six hours, and cost $1.5 million in actual damage to the Capitol. Throw in the costs of Liz Cheney’s investigations the costs are $30 million. On the other hand, in terms of damages, deaths, bloodshed, and treasonous behavior, Antifa and BLM are unmatched in their abominations, none of which the left not only did not criticize but praised or completely downplayed. These “summer of love” attacks killed 30 people, injured thousands more, and cost $2 billion in property damage.
When my correspondent and I began our debate in earnest, gas was just over $2.40. When we called it quits last week, gas had soared to $4 in most places, over $4.50 in others, and still climbing. Although the Biden administration blames the Russian war, gas was soaring months before it began.
And that, of course, is just the beginning. Inflation is at a four-decade high. The Southern border, under control during Trump, is now in the hands of Mexican drug cartels and gangs who are running fentanyl and other deadly drugs into our country hourly (root causes be damned). In a few short months, Biden and his administration have bungled everything they touched, including the pandemic (in which more have died under Biden than Trump), a botched vaccine rollout, draconian Covid mandates that slowed the economy and inured many to stay at home than return to work. This does not count the tens of thousands now suffering under some form of addiction because of the lockdowns.
Unemployment continues to rise, and every left-leaning crackpot theory gets a front-row seat in the White House. While Ukrainians hide in subways or flee their county by the millions, top Biden administrators tout electric school busses (cue Madame Giggles-Harris) and the coming “apocalypse” of climate change (unfortunately, the sky really is falling in Kviv and nearby locales). Further, as China President Xi Jinping and Supreme Leader Grand Marshall Kim Jong-un spy how our milksop president has behaved, we can expect to hear from them soon.
New taxes loom on the horizon (especially as Biden leers longingly at our retirement accounts), OPEC sultans laugh at us and won’t take U.S. calls, and President Maduro, once a blood-soaked, thug pariah, now dangles oil barrels in Biden’s cloudy eyes.
But this doesn’t begin to touch the social miasma Biden is throwing over the country. The alphabet soup of sexual proclivities—LGBTQ+ for the uninitiated—is rampant. Then there’s transgendered “Rachel” L. Levine that Biden picked as his health secretary. Thank God for Gov. Ron DeSantis whose sexual identity bill now prevents this madness from poisoning children in K-3 in Florida. Let’s hope more governors step up. Bear in mind that the “plus” in LGBTQ+ signifies whatever other perversion might obtain. Most recently, Biden eyes federalizing critical race theory, not to mention abortion. Will this insanity ever end? We can only hope the November mid-terms barricade us from further disaster from this ship of fools.
The mean tweets from the former president were often mean. But ask yourself this: were they bad as this, and the looming prospect of World War III?