Am I the Only One Who Can Appreciate the Forest for the Trees?
Americans dangerously suffer from short-term memory loss.
I will find a sturdy tree tucked deep inside some park or forest, and when Trump wins in November, I will go there and contemplate my next moves. Do I take my family to a “commune of survivalists” where everyone is politically aligned with me, and we prepare and wait? Or do I stay put and hope the tsunami wave a second Trump presidency will cause doesn’t reach us?
It’s day two after The New York Times/Siena College poll is shaking up the world for the few of us paying attention. 98 percent of Americans have not heard of this, which put Trump comfortably ahead of Biden simply because they are too busy with their lives. This is a good thing because it means they are earning for their families. Nonetheless, as a citizen, you should have the teeny-weeniest bit of responsibility for reality. Respondents to the poll talk about Donald Trump’s presidency as if it had been a glimpse of Nirvana — many of the more flattering comments were by people who had voted against Trump in 2020 and even by Democrats.
“I like his policies,” said Nadeen Geller, 57, a homemaker who lives on Staten Island, N.Y., and plans to vote for Mr. Trump. “I think they work.”
“I think economically he can do wonders,” added Ms. Geller, who is in favor of keeping abortion legal before 15 weeks of pregnancy and later for health reasons. “I just all around think he can do very well for this country (Across the Board).”
Here is my question to Ms. Geller.
ME: “What were the policies you liked? What in particular did you find good about the Trump presidency?”
She is from Staten Island. This is Trump’s country, especially because many of the people living there are blue-collar workers opposed to immigration.
ME: “Ms. Geller, you realize that because of Trump’s selections for SCOTUS, Row v. Wade was overturned?”
GELLER: “Oh, I love scotuses…especially with butter and a cup of coffee.”
Respondents in the poll talk about the “sudden” rise in prices.
“Once Biden took over, the prices sky-rocketed. Under Trump, everything was cheaper, at the pump and in the supermarkets.”
Most Americans are not competent enough to understand how COVID disrupted not just the U.S. economy but the world economy. Our nation’s overwhelming dependence on imported goods led to many store price increases. Has America learned anything from this? No, it still imports practically everything. The country is still as vulnerable to a supply chain collapse today as it was in 2020. But Americans are obsessed with the here and now: “I want an endless choice of cookies, and I want them dirt cheap, and I don’t care how you make this happen.”
One of the reasons that sanctions against Russia could not cause much pain for Russian consumers was because, from 2014 on, Russia has run an “import substitution” program that shifted many supply chains into the country or with countries that won’t care about Moscow’s politics.
After COVID, however, to get those cookies back into U.S. shops in the dozens of flavors and colors consumers wanted, a lot of stuff had to happen right in places not controlled by the U.S. The supply chains needed to be regreased but the United States could only do so much.
The COVID pandemic was exacerbated by Trump’s refusal to enforce masking, which led to more deaths. How many Americans died directly as a result of listening to Trump about the lack of need for social distancing and wearing of masks? The delay in reopening the country because of increased deaths and hospitalizations was caused by the waves of infection in red states. CNN was interviewing people whose relatives were dying from COVID, and they still refused to mask or social distance because the president hadn’t said it was necessary.
Somehow, though in 2024, people don’t remember any of this. They don’t remember Trump’s alignment with skinheads or his bizarre love letters to the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un. They don’t know that Trump’s senseless battles with China and increased tariffs on some Chinese imports also led to price increases for American consumers. To offset the pain for American farmers hurt by Trump’s policies, billions were given as aid to the nation’s biggest farmers — this was corporate welfare at its finest.
I imagine that these are the policies that Ms. Geller and others in the poll refer to as the ones they particularly liked.
But setting aside all of these pesky facts about how terrible the Trump presidency was, there is the reality of the unsightly blemish of January 6th and all that has happened since Trump retreated in shame to Mar-a-Lago.
Are these people, the Democrats, the Biden voters in 2020, truly so blinded by the forest that they can’t see that so much of the pain the nation still deals with was caused by Trump’s abysmal presidency? He is, without question, the worst president we ever had, and people who, as recently as three years ago, voted against him are regarding him as the second coming. He made no effort to reform himself.
There was no “finding Jesus” moment for Trump when he realized the error of his ways. All there has been 24/7 for the past three years is an unending display of how his mental health suffers and account after account from people who worked closely with him how sick, incompetent, and dangerous he really was.
And yet, people still seem to be flocking to him like he uncovered the secret to eternal life. America’s new love for Trump speaks volumes about how far our nation has fallen. Regrettably, the world will not recover from a second Trump, and only a naive, clueless, even American would dare believe I am being alarmist or exaggerating.