The Cavalry Is Out There Somewhere

It won’t be long now. These are the last days of Donald Trump.

At last we will be able to ignore him altogether. So it is okay to just pass the days, get along down the road. Forgot him. We are talking about what is most therapeutic. Change is around the corner.

“Passing the days,” means you are in glide-mode, just cruising.Taking in what is coming your way. You don’t have to worry about working through or around it, just cheerily greeting each new day. “Getting through the day,” implies hard emotional and mental work. It’s grim when you have to “get through it.” Things aren’t what they should or could be. It’s been a “getting-through-the-day-world” too often since November 8, 2016.

Joy melted away when we realized what we had done. The days became arduous, wearisome. All the itching complaints were still in place: the government is selfish and inept, the country is going broke, we do not have close allies, unemployment is high, too many people are sick. And this time that sickness is very serious and leads too often to death. We got stuck in-place not knowing what to do. The simple act of wearing a mask to save lives became controversial. Certainty and heartfelt bliss seemed highjacked from our lives.

Some voters thought Trump would change, that he would somehow wake up, but now he is making more of a fool of himself than ever before. Instead of reaching new heights, he is revealing new lows. Somewhere along the way Trump discovered that we the people had found out he was a fraud. The cat was out, shall we say, of the bag. Think of it: he had to live through 74 years of life before anyone dared to hold a mirror up to his failures. Most of us started making discoveries about ourselves before we were out of kindergarten.

Beforehand, in the dark pre-White House days when he lied or said something stupid, people coughed and looked the other way. His incompetence was kept in the family hidden under the arrogance of his money. He had his toadies. People bowed. But nowadays his every little peccadillo is immediately broadcast world-wide. Television is powerful. When television catches a big fish, it doesn’t let him off the hook. TV is Trump’s best friend and worst enemy.

Trump’s exposure as unfit for the job has melded right in with everything else that was is out of whack. And there has been a lot of that.

The Out of Whack Dept. includes a vast assortment of circumstances that persistently get in the way of the good life. Now would be a good time to get some of those out of the way.

• You can’t find a television series that’s worth its weight over the long haul.
• Sports have game away.
• The gig economy screws the worker.
• Pop music isn’t popular.
• People have too many phones.
• And spend way too much time with them in hand.
• For some people one phone is too many.
• We are hearing too much “I’m here for you”…”I’ve got your back.”
• Automobiles all look the same,
• Libraries are closed.
• More newspapers are dropping dead.
• It keeps getting hotter.
• It keeps getting colder.
• Aspirin doesn’t seem to work the way it used to.
• That kind of eternal pith.

But we must vote. Psephology looks like a misspelled word, but it actually means the statistical study of elections and the trends in voting. Studies show people often vote not to elect someone but to assure that another candidate will not be elected. That has been my predicament several times, but not this year. Best is when you have an inspiring, competent candidate (Biden) that you feel is up to the job, and the other candidate (Trump) has already proved he is obviously unfit by any measure. That’s what is coming up.

2020 is going to be one hell of an election. Down-ballot, many newcomers are running, candidates who have not up until now been called politicians. So this election features a candidate who has spent about four years as President, and revealed that President of the United States is way above his pay grade. He cannot run on his record because he doesn’t have a good one.

He will vote by mail. Trump votes by mail. Yet he says voting by mail can easily be corrupted; he has claimed prior to the election that voting was rigged. And then he won. What that tells us is that we should vote however we choose but keep a very close watch on Trump.

Here’s the deal. Biden is far more qualified than Trump. Besides, Trump is a crook; Biden is a good guy. At every turn Trump lets slip his dishonesty. Biden is honest. For those who fear Joe Biden is aging too quickly, perhaps a little frail, note that Biden does have a solid list of Vice-Presidential running mates. We know now that should Biden bite the dust, his Vice-President will be ready and very able— surely more capable than Trump or Pence.

Should Trump have mortality issues, we are left with Mike Pence. Mike Pence. He has morality issues. He once wrote an intense essay which insisted that Presidents should be held to a higher standard. That was before he became Vice-President Pence. The Trump/Pence ticket presents all kinds of difficulty. Trump stands ready to be carted off to jail at the slightest, leaving Pence looking vaguely into the distance for something that never shows up.

That’s never going to be easy; among other oddities, Mike Pence does not allow himself to be in the same room alone with a woman.That odd admittance of an inability to control oneself is not promising. We have long since reached a point in the evolution of civilization when Pence’s dilemma could have easily been overcome by a stern but simple time-out or two when he was a toddler. But can we trust Trump of all people to dole out the necessary time-outs at this late juncture?

No matter who Joe Biden chooses as a running mate, the combined accomplishments of Trump and Pence are all too easily challenged.