sonora2sonoma

Anyone not infected with the president’s magical thinking should know by now that he is, first and foremost, a liar, and not merely an ordinary one, but a charlatan beyond parallel whose mendacity is unprecedented in the history of executive branch mischief-making. Dishonesty seems as effort-free to this man as breathing is to most. Yet, when his lies begin to cost people their lives, as is now happening with this pandemic threatening to knock on our doors with potentially fatal import, his lying, as intolerable as it has always been, has now gone beyond dazed acceptance to the point where it has become completely and totally intolerable.

Whatever genetic mutations must lurk deep in the genomic backgrounds of those who still believe trump capable of leadership, these folks have, at this juncture, and by virtue of their blind acceptance of what any normal person would plainly see as absurd beyond reason, forfeited their right to continue adding their voices to the national discourse.

Reading an article in yesterday’s New York Times entitled “trump Was Warned Early and Often: Examining His Halting Response,” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html

is enough to rouse a mystic from his meditations. The piece amounts to an indictment, laying out, in stark detail, each mis-step trump made and each squandered opportunity he missed on his way to becoming the man on whose watch an unprecedented toll in lives needlessly lost and unbelievable disruption to peoples’ lives and livelihoods has taken place.

And, while trump may not accept responsibility for any of it, history most certainly will!

Among the many ironies of the trump abomination is his fondness for framing his so called “accomplishments” as unprecedented, when the truth of the matter is the only thing unprecedented about this man’s presidency is his enormous failure to rise to the occasion, to exhibit even one scintilla of the qualities that define leadership.

There have been few moments in our nation’s history when the need for a complete change of course has been more sorely needed than the one in which we find ourselves today. Yet, as history has demonstrated, no reforms of this magnitude are possible without great and at times sacrificial effort on the part of those desirous of such change—efforts like those exhibited by the brave voters in Wisconsin who risked exposure to the coronavirus earlier this week as they stood in long lines under adverse weather conditions to exercise their voting rights.

It is one thing to witness the spectacle unfolding before us, like far too many of us do as we take in the daily disheartening downpour of dire news, of which we’d sooner remain blissfully unaware, and then carry on with our affairs while seeking distractions from our social separation in a disempowering fog of disenchantment, disengagement and detachment. It is quite another thing to act, to commit to making our voices heard, to scream to the rooftops, Enough!!!

Were we to take to the streets and rise in mass protest like that witnessed in the 60s, the established order would be forced of necessity to alter course. But, given the reality of our current situation, where public gatherings are not possible, and for good reason, we still have the power of the pen to air our grievances to our elected representatives; we still have the power of the written word to lodge our protests online and in letters to our newspapers; we still have the power of the purse to contribute whatever we can to the candidacies of those brave souls willing to fight for us by bringing the battle to public office.

In this place and at this moment, when many of us are forced of necessity to suspend our normal activities, rather than spending our time in pursuit of self-indulgent distractions, we could devote some of our time to making our thoughts known, to participating in our democracy in a manner similar to that of our nation’s founders, only, thanks to modern technology, we, unlike the founders, have the option of becoming armchair activists, voicing our outrage in media. Such acts, however, only gain strength in numbers. If we don’t take the time to make our voices heard, after all, no one will hear them.

And nothing will change.

Tim Konrad

2020.04.11