The Times Have Changed: Donald Trump’s Segment of America Is Revolting!

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By Ron Signore

Currently, the country is in an extremely fragile condition in so many ways. Granted, I have only been on this Earth 35 years, but I have never seen such a quagmire of the identity of our country as I do daily recently. From a history perspective, I would argue the country is ideologically divided to a similar extent of the Civil War era. Tensions caused from hate fill our everyday interactions with the outside world, be it in person, on television or from behind the screens of whatever we are viewing social media on.

The amount of blame I place on the Moscow Agent Governing America, Comrade Cheeto Man, challenges what I thought was a threshold the day before. There truly has been no display of what could be bottom for the Imbecile in Chief. Lie after lie, all stemmed from what I sadly must hope is a dementia ridden paranoia. The fact that I must hope someone is in a state of decay within their brain to excuse their actions and words compared to that of just his natural ego is disheartening. It takes a special sort of a-hole to be able to constantly try and extinguish a small spark of a fire and turn it into something more devastating than the natural brush fires Australia experienced 6 months ago.

I remember being in high school, growing up in a dominantly white suburb of Chicago, during the 2000 election between Bush and Gore. I knew about as much about politics at that point in time as the fraud in the White House knows now- next to nothing. I knew I came from a very middle-class family, and even probably more on the lower middle class at that. The blue-collar work ethic had been beaten into me from an early age, though more by example than preaching. I am thankful for that. With that background and the special kind of jerk I am took the opposite stance of most of my classmates who were outspoken about how great W was. I knew my fellow students did not know anything more about politics than I did. But I was smart enough to pick up the concept they were just repeating what they heard elsewhere, most likely their house.

We were raised in somewhat of a conservative fashion, more old school family values and social principles. My grandmother would disagree, claiming my parents were raising us to liberally (not politically), but that was just the difference in generation. I knew that. My parents tell me the same thing now on how I chose to raise my children. Those social principles included those taboo things you do not talk about in public situations: sex, religion, and politics. I really did not find out some of my family’s political stances until well later in my teenage years. There were some things I probably should have picked up on from my grandfather being a union officer for the fire department, or even some of the demographics in occupation or nationality of our family.

Despite the lack of direct political discussion in our household, and the lack of engagement to our catholic religion as far as church attendance, we were always taught the common courtesy towards people, being neighborly. Wave to the neighbors when you walk or drive by, properly and respectfully address your elders. Things like offer to help when you can. As I look back and reflect, there were some early prejudicial fears to strangers, but I never took them as racist, and I still do not. A shady character, someone dangerous that poses a threat, comes in all shapes, sizes, ages, and races. I still believe that. It has caused me to have the same lack of trust in anyone, and for that trust to be earned. Everyone has an equal chance to gain and lose my trust. My parent’s generation went through some very strong shifts in culture in my birth town, and along with it came higher rates of crime. The things I currently go through when I think about letting my kids out of my sight when in public or when they play outside. We live in a time where there are just some sick people. I probably have lost more faith in humanity in my lifetime than my parents ever did.

The degeneration of this country socially has been an almost 30-year creeping death. The first election I remember was Clinton and Bush. SR. I was in 2nd grade and to learn about voting, we discussed the election in class on election day. I mentioned the cultural shift in my birth town, by this point, we had migrated to a western suburb of Chicago for about 6 years before my families final stop to this point about half an hour further from the city, where I attended middle and high school. But in that early age, as students, we were taught about the presidential position as a glorified leader, someone who commanded the utmost respect. In reflection to why I am getting these thoughts down, it goes to a very simple point from before the start of the degeneration: we were one country.

I hear stories of how it did not matter that Reagan or Bush, SR. were in office, there was going to be an effort to grow this country for the better. Hot button issues, more likely at center spotlight, may have divided the votes specifically to that 40% of voters who need to be swayed one way or another. Maybe it was a topic of a thriving or plummeting economy that swayed someone to vote one way or another. Probably the most infamous reason revolves on war like climates in the world we may have been involved on. While these led to some of the current stereotypes, they were merely a reason to support or not support a candidate/party. Fundamentally being bipartisan, it is impossible to make everyone happy, but the fairy tale I understood around these outcomes was in the end, there was still a notion to do the best for our country.

Then in the early 90’s, that one little cavity in Rush Limbaugh joins the airwaves on a war path to condemn the liberal/Democratic agenda. Spewing hatred and paranoia that arguably is nothing short of prejudicial racism brought fear to those who followed him. Like we have learned with the most recent pandemic, ignorance helps spread a virus and that virus becomes its own weapon of mass destruction. That cavity spread so wide; it became decay on society. Clinton’s time in office had a lot of positive effects on the country, the budget, and the economy- even globally. Many people made a heck of a lot of money with Clinton in office. But here is where we close the loop to Bush/Gore. The end of the Clinton presidency was riddled with the infidelity of Clinton with Monica Lewinski. Clinton ended up lying under oath, became impeached and acquitted. However, the damage was blown up beyond the topic of the incident. The media took that opening to generalize the lack of morals Democrats have. For a group of high school kids at the time, that perception was important when you know little about politics. Media played the liberal lack of morals card and some people ate it up.
Ironically, they did not have as destructive of an attack as one would think, but they still won. Despite the Clinton/Lewinski controversy, despite Florida famously screwing up an election, the numbers of those who voted red versus blue was still extremely tight. As time went on Limbaugh’s popularity grew, and George W Bush took office and was quickly hit with the 9/11 attacks. This crucial point in our history as a country brought out so much good from the awfulness. We saw people uniting. We saw an American pride.

We also saw some of the ugliness of America. The Americans of Middle Eastern dissent, Muslims, or any race or creed that resembled those of the 9/11 attackers were prejudicially acted upon in hateful ways. The fear spread that terrorists were among us, and there may not be a way to know a terrorist from a good upstanding citizen here trying to live the American Dream. As we came to W’s second term, we were so ingulfed in the Middle East, the likelihood of John Kerry winning against him were slim, despite the public decline of believing we should have been where we were between Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The major divide in the country was over a wartime scenario and the country moved forward with the “support” of the Bush Doctrine.

Those outcries were not just because of the perception of mistruths made present throughout our time in the Middle East in the hunt for Saddam Hussein or Bin Laden and the Taliban. They were for the opinion that we had enough to work on and fix on our own home front as opposed to the inflation of costs due to wartime needs. The middle- and lower-class families were impacted the hardest. It was apparent the big corporations were driving the wealth of the 1% and the rest of the 99% were getting poorer.

So many decisions during the Bush administration cost so many American’s financially and with life sacrifices, but it all burst with the recession that came as a result. Congress had to pass a $152B stimulus package to bailout multiple large corporations to try and boost the economy. The poor getting poorer concept drove people to the polls in a fashion to get our first Bi-Racial American President elected in Barack Obama. The amount of personal support I had for Obama was off the charts. I felt he had an ambition to do right by America, but I also fell to the cliché of the symbolic representation of where America had gotten to by electing its first Bi-Racial president.

As supportive as I was, the study of politics with constant observance of current events and our domestic reaction as a government brought an unsettling feeling. This feeling was not because I had lost faith in our leader, but because as a young adult exiting college into the real world, I saw more true feelings from people than I ever had before. Unfortunately, those feelings displayed were of a hateful nature towards Obama. The nature of the criticisms was either racially predicated or accusatory of Obama not being American, furthermore pushing a socialist agenda that aligned with communism. While the pushback to the Affordable Care Act was probably the most political of the adversity, the most memorable for me in reflection were the reactions to white police killing black Americans, most notably in Ferguson, MO.

It was this point in time my perception of white American did one of two things: 1) realized these were unacceptable social injustices that had gone on long enough and as a country we say enough is enough, or 2) ate up the right wing media stance of Obama was not supportive of police and is driving a wedge in this country dividing it farther than it has ever been. The resistance from the Republican driven senate coupled with the right-wing media made Obama’s presidency the hardest fought battle from within his own country. The perseverance and class displayed the whole time in office is not only admirable, but genuinely missed when you consider the arrogance of the racist narcissist in office now.

Though the polls were tight, the radioactive orange turd won the election and it has been downhill with controversy ever since. I mentioned earlier that I truly blame him for so much of the division of this country now, but I blame and hold accountable the people that allowed this. His supporters, of which a portion are white supremacists and members of the KKK, are so naturally filled with paranoia that paranoid preaching registers with the stubborn closed-minded conservative nature of their own thoughts. The preaching, though not explicitly, painted a picture that America was no longer great, and there was a savior to take our country back to a more conservative time. Unfortunately, as Bunker Boy’s presidency goes on, we see that time they hope for is pre-Civil War.

It has gotten to the point that the right-wing media does not even try to hide the hate. They drive this fear that the “liberal snowflakes” are going to take over and make this country to one of a socialist communism. This perception that the liberals who are so easily offended by everything make us appear weak as a nation, and their right-wing GOP pride is the American way. We constantly see this with the idiocy of citizens openly bashing and condemning Black Lives Matter, or not wearing masks because it takes away from their freedoms, especially since the virus is a hoax to begin with. Ironic that the pro-life party is so willing to risk the lives of others. Fox News or Deadly Donnie said so, so it must all be true.

My blame falls on the ignorant. The ignorant are the people constantly not willing to work together to do what is best for the country. That degeneration has hit a destructive phase in America. Believe me, there are plenty of ignorant and stubborn people on our side of the spectrum; those who do not vote or will not vote for Biden because their candidate of choice did not get the nomination to be on the ballot in November. I hold them to less of a contempt because in general, their ideology and practices of life are more of a social caring agenda, despite the result of the tantrum if they ignore voting out the grand wizard. But the ignorance for the right side of the spectrum, the MAGA supporters comes from a sense of fear, an egotistical portrayal of the image of the USA. The GOP had the stereotype of party over country, but this has gone so far beyond that. This has become one person over party, over country. Like his failed business ventures, the only one that benefits is him.

With the help of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, the GOP is not representative of what American should be anymore. There is nothing right now they can preserve and hold from change that would help fix that wrong. The allowing of the path we are on from within our own government and exploitation of the media to the ignorant, generates a fight within. That fight is taking place in ways they had not been taken 30+ years ago- with each other, out in the open via social media. That war, fueled by the biggest instigator with name calling and false information, gets bigger and bigger each day on a personal level. And like war, the soldiers are the casualties. The Generals and people in their high tower come out virtually unscathed. How many more casualties do we need to have before this country becomes un-repairable? How much more hatred can our citizens endure fighting for equality and peace allowed by natural rights and protected by our own country’s foundation for existence? It starts now. Vote early. Vote in person. Vote by mail. Do not give any chance for oppression for you to complete your civic duty as an American Citizen to bulldoze this disgrace from his bunker. If we do not, the certainty of anything being left of this country to build on.

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