What are we going to do?

 

We are now 100 days into a new Administration. As promised, a pandemic response bill has been passed getting money out to the states and to people who desperately need it. The vaccines that are proving to stop Covid 19 dead in its tracks

 are available to anyone over age 16. (Fact – over 88 million people fully vaccinated and 6,000 cases of Covid among those people and not one death. That’s 99.9932% effective!) President Joe Biden has an approval rating of >59%, something his predecessor never even got close to achieving.

Countries around the world are excited that America is back and are welcoming us back to negotiating tables, looking to us for leadership, and are hopeful again after one of the darkest years in the past 100.

Vaccines save lives!

And yet…

Almost 25% of Americans have stated that they “won’t get the vaccine.” Despite its success and its effectiveness, they’ve decided that having to get it violates their rights. That it will “change their DNA.” That they “don’t know what’s in it.” That it’s a “government project to plant a chip so we can be tracked.” That it “hasn’t been proven to be safe, yet.” That “vaccines take years to create, how could this one be ready in months?” That “the pandemic is a hoax, so I don’t need it.”

I wish I were making these up. I’ve personally heard people say these things.

For the world to rid itself of this virus, we need to reach herd immunity and the percentages I’ve seen for how many people must be vaccinated go from 70%-90%. In other words, we’re likely to be dealing with this virus for years instead of months, because some people believe their rights trump the rights of everyone else. (Pun intended.)

Vaccines work, they’re incredibly safe and remarkably effective. They’re the reason we don’t have polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, and a host of other diseases today. They’re one of the reasons that the life expectancy in the world has doubled in the last century. Doubled as in gone from mid-40s to upper-80s.

I guess we should be thankful that more people are educated than ever before or we’d really have some issues on this, huh? (I wish I had an answer for these people but I struggle to cure stupidity.)

And still…

Police kill, on average, three people per day. An inordinate percentage of them are people of color. Rarely does the officer that fired the shot face any kind of charges as, more frequently, the killing is “justified” in the course of duty.

Stop killing people!

(Yes, I know that Derek Chauvin was found guilty in the killing of George Floyd last week. There was video shot by a bystander showing him kneeling on the dead man’s neck for over nine minutes, even after he’d stopped breathing. When the jury came back with a verdict, the country was holding its collective breath for a conviction. Why? Because that’s what happens, nearly every time! When the ratio flips the other way, come back and talk to me about how police are being unfairly treated.)

I’m not advocating “defunding” the police. I’m advocating better training, money spent on mental health services, and a culture change for those who serve. Think it shouldn’t?

Policing began in this country shortly after slavery stopped, during Jim Crow. Well-armed people were hired to “bring back” workers who had skipped out of their jobs. They were unfairly treated and “tried” and essentially put right back into slavery in many cases. These groups of “arrestors” eventually formed police forces after being “deputized” by the local sheriffs who were unable to keep up with the population growth. To this day, America ensures that its police forces are armed with the best weapons available while most other countries don’t. Google it. France, Germany, England, Australia, Austria, Iceland, Denmark, and Finland are all among the Top 10 police forces in the world and none of them carry guns. (Oddly enough, citizens of those countries have tougher access to guns, too. Wonder if there is a correlation?)

And somehow…

There is a percentage of the population of this country that believes this new administration, with all the things it’s working to bring us – health and healthcare, financial security, improved and repaired infrastructure, a safer climate – is heading in the wrong direction.

This is not a small percentage, either. It’s nearly 50% of the population and far more than that in some states and areas. In other words, it’s large enough to elect some people to positions of power in our country that can have a deleterious impact to all the good that’s being done.

In fact, they elected that last guy President and, to this day, a good many of them think he’s the greatest we’ve ever had and that the election was stolen from him. Why? Because HE said so. There is no science or logic that can change their minds, at least none that I’ve been able to find.

So, what are we going to do to keep our country headed in the right direction?

It's up to all of us!

Ninety Days In – BP 120/80

 

Deep Breath!

If you’re like me, the four years of the Trump administration put a bit of blip in your health statistics. My blood pressure was up, my blood glucose was as well, thanks to daily self-medication in the form of cocktails, and I was constantly angry and/or frustrated with just about everything and nearly everyone.

And why not? Science had been suspended, truth telling became an anomaly, and a goodly number of rituals and processes had been tossed into the dustbin of history. You know things like, Presidents who release their income tax returns, Presidents that treat people with respect to the point of respectfully disagreeing on things. Members of Congress making a stand for the Country instead of solely for their party or personal checkbook.

Ah, how quaint those days seemed.

Those last couple of weeks were a test all their own. Who would have guessed His Orangeness would have the temerity to enrage his base enough to actually storm the Capitol in an insurrection effort to stop the rightful certification of the legal Federal election of a President? As of this moment, the Justice Department hasn’t brought charges against many people but the wheels of justice turn slowly. There are efforts underway.

I do find it interesting that even now, there is a substantial percentage of Republicans who claim that election was stolen and their candidate won – in a landslide! In other words, they’re saying that not only was there fraud at the ballot box but that it was on a scale of millions of ballots! Millions! I mean, there are certainly people whose word I trust implicitly but if they were to call me and say something completely outrageous and I know to be false like, “All the money in your paycheck was deposited by Russians this week; you’ll have to give it back to them!” I’d be getting an Uber to take them to the nervous hospital. I damn sure wouldn’t be storming the Russian Embassy to hand them a check!

This is the same group, by the way, that is refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19 because they don’t trust what’s in it or how quickly it was created. Never mind that in the next breath, they’ll point out that it was “developed under Trump and he gets no credit for it.” And right after that, they'll knock back a chili dog with extra chili and fries – having no idea what’s in the hot dog. Oh, then take something for acid reflux without knowing what’s in that or how it works. But, no, they’re not hypnotized zombies! They’re free-thinking adults who refuse to let those Commie-Socialists ruin their country.

Uh huh.

Thankfully, there is less stress since the inauguration of President Biden. He almost never Tweets, he’s having daily meetings with his Cabinet and Congressional leaders in an effort to get the country past the pandemic and back on its feet. It appears that 200 million people will have gotten at least partially vaccinated by his 100^th day in office, twice as many as he set out to do on Inauguration Day.

President Joe Biden

He’s acting so presidential, that I realized I forgot what that used to look like!

We’re coming up on the first ninety days of this administration and things are looking up and yet, there are people who desperately want Biden to fail. Why? Because he’s not Trump and “we” all wanted him to fail.

I don’t know about you but I desperately wanted him to succeed and prove me wrong. I mean, I can’t stand the guy – he’s skeevy, underhanded, has the morals of a ¾ rat, and brought in people who were worse than him to help him run the country. But he had been duly elected and been given the chance to run the country as he saw fit. Those are rules in this country. I had a suspicion that he’d be in over his head and that proved to be correct almost immediately. But I still wanted success because when the President is successful, America and Americans are successful.

(Was I successful during the Trump Administration? I was and that's been true during every single administration since I became an adult - going all the way back to Carter. Why? Well, I work hard, I'm privileged in this country as a white male, and I've also been lucky on a number of occasions. I enjoy helping others, too, so maybe my luck is actually karma. But I digress.)

Instead Trump showed that someone focused only on himself in that role, and surrounding himself with people just like him, winds up in trouble. His biggest accomplishment was to appoint far more judges (conservative to be sure) than his predecessors but that had less to do with him and far more to do with then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose legacy is still be written. But the number of unqualified judges he ramrodded through the system are going to make for some painful swings to our country in the areas of individual rights, abortion, and fairness of the application of the law. (Think I’m wrong? Google Trump appointed judges qualifications and enjoy the read. 85% male, 76% white, and only 5% black, please.)

Here’s the good news: We’re ninety days in and my blood pressure is under control. We’re slowly digging out of the pandemic (and would more quickly if everyone would get vaccinated and wear a damn mask!) and the economy is showing signs of strengthening.

Let’s keep it going, Joe!