It started with the Women’s March in Washington DC and ended
with the insurrection at the Capitol. The intervening years have been
unbelievable for many reasons.
To start with the
Trump win came as a surprise to all. If
only those eligible to vote in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the past
four years would have been significantly different in many respects. The shock
of the election outcome was so jarring that it resulted in spontaneous growth
of activism. The activism led to the
defeat of many Republican House members. It paved the way for flipping the
House seat from the Republicans to the Democrats in Orange County, California.
With Trump’s win it is was easy to identify many who are
naïve to think that Trump was a business man who was good for capitalism in the
country. There are a number of issues
with this acceptance. One of them is that so many were willing to take Trump on
face value – that here is a business man who was going to make them wealthier. They were prepared to ignore the many red
flags.
It was concerning to see the chaos the country had to
endure. It is pretty much like the last
four years did not exist. But they
cannot be ignored. The last four years
showed how precariously close democracy came to destroyed. This is not hyperbole. One shudders to
imagine what would have happened if the 2020 election resulted in a Trump win. It
would be very difficult to bring the country back after another four more years
of lies, conspiracy and incompetence.
How did we survive four years of chaos? Fortunately, we had a job to be engaged in
which kept our minds engaged. There were so many outrageous happening that distressed
many in the country. One of them was the
action of ICE. Parents with children,
who were citizens, were deported. It is
unimaginable, what the children would go through when they would return from
school one day and be told that their father or mother was arrested by ICE and deported
and that they would not be able to see them.
Another cruel action was separating children from their parents
at the border. It is difficult to understand not only how they could come up
with an order that would separate children from parents but also how those who
carried out the orders did so. It was one of the many cruel of actions.
Not until the period of 2016 to 2020 did many of us become
aware of white supremacy. They are a very dangerous group of people that have
been laying low and finally arose with support of a demagogue head of the
state. Who took seriously the topic of conspiracies and fringe groups until the
insurrection? Now we know how dangerous
all these can be.
The country was the
laughing stock of the rest of the work. With a demagogue as the head of the
government and a cadre of subordinates – some taking advantage of the circumstance
and advancing their agenda and others helpless in changing course. It is genuinely
refreshing to have a thoughtful administration in place as of 20th of
January 2021.
Hopefully all have learned a lesson, never to take democracy
for granted, even in an “advanced nation”.
The country is made up of citizens, whose insecurities can result in
irrational thinking and manifest in dangerous actions.
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