This is why we must never, never give up the fight
I would be remiss in not emphasizing, as would anyone recounting some of the horrors of Donald Trump and his pirate ship administration, that since I last wrote to you, brothers and sisters, 1,351 Americans (as I write this) have died from COVID-19. That 24 hour tally all by itself would make America 61st out of 291 nations worldwide in coronavirus deaths. That a core of Americans find this acceptable, that some inhabitants of the richest, most powerful nation on earth are okay with the knowledge that their country, with just 4.2% of the world’s population, has nearly 20% of the world’s coronavirus deaths, is a disgrace.
America has passed the quarter million mark of coronavirus deaths and the ten million mark in coronavirus cases. No other nation has that many. By the time Donald Trump leaves office in January, those figures could well be double. The existence of a vaccine (once it is certified) will not change that, as it is going to be at least another six to nine months before a sufficient supply of it can be distributed across the population.
The people who support an administration that has brought us to the brink of this horror are the people who claim to be patriots. Even now they are cheering a Secretary of State who claims that the transition will be into a second Trump administration. That isn’t tantamount to treason, that is treason. The Secretary of State has announced that he intends to discard the will of the people, a will enshrined in the Constitution, and stage a coup. His use of the modifying word “smooth,” as in “smooth transition,” merely signals that he intends it to be a bloodless coup. So foul a pronouncement against the single most fundamental tenet of a democracy is the final proof of the depth of his corruption. Mike Pompeo deserves to go to prison for that statement alone. It is the single most despicable thing I have ever heard uttered by a politician not named Donald Trump.
These, and many more outrages, have been the corrupting consequence of Trump. It is often said that many people think that the people who believe and support Trump have been seething beneath our democracy all along, waiting for permission to come forth. I’m not sure that’s always the case. I think, instead, they are many ordinary Americans too dim to think for themselves, but are more than able and willing to permit corrupt and evil people like Trump and Pompeo to do their thinking for them.
This is why we must not relax after January 20th. We have our work cut out for us. The torch has been passed to a sane generation of Americans, and we must neither relax nor relinquish our tenuous grip on that torch. We must continue to show up at elections in record numbers. We must continue to practice justice and speak out against tyranny. Some of you reading these words must run for public office. But we all must continue to do our part.
We have many battles yet to fight. Chief among these are global warming, racial and gender inequality, the corrupting influence of corporate money in elections and politics, and a pandemic that will be, hopefully, brought to heel by this new vaccine, and many more. After all, if the job of making the world a better place isn’t ours, then whose is it? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.