Putting 2020 — and Trump — in our rearview mirrors
“‘Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.’ By the way, on November 4, you won’t hear about it anymore.”
— President Trump, at a campaign rally on Oct. 24in Lumberton, N.C.
“Spoiler alert — we’re all still hearing about it. Every. Single. Day. Wednesday alone was the highest death toll on record, and hospitals are filled to dangerous levels.”
— People with Brain Cells United No. 1373, speaking at an exasperation rally in The Real World, Planet Earth.
Of all the coronavirus-related statements to sputter out of Pennsylvania Avenue in the 2020 presidential campaign’s elongated silly season — “it will leave with the warm weather in April” or “there will be no second wave” anybody? — it is, oddly enough, Loser-elect Trump’s “You Just Watch!” fifth-grade class president-like stump speech that best suits the view as we leave the 15-pundit/partisan/patient/president/personal tragedy pileup that was 2020 in our rearview mirror.
It was the kind of vapid, incoherent nonsense — the death and suffering in the United States was all just a political hoax — spewed by the guest on the A Block of Sean Hannity, or the dolt you’re trying to avoid in the checkout line.
Or, of course, by what was left of the Trump presidency, high on steroids and low on realistic hope in the waning days leading to that fateful night in Lumberton, N.C., right on the outskirts of Conspiracyville,
USA.
A sitting president uttering such inane tripe in the middle of a pandemic that was only getting worse under his inattentive watch would have qualified for spit-takes, hands- on-the face outrage and panicked punditry hyperventilation — you know, in 2015. In November, some 17.8 gajillion such jaw- dropping monstrosities from Trump later, it mustered, well, crickets.
But to say it, to actually believe it — and some who were clueless enough to utter it out loud actually did believe it — is just, pardon the “elitism” here, a special kind of stupid. Dunce-like, even.
And you can’t spell dunce without Trump. Trust me on this. I looked it up.
If nothing else, Trump’s comment serves a dual purpose for a pair of mistaken notions about our consensus “Worst Year Ever”:
2020 was the worst year ever
Was it? Really?
Down the home stretch alone, we watched as Donald Trump, in the space of one guffaw-inducing week of unadulterated joy, pouted all by his lonesome as Mitch McConnell said — out loud — he lost to Joe Biden. So did one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
I mean, your own boss smiles and congratulates the guy who beat you? And the leader of the Senate does it, too?
On top of court loss after court loss after court loss during that one final White House grift of ripping off his devoted cult members for “legal challenges of fraud” that never did use the word “fraud” in court, it all made for a lot of losing. We’re talking the kind of losing where Rudy Giuliani getting caught with his hands in his pants on the bed of a 20something’s hotel room was perhaps the third worst embarrassing moment of his month — depending on how one ranks a sprung oil leak on the face while on national television or trotting out laughable, baseless conspiracy theories in the parking lot of a landscape store ... next to a sex shop.
So. Much. Losing.
I’ll let you know when — if — I get tired of it.
The point it is, any year that concludes with the Electoral College ass-kicking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris handed Donald Trump and what’s his face — why some might even call 306-232 a “landslide” — can’t be all bad.
Thank God 2020 is over. 2021 will make it all better
Will it? Really?
We did flip that calendar page. And there are still patients suffering in too few hospital rooms, on too few ventilators. There are people dying — often alone — that didn’t have to die. Funerals that can’t be attended. Stadiums and concert halls that are still empty. We still should be wearing masks while stubborn fools refuse to. Wildfires will still erupt, claiming lives and homes. The Olympics may return. Or maybe they won’t. And beloved celebrities will still die in 2021. Will that news carry the gut punch of Chadwick Boseman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Kobe Bryant? Depending on the person, you’re damn right it will.
But ...
As you go to bed on the night of Jan. 20, ask yourself a question: Is the orange fraud, the game-show con artist, the inept loser who appointed a few judges off a list that wasn’t his and lied about a tax cut for his rich friends and called it an historic success, while the world and the country fell apart around his incompetence, is he gone?
Well, no. Not as long as there are cable television networks and cameras.
But that guy — the one who openly mocked his own deadly failure to lead as a joke — won’t be the president. Not anymore.
And that is nothing to take your face mask off long enough to sneeze at.
Any year that ends with the ale toral Jollege ass-ki king Diden and carris handed Trump and what’s his fa e — why some might even
all 306-232 a ‘landslide’ — an’t re all rad.