Short Memories Are the Greatest Threat to the American Republic | Opinion

If you’re still undecided on the presidential election, you’re not alone: ​​up to 13 percent of voters may be in the same boat. according to to Change Research – have doubts, or look at a third party, or are simply not sold yet.

Try this short exercise to loosen up. These are three simple steps that can make things a lot clearer.

First, consider what things looked like at the end of 2010. It’s hard because it was six or seven years ago and there was a pandemic, but think back for a moment. Donald Trump been chairman. He came from a company that looked flashy and successful, but that’s mostly what it turned out to be made up by Hollywood and based on a lot fraud. Many of his key political allies were actually sketchy con artists who eventually went to him prison. Trump eventually filled his administration with it unqualified con artists who didn’t know how to run things, like him.

The results were brutal week after week unrest That caused many functions of the U.S. government that Americans rely on to fall apart. In just one example: Trump delayed needed urgent aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, partly because he pushed for the longest government to block ever. And that was just one of his three shutdowns.

During Trump’s term in office, a lot started to go off the rails. Crime was peakingincluding the largest single-year increase in homicides ever. Jobs came outsourced abroad even faster than during Obama’s presidency. Costs rose as a result of Trump’s trade war with China. The national debt was exploding. And everything people hate about politics went on steroids: after Trump abused his power, working on anything productive from Washington ground come to a standstill. Trump is known to have a glass jaw and thin skin, so he attacks everyone. He spent most of his term in office in anger tweet instead of achieving anything for the people who elected him. That’s why historians rank him the worst president ever and the Americans gave him one of the lowest approval ratings ever.

Second, move on from what you went through four years ago. It was the end of Trump’s term in office. Covid was raging. The number of American deaths has already reached almost 200,000. Eleven million were without work. Crushing stress for parents trying to manage their children’s ‘remote school’. Couldn’t get toilet paper. Difficult to do shopping. It was awkward and uncomfortable when you masked up and distanced yourself, but a little anxious when you were in a place that didn’t do those things (who was coughing on you anyway?). The grind of Zoom. The claustrophobia of being alone. The boredom of exhausting your binge-watch list. And what about dating? The gym? Your immunocompromised grandmother?

Try to remember why things got so bad. Trump actually does known how big the threat was that Covid posed. But him ignored to be named lied about it. He had already done that dismantled the government apparatus for combating pandemics, and then him thrown away the game plan for combating emerging diseases. So we missed the window to limit the damage. Smart, coherent public health strategies were once our best and only remaining weapon against the pandemic confused, undermined, politicizedand downright stopped all measures that can help. His own chief Covid coordinator said that Trump single-handedly caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans (he certainly caused many more to do so). die in Republican areas). His incompetence and destructive decisions made the economic and social pain of the pandemic much worse.

Quickly take one last step forward. Remind yourself of what happened in our economy as the pandemic rose and fell (you can read this for yourself in Congress). testimony by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics). Covid forced stores, schools, restaurants and factories to close, people to stop driving and products to stop shipping. So the demand for everything dropped.

Once Joe Biden became president, he executed the most successful America vaccination program in history. This allowed us to get everything running at full speed again (under Biden, for example, we went from less than half of the schools open to almost all of them). So the question came roaring back. But the supply of most of our goods and services was severely disrupted. Due to more demand and less supply, prices started to rise. Then the Russian invasion of Ukraine limited energy supplies and prices skyrocketed further.

So, what can we take away from this mental refresher? The biggest point – and if you only remember one thing, please remember this – is that Donald Trump had more to do with causing high costs than anyone else: the reason prices rose so much is because of Covid, and the economic consequences of Covid. were much more serious because of Trump.

Trump is trying to shift the blame. He argues that it was all government spending under Biden that exacerbated inflation. That’s BS. Trump actually spent way more than Biden, both on Covid and in general. And if it was Biden’s spending here in the United States, why did inflation rise everywhere? world? And why did the US do that? better than any other advanced economy in reducing inflation? And while we’re at it, why is Trump now pushing for a plan that would increase inflation? skyrocket again? Trump is an arsonist trying to blame the fire department.

There’s a lot of that stuff with Trump, a lot of hope that we’ll forget crucial things. Take an issue that has voters undecided participation makes them doubt the vice president Kamala Harris: Concerns about the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war. Remember, Trump was one of Israel’s prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu‘s best friends and gave him everything he wanted, which is partly why former Trump officials to believe that “compared to the Biden administration, a second Trump administration would likely be more tolerant of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and less inclined to exert American influence in shaping Israeli behavior.” Trump hopes we will forget that.

If you are in doubt, no one should tell you how to vote. But before you do that, you should first try to remember accurately what happened before. And based on that, think about what is likely to happen in the future.