Frank Lingo

Rescue and Recovery

First responders in disasters use the term rescue when they save people’s lives and recovery for those who didn’t survive.

This has been a four-year disaster for the United States. After the Trump tornado passes, the relief for our side is palpable. But as the smoke clears and President-elect Biden takes power (hopefully peacefully), we see the damage to our country is on a scale similar to Ground Zero in New York after 9/11.

First, of course, are the approximately quarter-million deaths from the Coronavirus. Our DAILY fatalities equal the TOTAL fatalities in China since the pandemic began. The difference is pure and simple: Intelligent and disciplined leadership.

Trump’s denial of the virus’ severity is contagious and half of our country has caught this syndrome of stupidity. It was excruciating to watch Trump stand in front of experts from the Centers for Disease Control and spout disinformation that endangered our entire population. The Oaf of Office didn’t invent our stupidity but he has grown it into Kudzu vines on the American psyche.

There is no recovery for all those virus victims but we can rescue our respect for human life and our will to protect it. That is one big way of being pro-life. And we can rescue many possible patients from a fatal fate by providing adequate protective equipment to hospitals, a promise frequently unfulfilled by the outgoing administration.

To focus on the financial, we should be able to rescue the tens of millions of people who have been punched in the pocketbook by Trump’s neglect. Joe Biden has experience with this. He and President Obama took over in 2009 amid a financial disaster, and they guided America into a vibrant recovery.

On the environment’s experience, Trump hasn’t just been neglectful, he has purposely eviscerated the important laws that were passed with bi-partisan backing decades ago. Some of the wreckage he wreaked might not be rescued, some can be set aright, but it leaves a tremendous task for the next heads of the EPA and Interior Department.

How do we restore faith in our Department of Justice after Attorney General Barr used his power to be Trump’s personal fixer, like a gangster’s lawyer? It was an appalling abuse that apparently went on throughout the Trump Administration with few pangs of conscience.

The FBI has been besmirched, too, of course, with Trump and his enablers ludicrously calling for “investigating the investigators.” That’s a pity because in the last few decades the Bureau had finally earned the respect of the country after its first 48 years were rife with prejudice and skullduggery under the dictatorial J. Edgar Hoover’s iron fist. (But J. did have his soft side — he had some lovely evening gowns.)

Regarding the rescue of refugees, there were thousands of babies and small children who were ripped from their parents’ arms and shipped far away with no record of the family names. Trump deliberately inflicted this irreparable trauma as punishment for asylum seekers. It’s a crime against humanity. Some effort has been made to re-unite them but at last count over 500 kids were still lost to their parents.

Lastly, Trump has attacked our American accord with an avalanche of lies against the press and anyone who opposes him. It’s not only laws that hold our union together. It’s an agreement of Americans to value country over cult, and even when we disagree, to transfer power peaceably.

Trump is a traitor who has sold out the lives of American troops to his puppeteer, Putin. He has trashed every tradition, every institution in his path to preserve his position. We have had corrupt presidents before, but no one on a scale of Trump to undermine faith in our federation — and in each other. It remains to be seen whether this is a case of rescue or recovery.

Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is a former columnist for the Kansas City Star and author of the novel “Earth Vote”. Get a free excerpt at EarthVote.world. Email: lingofrank@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2020

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