By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What the hell is happening to this country?

The latest victims of hatred now belong to a group of people of Asian descent. We are witnessing a hideous outgrowth of our national fight against a killer virus.

The coronavirus had its beginning in China, or so we have been told. It spread around the world. It entered the United States either in late 2019 or early 2020.

To worsen it, we heard our nation’s president refer continually to the disease as the “China virus,” or making mocking references to something he would call the “kung flu.”

Have we heard anything from the now former president urging Americans to stop the attacks on Asian-Americans? Has Donald Trump raised a single objection to what is happening throughout the nation he once led as its president? No! He has said nothing.

Individuals are being captured, jailed and prosecuted for hate crimes against Asian-Americans. And why? Because they are being vilified only because a virus took root in a foreign land.

President Biden has condemned the hate crime wave. However, the hate crime perps aren’t listening to the current president; they cling to the rhetoric from the man he defeated in 2020. The MAGA mob needs to hear this condemnation from Donald Trump. Tragically, Trump doesn’t appear wired to say what he must to those who are attacking elderly people, inflicting physical harm or bullying individuals over social media.

This terrible spike in hate crimes against Asian-Americans is no way to “make America great again.”