{"id":42902,"date":"2020-05-27T01:30:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T01:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42902"},"modified":"2020-05-27T01:30:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T01:30:36","slug":"oh-the-dilemma-is-maddening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42902","title":{"rendered":"Oh, the dilemma is maddening"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=MAGA%20%23pandemic%20%23coronavirus%20%23COVID19%20%23POTUS&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/don.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-42903\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/don-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/don-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/don-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/don-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/don.jpg 1422w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I am faced at this moment with the most vexing political dilemma I have encountered since I first became eligible to vote.<\/p>\n<p>That was in 1972. I had just returned from active duty in the Army. The 26th amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1971. I got to vote! Cool!<\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s 48 years later and I am trying to stare down this dilemma. It goes like this:<\/p>\n<p>I am torn between wanting the economy and the nation&#8217;s health to recover from the global pandemic that is going to kill thousands more Americans while also wanting to <em>remove Donald John Trump from the office of president of the United States.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The dilemma forms because Donald Trump would find a way to take credit for the nation recovering from the pandemic when, in my view, he has done <em>damn near nothing<\/em> to bring about a welcome conclusion to the crisis.<\/p>\n<p>The economy might start to rebound later this year. Or it might continue to crater. Americans might no longer be stricken with the viral infection called COVID-19, or we might continue to get sick and die at a shocking and tragic rate.<\/p>\n<p>Do I want the worst to occur? <em>Of course not!<\/em> I want there to be a full return to economic vitality and I certainly want an end to the misery, the grief and the tragic loss of life we are enduring at this moment.<\/p>\n<p>However, a return to economic and physical vitality is likely going to produce a blizzard of self-aggrandizing and misleading (at the very least) pronouncements from the Nimrod in Chief about how &#8220;none of this could have occurred without me as your president.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the strangest aspect of it all is that millions of Americans are going to guzzle the swill that this con man would deliver.<\/p>\n<p>Would a happy ending produce a Donald Trump re-election? I shudder at the thought. In my humble view, this individual &#8212; through his initial dawdling and dismissiveness about the pandemic &#8212; is responsible for more of the misery than he ever will acknowledge.<\/p>\n<p>He deserves to be booted out of office.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=MAGA%20%23pandemic%20%23coronavirus%20%23COVID19%20%23POTUS&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am faced at this moment with the most vexing political dilemma I have encountered since I first became eligible to vote. That was in 1972. I had just returned from active duty in the Army. The 26th amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1971. I got to vote! Cool! Now it&#8217;s 48 years &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42902\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Oh, the dilemma is maddening<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[9236,9261,5044],"class_list":["post-42902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-pandemic","tag-us-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42904,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42902\/revisions\/42904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}