When Air Force One lifted off from Joint Base Andrews yesterday with Trump and his family for the final time, I did breathe a sigh of relief. However, truth be told, I was not 100 percent relaxed until President Biden and Vice President Harris were officially sworn in and Trump no longer had his hands on the levers of government. I watched the inauguration festivities and I kept having a feeling like, “America is back.” I think that was encapsulated beautifully by the poet, Amanda Gorman, who did such an eloquent job.
I am encouraged by the flurry of executive orders immediately issued by Biden to undo many of the policies put in place by the Trump administration. In addition, it certainly appears that the new administration will take this coronavirus pandemic seriously and essentially put the country on somewhat of a war time footing to get it under control – finally! And while I am hopeful for the nation, I am concerned about the direction things are heading here in Montana under the new Republican regime that is in control of the state at all levels. The nation appears to be poised to move ahead while Montana appears poised to move backwards into an anti-science, anti-data, ‘we know best what you should believe and how you should live your lives’ mentality. Based upon something I read in the paper yesterday, I wrote the following letter to the editor. I have no idea if it will be published.
“Our new Republican governor, senator, representative and legislature have barely been in office three weeks now and already seem hell bent on doing things and passing legislation that smacks of hypocrisy. Senator Daines and Representative Rosendale decided to join in an effort to propagate a lie about the election and overturn the certified Electoral vote counts in other states. The legislature decided that allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to carry a concealed weapon almost everywhere, including on college campuses is a good thing for Montana. Hikers are advised to carry bear spray since it is more effective than handguns against predators but the legislature has decided that arming college girls is the safest form of self-defense. Governor Gianforte, in the midst of a pandemic, repealed restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus and has stated that he will repeal the state-wide mask mandate. He argues that he prefers personal responsibility to government-imposed restrictions. If Montanans were really responsible, we wouldn’t have one of the highest drunk driving rates in the country. And now, after all of this talk about ‘Montana values’, ‘states rights’, ‘government overreach’, and ‘personal responsibility’, the legislature is reviewing legislation to restrict access to abortions. So, my question is this, “If you are so damned concerned with ‘government overreach’ and want to promote ‘personal responsibility’, why do you think you have the right to stick your government noses into a personal decision that should be the solely between a woman, her partner and the doctor?” A woman is responsible enough to decide to carry a gun, to go to a crowded bar in the midst of a pandemic but she is not responsible enough to make decisions about her own reproductive health? Your words are hollow and ring loudly with hypocrisy. “
I find that I am somewhat addicted to writing in these posts either in the evening or early in the morning but, as I said yesterday, I am trying to figure out what direction this blog will head as we leave the Trump era behind (with the exception of the upcoming impeachment trial). I have, in fact, signed up for two bike adventures this summer although I am going to pull the plug on one of them due to the coronavirus and the fact that I’m still not comfortable traveling overseas. The overseas trip was a bicycle excursion from Paris to Istanbul which sounds fabulous but, like I said, I’m just not comfortable that the world will be ‘COVID safe’ by the time I would have to leave. The other ride is a little closer to home and significantly shorter. It is a 10-day ride that starts in Whitefish, MT, circles up through Canada and culminates with a ride up Going to the Sun highway. (That will be a challenge to pedal my butt on my semi-loaded touring bike up that hill!!) We’ll see. Hopefully it will all come to fruition and I can write about another bike ride.
In the meantime, I suspect these posts will be somewhat eclectic in nature as I try to find a new direction but, life is an adventure, so we’ll see where it goes. Stay safe out there.
A friend of mine wrote this and it explains it well on how the news media has degraded to become a great danger to our democracy. “Now we know the costs of rescinding the Fairness Doctrine for media. Fox News has proven that it is profitable to lie to the public because a sizable portion of the public will believe the lies and become ardent viewers of the network. These ardent viewers can then be capitalized as the network sells air time to advertisers. The network miseducates its viewers and spins an alternate reality which politicians can capitalize on in their quest to get votes and get elected. The miseducated Americans develop false beliefs that that they are willing to protect, even to the point of murder and sedition. As long as we allow news to be tailored to be a commodity, and not actually truth, we will be vulnerable to another insurrection just like this coup attempt by Trump. The mechanism will be left in place for Trump, or another malignant narcissist, to use in the future.”