Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, America. Not America’s Nero.

Kayle Kaupanger@notaphotographer

Ah, the distracted driver. The ones who crane their necks to see the latest metal crushing, life threatening disaster on the road. The ones who just can’t put down their cell phone. They are a menace, for sure. And those are the folks that concern this writer as our nation approaches a momentous decision in November.

Mr. Trump has a very simple understanding of the voter: keep them distracted and make sure they can’t see the forest from the trees. He is not alone. Mitch McConnell has realized that he can do much more politically if he hangs close to Trump’s crazy driving habits. Each day, week after week, month after month, there is another wreck on the highway.

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And we are induced by the media (social and network) to look at the next outrageous video or tweet. Meanwhile, the real disasters get pushed into the foggy memory banks of a public’s consciousness. Americans are so battered by the abnormal that people just want to hear…nothing. They long for peace, but that isn’t a part of the Trump Chaos Plan.

But my point is this: Mr. Trump does not want the American public to see any of these things.

Here is a very short list of what we have forgotten that this president has either demolished or made every attempt to mitigate. The Paris Climate Accords; The Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement; the Iran Nuclear Deal; the Air Space Agreements — these he has ripped up. But that’s just the beginning. NATO has been an organization he wishes to defund; as opposed to the World Health Organization, which he has simply cut off funding. These two organizations have keep the peace and curtailed disease for decades. Then there is the ACA — Obamacare. Trump can’t wait to toss those 20 million people to the wind.

Trump has disemboweled the justice system. Five Inspector Generals — out. Two FBI Directors — out. Two Attorney Generals — out. The Mueller Report — discredited as a ‘witch hunt’. The Emolument Clause — ignored. His taxes — sorry, he’ll not show them even though he said he would after ‘the audit.’ — Never happened. (And that’s the short list.)

But my point is this: Mr. Trump does not want the American public to see any of these things. Instead, he slithers around the internet and Fox ‘News’ with inflammatory remarks about murder and television hosts — “someone should look into that.” Last week it was that Dr. Fausi he “wants to play both sides.” (As if that matters as the deaths soar over 100,000.) Each week, there is another rant for the media to swallow, and the public gorges itself on all the foolish Clorox information that is only fit for a skit on SNL.

What is an American voter supposed to do?

Keep focused on the big picture: a planet on the brink of climate disaster; a Middle East at war with itself; trade deals that balance propriety with economic practicality; prepare a nation for diseases that will inevitably come; remember that the Russian government is not our friend and that Putin will do anything to shake the foundations of this democracy; make sure that justice is not tilted towards those who can pay millions to get their way; and above all, make sure that all Americans have the opportunity to cast their vote.

I am trying to keep Trump in a smaller box, sealed in a dumpster, heading to the waste disposal site, America’s Nero.

In November, America will either flicker its beacon of hope out to the world in the trembling hands of Joe Biden, or America will surely fall into despair to become one of those lighthouses that is condemned, rusting away with onlookers saying, ‘Oh, what a shame. It used to light our way and now we are lost in the darkness.” Mr. Biden has enormous responsibilities to reconstruct and renovate what one narcissist and his handlers have spent four years trying to obliterate. Mr. Biden best nominate a Vice President, capable in four years’ time of taking the helm.

That is the road we need to travel with eyes glued to the highway that leads to the Promised Land (with apologies to Bruce Springsteen).