Judge Robert Rosenberg of the Broward County Canvassing Board uses a magnifying glass to examine a dimpled chad on a punch card ballot on November 24, 2000 during a vote recount in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

CAMP DAVID, Md. — Just before the results from Pennsylvania were updated Friday morning, I was sipping coffee in the Maryland campground getting ready to head back into the city and found myself in a bit of a flashback to the year 2000.

When the election between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush got bogged down by hanging chads in Florida, I was watching closely and covering the story from New Orleans.

At that time I had just moved in August to Louisiana from Knoxville, Tennessee. After working on a Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee for four years, Loyola University hired me in a full-time, tenure track position to teach journalism and communications. By October, I was also hired by The Dallas Morning News to free-lance as a reporter covering Louisiana.

As a liberal journalist and professor, of course I voted for Al Gore, and was quite horrified when the United States Supreme Court prematurely ended the recounts in Florida and declared Bush the winner.

I figured things were not going to go well after that, which turned out to be right.

By September 11, 2001, we suffered the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, then ended up in a war in Iraq based on bad intel.

By 2007, the country was already in a major recession, which was only officially announced when all the numbers came in early in 2008.

Once again, the false idea that deregulation of big business, called “Voodoo economics” back in the Reagan era, would lead to a booming economy proved horribly wrong.

It took the election of the first African American president in history in 2008 and two mega-trillion-dollar government bank bailouts to begin pulling us out of that economic collapse, when the credit markets were nearly frozen. We were only days away from bank failures, when ATM machines would not have worked and the entire world could have ended up in a financial collapse of epic proportions. I still don’t think most people realize how close we came to economic Armageddon.

After eight years of running a merit system and saving American industries like General Motors — not with a bailout or a handout but with a government loan program one that was paid back with interest after the auto industry rebounded and came back from bankruptcy — the country was in pretty good shape by 2016. Yes the poor and middle class still struggled.

Then along came Trump, taking us back to the era of Voodoo economics, rolling back environmental regulations and turning big business loose to keep destroying the planet and ripping off workers again.

By the time the coronavirus pandemic hit full force in March, the Trump administration and the federal government were not equipped to deal with it — and the economy collapsed again.

When will we learn the lessons of history?

The myth that putting Republicans in charge of government is better for the economy is clearly false. Not that Democrats are perfect. Far from it. But at least they try to run the government and make the economy and democracy work.

There is no way you can put chaos monkeys, ratfuckers and anarchists who disparage the very idea of government in charge of the federal or state governments and expect democracy to work.

Wake the fuck up, people, and by that I mean you goddamned uneducated white redneck workers and farmers who would follow this reality TV star, failed businessman, authoritarian dictator, king and divine emperor wannabe off an end of the world cliff — and take the rest of us down with you.

The top issues we face in this country and in this world are not federal policy on abortion or your unlimited rights to possess every kind of gun known to man. The problem is not who individuals marry, no matter their sexual orientation. These things are not a threat to you or your way of life.

No one is going to take away your guns, either, unless you actually use them to shoot and kill or hurt someone else. You will lose your rights then, by damn, and end up in prison where you can face those gangs you fear so much on a daily basis in the mess hall.

Nobody is going to take your property rights away either, unless you have a farm that fails due to Trump’s ill-conceived trade wars that puts your livelyhoods — and our food supply — at risk.

None of the federal workers who live in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. are a challenge to your way of life, either, unless you elect another idiot like Trump who fires them all so there’s no government left to manage the economy, the environment or the health care system.

The coronavirus will not be our last health pandemic. As we speak and count the votes, other viruses are bubbling up from the animal and human waste cesspools of the world, and not just in China. The giant hog and chicken farms in places like North Carolina and Arkansas could launch the next pandemic, especially if we elect anti-government Republicans who refuse to regulate them.

We have big problems and issues to deal with in this country and this world, and we need serious, qualified people to deal with them.

If you have a job, any job, please go do it. If not, you might want to vote for and support candidates who might have a chance to provide you with one. And don’t forget your face mask and hand sanitizer.

If you want to die, and believe you are going to heaven, try aiming that gun at yourself and let the rest of us try to keep on living and working and making this country and the world a better place.