Tag: Op-Ed

The World That Was

Posted on by Mike McLaren

Think for just a moment… or for even a moment after that first moment. What happened in 2020? Two things made news: the COVID-19 pandemic, and Trump with his Republican Party cohorts. That’s all that made the news. But think; what else?

So much more happened which we can barely fathom, but which never made front page. We heard about a few other things, but not being boisterously apparent like Trump, or as deadly as COVID we probably passed aside those other things that made only the back pages of the newspapers.

The press reported the total number of deaths effected by the virus, but did not publish the names of the 300,000 people who, with their deaths, left at least double that many people grieving and wondering how they would manage to fend for themselves in a world gone haywire. How many of those people were mothers or fathers to multiple children, were aunts or uncles to a multitude more. The unknown number of affected people tears at the heart.

That is news.

In your lifetime, certainly not in what remains of my lifetime, Oregon, Washington, California, Colorado will never display the beauty of their once magnificent forests. The parts of each of those states that we most enjoyed are gone: beautiful lakes stripped clean of the trees which once stood watch among their shores are gone, trees which, if sturdy enough, stand only as charred sticks in the brittle ground that may wash away in the floods which will come with the spring thaws.

How many notable deaths――scientists, musicians, literates, conservationists, proponents of human equality? The list seems longer than those of the previous five years:

• Mario Molina―received the Nobel Prize for his work on the effect of CFCs on the Earth’s ozone.
• Julian Bream―master of the classic guitar.
• Eva Szekley―survived the Holocaust to win the gold medal in the 200-meter breaststroke in the 1952 Olympics.
• Arthur Ashkin―invented the “Tractor Beam.”
• Debra White Plumne―defender of the Oglala Lakota Tribe.
• Barry Lopez―naturalist and conservationist writer…
… and the list goes on: Bill Withers, Terry Gilliam, David N. Dinkins, Priscilla Jane, George Bizos, Charlie Pride… .

How many of us know these names? How many of us understand the significance of these names. They were reported, but only as an afterthought of political spewing and the virus that hacks at the guts of the American Dream――chops away the dreams of so many people on this planet.

But what is it that holds us all together, as one people, stuck on a rock circling a star that glimmers in a universe so infinite that time does not know we exist, never needed a reason to care that we inhabit a mote that has never made the news?

My hope is that the “lock-downs” of COVID have given us enough time for introspection, a study of humanity that reveals each of us is a part of larger whole that seeks to survive amidst the turmoil we inflict upon ourselves.

Personal Accountability

Posted on by Mike McLaren

Trump is whole-handedly responsible for the insurrection January 6, 2021. He is also responsible for the five deaths that occured during the incursion. With his particular phrasing, the worst POTUS in American history purposefully incited violence and “wild action,” and kindled that violence over the course of months. Just as troublesome is that Trump could not have incited anything had he no followers. Thousands of people stormed the United States Capitol and took control of it for several hours. Would they have amassed in what many of them called “revolution” without someone giving them cause, on a specific date, at a specific place, for a very specific reason vocalized by Trump since his failed re-election in November?

Probably not, especially after knowing how the police handled the riots in Portland, Oregon (tear gas, baton beatings and rubber bullets in the eyes).

The ruction at the U.S. Capitol, however, was brewed over the entirety of Trump’s four-year term, his bombastic lies empowered by a political party that refused to uphold its duty to defend truth and the U.S. Constitution throughout his tenure.

The showdown January 6 was bound to happen, because the Republican Congress pushed it that direction. Had our Republican senators and House representatives not willingly acquiesced Trump’s ineptitude in the highest position in the United States, had they not aided him in perpetuating obvious and dangerous lies, and had they stepped up to the plate like Vice President Mike Pence to act contrary to the wishes of their “savior”――to uphold the United States Constitution and American Rule-of-Law――Trump’s ability to “enlist” thousands of people to his personal cause could not have happened.

Trump did lie throughout his calamitous term in the White House; his false claims were exposed day-after-day by reported fact-checks across the country. Statements he made claiming the 2020 election was rigged were determined by more than a handful of U.S. justices to “have no basis in fact and law.”

Still, people followed him, and continue to follow him.

Trump led the charge to “Make America Great Again” during his presidential campaign in 2016. It is ironic that upon his exit Russia laughs and points fingers at us, claims we are now an example of how democracy crumbles. Iran now calls us “fragile and vulnerable.” China touts itself as more safe than the United States. So many other countries have expressed pity for our plight.

Such statements and sentiments are not how other countries refer to “great” countries.

The United States has fallen from its high global perch because so many people allowed themselves to believe Trump’s lies, and too many still perpetuate his latest last-ditch fabrication.

Unfortunately, even after life-threatening sedition at the Capitol, one hundred fourty-seven congressmen still upheld Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, though the United States Supreme court decreed this was not true.

In Colorado, all nine of its congressmen admonished the January 6 attack on the Capitol, yet two of the State’s House Representatives――Rep. Doug Lamborn and Rep. Lauren Boebert――voted to sustain Trump’s assertion of voter fraud and electoral miscounting. Such equivocalness makes no sense; a person cannot condemn that which she or he helped perpetuate.

But that is the state of my country: divided by too many in positions of authority who persist without factual foundation to ignore truth, justice, and the American way.