You still think that the 2016 election was about economic anxiety?

Back in May 2016--six months before the fateful election that upended liberal democracy here in the US and throughout the world--I wrote about an important milestone that will come up in 2019: "we will mark a very dark anniversary--four hundred years since the first Africans were sold as slaves in Virginia."

I ended that post on this note: "I shudder thinking that it could be President Donald Trump addressing the nation in 2019, marking the tragic anniversary!"

The two commenters, who later revealed themselves to be supporters of the strongman in their respective countries, couldn't care about the worries that I expressed there regarding bigotry and racism.  In response, I added:

The one president who could have compelled us to engage in a deeper and nuanced understanding of race issues pretty much chose not to for all the political reasons. Yep, I am referring to Obama. As much as his election to the presidency was one heck of an achievement for this country that was built on the backs of slaves, I have worried that this also fueled a complacency that we are now past the race issues ... which is also why I am not that surprised that racism and hatred of all kind have been exposed during this campaign season--it was always there, hidden in plain sight :(

Honestly, as much as I worried like hell that things would get awful under tRump as the President, I never imagined it getting this worse.  The current situation is wildly beyond my wildest worries!

Here we are in the summer of 2019 when tRump has made it clear that he intends to win again by explicitly campaigning as a white supremacist.

[Look] at how Trump speaks and acts, and there’s no question he’s working with the spirit of the Dixie demagogues as he re-enacts and recapitulates the worst of our nation’s history. He’s drawing on their awful contributions to American life, to restore something of the country as it once was.

As Speaker Nancy Pelosi remarked tRump is on a path to Make America White Again.

Where do we go from here?

I suppose at this time, we can only rant as we wait for November 2020:

Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.