What's past is prologue

Good morning, all.  Hope you're having a good weekend!

The phrase I used as the title of today's post is one I borrowed from Shakespeare, and I think in many ways it's appropriate just now.

The other phrase I kept thinking of as I began this post is "those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."

Either one describes where we are.

In 2016 a first-time political candidate was elected President of this country and things have not been the same since.  People who could have cared less about politics or elections suddenly were motivated to participate in the process and mobilized, thus assuring this candidate's victory.  Totally unexpected and unbelievable.

The same candidate lost his bid for reelection four years later, losing to a former two-term Vice-President, as an equally large swell of voters, buoyed by a large swath of female and minority voters, voted in large numbers and the previous President was defeated.  But not before be attempted a coup to cling to power.

And then in 2024 the sitting President was pressured to leave the race due to perceived health and congnition issues.  His Vice-President ran what appeared a good campaign, but the previous President was reelected, not by a landslide, but a decent margin in which he swept most every swing state in the country.  And so the 45th President became the 47th President.

Since that time, which seems like just yesterday in some ways but eons in others, our country has experienced the same kind of neck-snapping chaos and upheaval that the President's first term featured.

But now things have progressed to where "government" agents are being deployed to areas the President designates as crime-ridden "hellholes."  Crime statistics show clearly that the murder rate, for example, is far higher per capital in many cities in "red" states than in the cities in "blue" states that are being targeted.  And what's worse, National Guard members, who volunteer their services to this country as needed, are being ultimately used for nonsense like trash collection and landscape maintenance that someone has deemed necessary.

Our military has attacked other countries and just last week destroyed a boat that it was claimed was a drug-smuggling vessel with 11 people aboard in the Caribbean.  We randomly assign tariffs on goods coming from foreign countries, with the percentage charged based on how our President feels about a given nation at that moment.  

During the last campaign he said to his supporters "I am your retribution."  But I'd bet all the money in my bank account that his supporters never suspected that part of that retribution would be to eventually do away with most Medicaid and other support programs for low income persons, who make up a large percentage of the votes who elected him.  We're not seeing the self-aggrandizing rallies and other events as much, now that this President is apparently experiencing some health issues that keep him pretty close to the White House these days, but events are still being created regularly to flex his political muscles regularly.

The greatest comfort I take in what's happening right this minutes is that once again the courts are invalidating many of the policies that the administration has attempted to enact.  And governors and mayors in blue states and cities are pushing back, most forcefully by Gavin Newsom of California and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.  

I think the time is coming when our President's many supporters will see what's happening, one way or another, and decide that this was all a lot of fun but isn't fun anymore.  That may not be tomorrow, but I think that time will indeed come, but we can only hope that it comes in time to undo so much of the damage we've experienced in this country.