Post-election mysteries

Kamala Harris in Reno, Nev., a few days before the election. (Photo by Brycia James)

Questions for America
 that I cannot answer

Four years ago, in the weeks leading up to Election Day, my wife Bonnie Schupp was deeply worried. "I don't want Trump to be the last president in my lifetime," she told me.

 Election night was tense, the result too close for comfort -- and the accelerant for Donald Trump's "Big Lie" alleging rigging.

 We had for weeks watched Bill Maher's HBO show, "Real Time," in which the comedian/social critic repeatedly warned that Trump would not leave office willingly. Then, like prophecy, came the January 6 insurrection -- a riot and invasion of the Capitol which Bonnie and I watched, transfixed and horrified. 

I assured her that the attack would not change the result, that Joe Biden would be inaugurated as scheduled two weeks hence. Days before the inauguration, Bonnie found out she had aggressive pancreatic cancer. 

We watched the inauguration together. Though she knew her own time remaining was limited, Bonnie was relieved for the future of others and the nation she loved that Biden was president. She died two months later. 

Four years down the road, it is my turn to worry. No, I'm not on the edge of death. But I'm anfew months older than Trump. His health status (both physical and mental) has always been a mystery couched in vague assurances, but I've had some challenges of late. Like a brush with mortality just two months ago. And I had hopes, as Bonnie did, that Trump would not be the last president in my lifetime.

 Now it seems he might be, assuming Trump has four years without an intervention of fate and I don't. And I fear for the future of the nation that I love, but now have a harder time understanding.

 I've read numerous stories and heard TV pundits in the election aftermath assessing reasons for the failed Kamala Harris campaign. 

The economy? She offered proposals to help families and vowed to take on companies for price-gouging. Trump blamed her for not fixing the economy during her four years as vice president. Not that she had the power to fix the inflation of higher consumer prices, mostly the result of initial shortages during the pandemic and the simply relationship of supply and demand.

 He harped on America as a failing nation, claimed only he could fix it, and tariffs were the answer -- despite the warnings of experts that tariffs amount to a tax on consumers through higher prices and would fuel a new inflationary spiral. All this nonsense when unemployment was at a record low, wages higher, interest rates finally dropping and the stock market at a record high. America is hardly failing economically.

 Illegal immigration as an invasion of criminals was a constant theme, and inevitably the few recent cases of undocumented aliens linked to murders -- including one if Maryland -- served Trump's purposes for political exploitation. And even when the House and Senate had reached a bipartisan agreement on legislation to deal with uncontrolled border crossings, Trump got his legislative sycophants to kill it. He needed the issue to remain as uncontrolled as the border. 

Trump as the problem-solver? How many times has he been asked for his promised plan to "fix healthcare" to replace the Affordable Care Act? In four years as president, there was none -- only a Republican attempt to scuttle the ACA that was foiled by the late Sen. John McCain.

 Or for many voters, was it simply the fact that Trump's opponent was a woman of color? They were just looking for excuses to vote for him? 

More than a dozen former key aides in his presidency urged Americans to vote for Harris, saying Trump was a danger to the nation. A fascist, even. Others in his administration or took part in schemes to subvert the Constitution were convicted of crimes, imprisoned, disbarred. But Trump himself, the crime boss, despite his New York state conviction on fraud charges, will not lose a day of his freedom and doubtless as president will scuttle all federal cases against him.

 How could more than half of the participating electorate vote for him? I cannot fathom it. President-elect yet again, four years after his defeat by Biden, despite his innumerable faults and failures as a human being and from 2017 to 2021 in office. What voters chose to ignore, forgive or forget is astonishing, but inevitably offers a clue to their psyche.

 I am left to ask how anyone who lost a family member to Covid could ignore, forgive or forget Trump's lies and ignorance in his public response to the pandemic and undermining of public health science. More than a million Americans died. He at one point voiced the idea of people injecting bleach as a cure, among other preposterous suggestions, as he undermined the work of experts studying the virus and their push for wide acceptance of the quickly-developed vaccines to help contain it.

 I am left to ask how any military veteran could ignore, forgive or forget President Trump deriding the courage and sacrifice of the nation's defenders. among other insults. "Suckers and losers," he said in minimizing visits to the American cemeteries in France where many lost in World War II are buried. Or his stated suggestion of using the nation's military to deal with Americans exercising their free speech right of protest. (All this from an obvious draft dodger in the Vietnam war era whose alleged bone spurs must have been miraculously cured.)

My neighbor's lawn

 I am left to ask how any police officer could ignore, forgive or forget President Trump inciting the crowd he summoned to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally and failing to intervene as a mob's ensuing attack on the Capitol injured 140 police officers and contributed to the deaths of several. Close to a thousand people eventually were convicted on criminal charges related to the attack. Trump has called them patriots and vowed to pardon the many who are now serving prison terms. (In my own neighborhood in Pasadena, Maryland, a police officer who brings home his county patrol car after work flies a Trump "no more bullshit" flag outside his house and has a line of lawn signs adjacent to his driveway declaring he was voting for law and order, and for "felon and hillbilly.")

 I am left to ask how any good union member could ignore, forgive or forget Trump's blatant contempt for organized labor (and forget, by comparison, the incumbent Democratic president joining auto workers on their picket line during their strike in battling for a fair contract).

 I am left to ask how so many American voters could ignore, forgive or forget the incessant lies of Trump, his obvious lack of empathy for anyone other than himself and his family, his personal greed, his theft from charity, his con-man frauds, his racism and xenophobia, his abuse of women, and his crimes -- indicted by grand juries in multiple states, convicted in New York, and proving through millions spent on lawyers to delay justice that laws and the Constitution at the bedrock of America for more than two centuries do not apply to all.

 And I am left to wonder how those voters will perceive the results of their choice four years hence. I might not last that long, but suspect they will find themselves paying the piper. To say nothing of the likely global damage that may never be undone.

On the Road Again... Part 6

The Fall of Saigon, as seen from Interstate 80 in Lexington, Nebraska. (Photo by Bonnie J. Schupp)

Heartland volunteers preserve history,

operating military vehicle museum

 LEXINGTON, Nebraska – The last helicopter out of Saigan catches you by surprise, the sight of a helicopter atop a platform where a figure with hand outstretched reaches for those fleeing in the last moments of the Vietnam war. And it’s in the middle of Nebraska, of all places.

Just off Interstate 80, about a quarter-mile east of the Lexington exit, the display is part of the collection of the Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles. There’s about two dozen military vehicles and pieces of equipment baking in the sun, and rusting, outside a warehouse-size building filled with the stuff of military history dating to the first world war.

Helicopters, jeeps, ambulances, trucks, armored personnel carriers -- the hardware of war – fills nearly all the floor space. There’s even a large Korean War-style MASH tent --  Mobile Army Surgical Hospital – depicting the setting of the legendary television program M*A*S*H* that put the acronym into the mainstream vocabulary. A posted menu offers some tongue-in-cheek dishes.

Our guide through the museum is one of the volunteers, Gary Gifford, himself an Army veteran of Vietnam. He points out the most unusual pieces, like a restored troop truck built shortly after World War I, and a helicopter still in flying condition. Many of the pieces could run, and some have participated in parades, he noted.

He led us to the backside of a combat tank, where visitors can clamber inside, take a seat and imagine how hot soldiers must have been when riding in one. It’s not like chilling in an air-conditioned car set on cruise control. It is among several pieces in which visitors can sit or climb around. Another is a former Huey gunship helicopter.

There is an open area in the building where local Veterans of Foreign Wars meetings take place, and a large display of tri-folded American flags – presentation flags from the funerals of veterans, customarily handed to the next of kin. The flags had formerly been housed in a veterans club that closed, and they were moved to the museum. Each of the stacked, triangular wooden cases has a name tag. They are the real centerpiece here.

Admission is free, but donations are welcome – along with grants, they are a major source of funding for the museum.

Roadside attractions continue

Interstates will get you there fast, but most often it’s the blue highways that bring the best smiles.

Getting off I-80 in favor of the two-lane asphalt ribbon of State Route 30, we rolled into the town of Gothenburg – home to a surviving station of the storied Pony Express. The station was moved to the site, now part of a pleasant town park, in 1931 from its original location along the National Historic Trail route of the daring, perhaps foolhardy,  riders.

It was a business that lasted only about 18 months, providing a means of communication between Missouri and California through a relay of mail delivery riders -- an early example of how quickly technology can render a business obsolete. In this case, it was the telegraph.

  

But the little museum/souvenir shop operating inside the restored station, and a silhouette rider a few steps from the building, help keep the romance of the Pony Express alive. It also sells lots of books – and (hint, hint) could use some more copies of our friend Chris Corbett’s book, “Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express.” It was sold out.

  

As we continued westward on Highway 30, enjoying the sight of millions of black-eyed susans (also called wild sunflowers out here), the blaring horns of trains hauling mega-tons of coal eastward, passing an occasional abandoned homestead fallen into ruin, we came upon a large stuffed animal gorilla and dog sitting side by side on a bench, mounted atop a pair of old utility poles in the rural community of Paxton.

The sight was worth stopping and turning around, to admire the whimsy and wonder at the why. I steered onto a dirt lane and drove between fields of tall corn in search of the folks who lived there. But no one seemed to be home when I rang the bell – only a curious pooch that popped through a little doggy door onto a side porch, with nary a bark.

The roadside mailbox bore the names of the folks who live there, Randy and Cher, and if I manage to contact them I’ll update this yarn with their explanation. In any event, thanks for the laugh!