Mariella Gattini

Republicans who do not want to be associated with Trump any longer are endorsing Biden for the upcoming election this November 2020. It looks promising. As if they finally realized everything that is wrong with their party. Unfortunately, it’s an illusion that we should not harbor, not in the least. These are the same republicans that supported the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Out of sight, out of mind, right? These are the same short-sighted republicans who don’t give a damn about the people in dire straits right now. They care about one thing only—the optics affecting their party.

As long as they keep being associated with the kids in cages separated from their families at the border, the downplaying of the pandemic that has cost the lives of over 180,000^* Americans so far, the police brutality instigated by Trump against pacific protesters around the country, the lack of principles and intelligence that his administration is displaying, and the impunity with which its members are behaving, the greater the damage to their party in the long term.

Mitch McConnell, the majority republican leader in the Senate, said publicly that he had to ask his donors (not his constituency) if the decisions he was making were the ones they would support. He said it months ago to a group of journalists. Imagine the nerve to say that in public. He didn’t even see the need to hide his commitment to his donors—the people who put him there to protect their special interest, which is not even the interest of the republican voters.

So the problem with this administration’s lack of morals, education, and dexterity goes beyond Trump and his maladroitness. It goes to the core of the republican essence.

They attract the attention and support of the one-issue voters such as that of Evangelicals, who do not care how many people die or remain amputated (mentally, physically, or both) in wars elsewhere, as long as the government keeps a leash on women’s reproductive system here in the country to make sure they know their place in society.

Republicans supporting Biden are people like Meg Whitman, a senior member of republican Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, but, at the same time, it’s vox populi she fundraised for the Republican Party among Hewlett-Packard employees during her period as CEO of that company. In 2013, Bloomberg L.P. named Whitman “Most Underachieving CEO,” nevertheless, she was very efficient in extracting money from HP employees for the Republican Party, and we can easily infer that she evaluated them accordingly.

Look, the majority identifies with the heroes they see in movies because they are good and strong enough to fight evil, right? Not Republicans. Republicans, the Trumps, and Trumps-alike individuals want to be the hero’s nemesis, believe it or not. While most of the world is concentrating on what the hero is doing, the right-wingers are focusing on the hero’s nemesis as their role model. Their behavior is so alike, so stereotypical, that it is pathetic.

Republicans publicly backing Biden only want to save face. I’m sure that in private their votes are going to Trump anyway. Because he represents them very well. The only difference is that all that he is it’s out in the open, or as Sarah Kendzior would put it, “Hiding in Plain Sight.” It is what it is. He especially represents his base very well. Look at him republicans, because that’s the way you look, exactly like him, surrounded by women for hire. In all his misogyny, racism, and disrespect for the underprivileged. And it’s ugly. It’s not a pretty picture.

It’s not that the non-republicans are leftists. What happens is that republicans are such extreme-right creatures that they have to look to their left to be able to see the rest of the world. Everybody else lives in that world, a world of innovation, one republicans are bound to destroy, because they don’t know better.

Republicans are conservatives and protectors of the status quo because it’s the only thing they know—they conserve. They are people like the Bushes: George Senior & Junior, like the Koch brothers, and like the Trumps. They didn’t create their fortunes; their ancestors did. They only know how to spend money; not how to make it. They don’t even work, they hire and fire people to do so—conserve; not create, and they do it by annihilating the competition. They have enough money to shape the reality of the wanna-be-them, and to constantly cancel from view anything that’s uncomfortable in their very narrow, little world—it’s lonely at the top, they say. Awwww!

Do I hate them? No, they don’t inspire me enough to hate them. But I don’t have to respect them, because respect is earned; not imposed. Respect is earned with hard work, hand in hand with those around you, with empathy, with new ideas and inventions that make your business, your life, and the life of those around you, grow.

You see, when I was a little girl and I watched a movie, I wanted to be on the side of the light; not on the side of the joker. I’ve never respected the joker of the story. I wanted to become a writer because I wanted to put on paper those heroes I knew existed—I saw them in my everyday life, and I wanted them to be immortal.

As a grown up, I know that immortality is not possible, but I also know that as long as I live, those heroes will have a place in my mind and in the minds of all those prepared to listen to my stories. Because life is short, and time does not care if you are a somebody or a nobody. At some point, we all wither until we disappear, so we can’t take our riches with us. Remember—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That’s all we are.

UPDATE (March 23, 2021): The lives lost due to the coronavirus pandemic reached the 500,000^* in the month of February of 2021 in the United States. And we are still counting the dead.

UPDATE (January 3, 2023): According to the World Health Organization website, from January 3rd, 2020 to January 3rd, 2023 the U.S. has had 99,423,758 COVID confirmed cases, and 1,082,265 people have died because of it. As of December 16th, 2022, 652,464,668 vaccine doses have been administered in the country.