The Witness Chronicles, 10/21/24
Revisionist history and a fall memory
Burning Leaves
Times always change, no matter what politicians tell us
When I was a kid it was a fall ritual on a mild and dry Saturday to rake the crisp leaves into piles on the side of the road and set them on fire. Dads would stand by with rakes tending the smoky fires as us kids would bring armfuls of leaves from the corners of the yards. The air would be thick with smoke, the smell of fall to generations.
Yesterday, while visiting my elderly mother on just such a fall day, I walked down that street to take a look at the glassy waters of Lake Ontario, dotted with silent sailboats heeling in an offshore breeze. The fires are long gone but there was a Harris/Walz sign in one yard with the slogan We Won’t Go Back.
Across the street was a Trump sign in a small front yard covered with Republican signs for local candidates and one small sign that simply said Jesus. The air was clear and warm and the leaves near the warmer waters of the big lake were just starting to fall.
An action like burning leaves, which was normal back then, would never be these days. Even the smoke from distant wildfires, high in the air, is a health risk to many. Times change, something we should all be considering as we approach Election Day.
There is a severe disconnect between the actual effects of the first Trump administration and what he claims to have accomplished. The reality of his time in office included a massive increase in the national debt because of a tax bill favoring the very wealthy and an estimated 100,000 unnecessary deaths because he felt acknowledging the pandemic would endanger his re-election. So, he denied its existence and then cast doubt on vaccines that could have saved those lives.
Yet, many look back on his time in office and believe the revisionist history he pitches, history that did not take place.
This morning in the NYTimes Morning newsletter, there was a blurb about Trump briefly ‘working’ in a McDonalds in Pennsylvania as a campaign stunt. But the Times failed to mention that the restaurant was closed and the food he supposedly served was given to five Trump supporters in a totally staged photo op.
As with everything he does in this campaign, it was a lie, and the Times once again glossed over that reality. Trump also called Harris ‘a shit Vice President’ in a typically vulgar display. No mention of that either.
If this man is elected, this kind of media coverage will be partially responsible. This is not an election from the past, far from it. The right has moved so far from decency and civility that they no longer seem to know what those things mean. And they have taken a large number of Americans with them.
Trump is not going to return us to some halcyon past when everything was much better, because that past never existed. Instead we know the plan; the utter destruction of democracy, disrespect for anything resembling the truth, and the spreading of hate and fear among us.
That’s not speculation. They are not hiding their intentions, they are trumpeting them to the world, selling them as though they represent a new set of virtues, virtues designed by a man and his colleagues to redefine the world with Trump at its epicenter.
And the likelihood of a term ending with Vice President Vance taking over, making him the least qualified candidate for the role in the past one hundred years.
We can cherish memories, like mine of a street filled with burning leaves, and the scent of falls past, but the reality of that was air filled with acrid smoke, filling our city with a low layer of smog. Memory is selective and the Trump supporters’ memories are not the reality of what his term was like, far from it.
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For exactly the types of things you outlined, I've cut out the NYTimes from my media feeds. It's getting downright ridiculous. Oddly enough, the number of random newsletters, campaign materials and other garbage has decreased as well. I should note that my university employer has a site license for NYTimes, and it doesn't seem worth it. Good riddance!
All of this is just like trump said---he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue & get away with it. This is the same thing. No repub is even trying to hide what they say even though these politicians should have more restraint. Why do people vote them in to represent them/us. It's horrendous. And the media is totally to blame!