A brief reminder: WHAT ISN'T TRUMP'S FAULT

 JUST A BRIEF REMINDER...

THAT PLENTY OF THINGS WERE GOING WRONG BEFORE HE BECAME PRESIDENT.

I thank Ross Douthat for his great op-ed piece in today's NYTimes for the title and idea.

A short list includes

The insane thinking about science. It began way before--I want to say Reagan era? The idea that science, that is to say, fact is just another opinion.

I'm sure someone knows who started this. Gingrich?  

This insanity includes creationism, pandemic denial, climate-change-by-humans denial, anti-vaccine-ism, and spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child childrearing.

We as a nation have underfunded science education and research, with dollars declining under Clinton and Obama. 

Our fault, not Trump's.

Infrastructure was collapsing and underfunded before him.

Public health funding was nearly non-existent before, with, just as an example, in our schools: used to be one nurse for each school, now each school nurse has to take care of the health of children in, on average, 4 schools.

One of the problems with blaming Trump for everything is that we fail to see, take responsibility for and correct, many of the things that he has become the poster boy for. Unreason was no stranger to American politics before Trump. Partisanship was already insane under Obama--remember his last Supreme Court nominee and that fiasco? 

Lots of the problems related to income inequality, inadequate safety nets for the less-than-affluent, banking perfidy, social security deductions stopping at a crazy low point (causing underfunding of that safety net. Then that underfunding used as proof that social security doesn't work, and calls for eliminating it). 

Our fault, not Trump's.

I could go on, but you can fill in as many as I can, now you're thinking about it. And keeping this in mind, I hope. It is so easy when the avatar of all our woes is so perfect for the job.

While he may do a good job of exemplifying lots of the bad stuff happening now, in a way, that is his job. Why he is supported. He is a side-show who became a star precisely because he is so useful to the anti-democratic agenda. He stands there pontificating unintelligibly in his flying yellow hair, and how can we resist castigating and blaming him.

But that is his job.  

Our job is not to be distracted by his posturing. 

For example, in Sacramento not one single bill that would have reformed the police even came to the floor of the legislature in its last session. This in spite of the fact that, in Los Angeles alone, 6 more black men were killed by police, since George Floyd's death at the end of May.

Was that Trump's fault?

No. it is the fault of our ELECTED representatives, beholden to the police unions who donate so much to their campaigns. 

Not Trump's fault. 

Not Trump's fault. Our fault. As is the Trump presidency itself.