Nobody is going gently even if they should

Joe Biden has enough Electoral College votes to become the next President, the 46th in the country’s history. Donald Trump has not conceded, and it is doubtful that he will go gently into that good night. I hated using that last phrase as it comes from one of my favorite poets, Dylan Thomas, but I suspect that the Tangerine Wankmaggot will go on Tweet Raging for a while yet.

The coronavirus has not miraculously gone away after the election as some claimed it would. Illinois where I live and Wisconsin where I lived for 40 years have both seen record increases in cases. The entire country has seen over 100000 new cases for the past several days. Deaths have numbered over a 1000 per day for over a week.

Most experts say it’s going to get worse before getting better.

The excuses for continuing to ignore the experts boggles my mind.

One claim in Wisconsin is that you have a greater chance of dying in a car crash than you do of COVID. In Wisconsin the estimate is that about 600 car deaths will occur this year. Nationally about 37000 traffic fatalities occur every year. Statewide, Wisconsin COVID deaths total 2330, almost four times more. Nationally the rate is 6.5 times higher. It hardly seems plausible to compare the two.

Another wild-ass claim is that the survival rate is 99.9%. I have no idea where people are getting that number. Right now the national mortality rate is 2.4%.

Biden is going to have his work cut up for him. He has to convince people that Trump was wrong about the virus. He has to undo a lot of damage that incompetence and lack of leadership caused.

Maybe nobody is going gentle into that good night. The dying of the light is not happening easily.

The Day After the Election

 I went to bed last night not knowing who won the election. I woke up this morning still not knowing. 

As I write this, neither Trump nor Biden has the necessary 270 electoral college votes. 

Without any basis in fact, however, Trump made an announcement at 2:00 a.m. that he had won the necessary states to get him to the 270. He evidently forgot that several states were still counting votes. Yet, he said he won and that all counting should stop. 

Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and MIchigan were all states that Trump won in 2016, the last three of which because Hillary Clinton basically ignored them, not even stepping in Wisconsin once during her campaign. Biden didn’t make that mistake.

Since I woke, Wisconsin and Michigan started counting all their absentee and mail-in ballots. Milwaukee gave Biden the lead in the Badger state. In Michigan the Detroit area did the same thing. 

We actually won’t know vote totals in all the states for a few days. The popular vote right now is Biden: 70,553,886 Trump: 67,264,273.  The candidate winning the popular vote has lost the electoral vote twice in my lifetime. I hope this is not the third time.

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Sadly, regardless of who eventually wins, the country will remain very divided. These divisions are based on numerous things all of which, to me, are smokescreens for what really ails our nation. Yes, there is a systemic racism in the system. Our races, our religions, our various ethnic backgrounds are all things that keep us separated, figuratively and literally. At the root of our differences, however, is money, the haves versus the have nots. 

When I was growing up, I distinctly remember the residual fear of the Great Depression that my parents and grandparents experienced. That fear was being out of work and poor. If you had a job and money coming in, you certainly didn’t want any other group ruining your chance at solvency. Irish, Chinese, Italians, Polish and other ethnic groups all experienced discrimination from other groups of immigrants previously established in the country. Catholic immigrants faced the same from the established Protestant faiths. Black and Native Americans were always at the bottom of the pile of opportunity.

There is an extremely and increasingly small number of people who control the largest amount of wealth. The rest are scraps that the rest of us have to fight over.

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It’s been six years since Pete Seeger died. It’s been longer since Woody Guthrie died. People like that don’t come along very often. In more ways than one, both men have helped unite people. I think it’s time to find someone like them to lead us again in song.

This was a cartoon that came out when Pete died.

This is one of Woody’s songs performed by his granddaughter, Sara Lee Guthrie.