SOMERSET, KY. — A chilly wind again whipped the flags flying at half staff here in central Kentucky. This time it was for George Bush, who died on Friday. Three weeks ago Jews were massacred in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Collegians were massacred in a bar and dance hall near Los Angeles. The two tragedies are linked by America’s miserable devotion to assault weapons and spilled blood. Flags flew at half staff then, too.
There is plenty to mourn in America, even for the regions of the country that thought they were making a difference by electing Donald Trump. Like suburban Detroit. As a candidate, Trump held a rally in Warren, Michigan and promised that if elected “not one job” would be lost in the auto industry. This week General Motors announced it was closing the plant it operated just down the road from where Trump made his promise as part of a plan to shed the company of 15,000 jobs. What’s sadder is that as Trump sputtered his indignation in Washington, his supporters on the ground and in right wing state media insisted the president was guiding the economy on the right course.
Even the election didn’t lift the November in my soul. Progressives took the House. A big help. But the Senate added two more Republicans. And Trump, who campaigned hard in Florida and Ohio, held those two states that are essential to his reelection.
I’m not a depressed personality. But I’m so saddened by circumstances in the United States because of this single fact. Change will occur but only after conditions get worse, perhaps much worse. A nation that has so quickly lost its bearings depends on great leadership to recover. The president of the United States is a miserable, limited scourge of a man, and a disastrous leader. But it seems clear to me that the antidote for President Trump, and the steps for diminishing the devotion that the president enjoys in white and rural America, is for the economy to sour. That unfortunately looks like what’s unfolding. Job growth has slowed. The stock market has slipped. Trade imbalances tilt more steeply to our imports.
In my specialty, the environment and economy, Trump’s ignorance also is adding to the damage that makes living in America more dangerous. As the condition of air, water, and land decline so will Trump’s support in rural America, which is being ravaged by ecological menaces that the president’s anti-science, anti-regulatory doctrine is making worse. Hurricanes and floods in the Southeast. Flash flooding in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Tornados in the Great Plains.
Fires in rural northern California since July have burned down more than 28,000 homes so thoroughly they look like they’ve been bombed. Over 100 people have died. The president blames mismanaged forests for the problem. It’s an idiotic, uninformed view. The fast moving walls of flame — and blame — raced through heavily settled, climate-dessciated, bone dry brush and wild land areas close to towns, not in stands of timber suitable for commercial logging.
Lament is not one of my typical emotions. To date, my mourning has been reserved for the people I love and lost. I don’t feel helpless. I’m saddened by the incapable place that is America. I feel plundered by the calamity that our country has become.
— Keith Schneider
