Trump was right about one thing...

Trump was right about one thing, though I don’t think he meant it that way. “Make America Great Again”. I kind of agree with that. Not that he’ll make it great again, (Because he hasn’t) but what it implies; that America isn’t great right now. In fact, it really sucks, as far as “first-world” countries go. Let me just put up a classifier that I have only been to one other country, so obviously I’m being a bit dramatic here, but this global pandemic is really showing each country’s true colors! — Before I continue, you’re probably wondering, “where the hell have you been!? You’ve been dead silent for months; almost a year, maybe? What’s going on?” The short answer is a bunch of bad things happened one after the other and they are not really the kind I have the sole authority to talk about, except the ones directly affecting myself. The long answer is... well, as I said, it’s private and really complicated, so I’ll just let it shadow over you as a deep and dark mystery... Add to all that my utter contempt for social media, super depression, and procrastination, and you get a very very long hiatus!

But every month I get an email saying that I’ve had visitors to my website. And granted, those are most likely bots, or typos, or chimpanzees testing a variation of the infinite typewriter scenario, fine. I thought this was as good as dead, but if the world (wide web) wants me to keep writing into the void, so be it!

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The coronavirus. COVID-19. It’s like Dovid, but if that name was already taken. (which it is. By me!) Our country has handled the rising pandemic absolutely horrendously. Granted, we’re not the worst, like China, Italy, and the UK, but we are far from the best, like Taiwan and Vietnam. You have to wonder, why? Why is the world’s number one country and super power not even close to number one in very crucial categories? It’s rated very high in gun violence, high in poverty, low in academics, low on health care availability (not necessarily health care itself). Our country basically invented modern democracy, but we have historically low voter turnouts that seems to keep decreasing every election! So, what are the problems? Is it our leader? Definitely. Absolutely! The president of the United States is arguably THE MOST INFLUENTIAL person on the planet! Trump has lied as many times as his tweets had grammatical errors in them. He is an embarrassment on our country! How can he go on TV, lie about the Coronavirus’ impact, scramble up the pandemic team during its peak spread throughout the country, lie about the stock market, and then assure in his national address, not the people worrying for their and their loved ones' lives that it’s being taken care of, but the mega corporations that they won’t have a huge loss in profits this quarter!? But America sucked before Trump. It’s just doubled, nay, tripled since. Obama’s inauguration really seemed to get the racists in our country’s anger to boil to the top, leading up to the country electing a xenophobic, misogynistic, racist, arrogant, moron. “Obamacare” was supposed to be our country catching up to the rest of the world’s policy of free health care. It barely survived the political machine and now functions as a skeleton of what it was first drafted to be. Did you know that health insurance isn’t a thing in other countries!? I literally did not know that (or put that together) a couple months ago! The entire medical insurance industry is solely an American industry! In other countries, you just go to the doctor! And you don’t get inflated bills in the mail for things like chest X-rays when you went in for a head thing! Before Obama, though, was Bush, and how he dealt with the Middle East after 9/11. And his “No Child Left Behind” debacle, that left more children behind than ever before! Why are children struggling in school? Too many tests! Learning in ways that don’t align with a rigid curriculum! So let’s test them more and restrict a standardized curriculum! And if you’re part of that generation “left behind”, guess what? You can probably vote now, huh? In fact, you are likely feeling utterly inept in things that school should have prepared you for: like financial and time management, your state’s laws and regulations, how taxes work, how to live a healthy lifestyle, and in more than just a few states, what sex is and how to do it safely! But hey! You definitely know quadratic equations, punnet squares, and you can hold your own in a debate of what the green light meant in the Great Gatsby, right? And I’m not even talking about college! Get this! For the price of going to an American University, which will cost you hundreds of dollars a month for the REST OF TIME, because most professors are old and the Coronavirus is forcing social distancing, instead of refunding tuition and trying again next semester, professors are just auto-passing students! Worst case scenario, we’ll have med students who would’ve learned heart surgery, but because of the Coronavirus, that class was canceled and the professor passed him through because the internet is too scary to learn at a tenured age of 74. So, you’re probably like me: sitting in isolation, fighting a million reasons not to get out of bed, and thinking: our society is broke, mentally broken, morally corrupt, and not very well educated, it’s no wonder people are buying and hoarding all the toilet paper and soap and masks. It’s no wonder they believe stupid things like, “if you hold your breath for ten seconds you don’t have the Coronavirus.” It’s no wonder businesses are forcing people to go to work despite health officials suggesting otherwise, and it’s no wonder those people go to work, because they can’t afford toilet paper and soap! Here’s the big takeaway that I want everyone to read: We are extremely stressed because we can barely afford to make ends meet, so we work multiple grueling jobs for little pay over many hours and stress about being let go without notice at any time. Because of this global pandemic, we are forced to not work and so we sit at home and worry about how to make ends meet. Instead of taking a forced vacation and spending quality time with loved ones, we panic and stress out over which one will cost more: staying in all month with no income, or risk working, getting sick, and having to pay medical bills? Americans are more stressed and unhappy and feel unsafe more than ever; which seems to contrast with living in the so-called “Greatest country on earth”. When people are this stressed, their immune systems decline, making them more likely to succumb to illnesses like the coronavirus. When people are this stressed, mental illnesses lying dormant will creep out to the surface. When people are this stressed, they panic and act irrationally, and make poor choices like hoarding essential supplies. When people are this stressed, they look desperately for some kind of stability to hold onto for sanity, and our country’s leader is not it! I’d say stay safe, but the illnesses this global pandemic will bring out isn’t just the coronavirus, but mental illness, major societal problems, financial hardships, and poopy butts. Here’s my advice: Survive this, and then meet back up with the rest of the survivors when the quarantine is over and help each other through their own individual problems so we become each others’ rocks.