So
Long, Loser. We've Suffered Enough.
For many too many families, and too many businesses, 2020 was a
year of incalculable loss, all of it made worse by Trump and his minions.
BY HOWARD
TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS@TULLMAN
Getty
Images
It's New Year's Eve and more than 330,000 Americans have died
from the awful collision of COVID-19 and the unending arrogance, indifference,
lies and incompetence of the Grifter-in-Chief, his enabling henchmen, and his
complicit minions.
On Christmas, millions of bereft families sat down to a holiday
meal in a sad stupor, with empty seats at the table, near and distant friends
and relatives missing from the event, and little or nothing but the faintest
hope for the future. This at a moment when it's critical to draw and hold close
what family you still have and try to remember better times.
So many friends, neighbors and strangers have lost parents,
siblings, spouses and others to this evil disease; people who can never be
replaced and who, most assuredly, will never be forgotten. These devastating
losses are the ones that will be with us long after the current crisis finally
ends.
Two good friends abruptly and unexpectedly lost their mothers
recently. One of the saddest and most horrendous effects of the Trump/Pence
disinformation campaign about the seriousness of the pandemic is that so few
people take the virus seriously enough and almost none of them, or us,
understands how quickly and devastatingly it can take someone's
life. You only have one mother, and one day she's gone.
I have just finished reading books by Jeff Bezos, Scott Galloway
and Steve Martin and each of them has written about how singularly important
their mothers (often single parents) were to their growth, to their grit, and
to their eventual success. While our fathers often challenge or confront us
with the world, it's our mothers who are always there to comfort and protect.
Robert Frost noted that, while you don't have to "deserve" your
mother's love, it often feels that you need to earn and deserve the love of
your father.
Philosophers will tell you that you never know who is going to
bring you your future, but every entrepreneur knows that they wouldn't be where
they are today without their parents and other important mentors,
supporters, believers and advocates and many wonder even now how they will fare
moving forward without them.
Yes, there will be a new and decent President shortly, and a
vaccine provided for those smart enough to want to take it. But there's no way
we will ever recover from all of the mental, economic and institutional damage
done in 2020 and earlier in the Trump debacle. Tens of thousands of
entrepreneurial businesses in every major city won't ever reopen. What
government aid we've received and whatever pittance may come hereafter is too
little and too late.
And the pandemic, like a plague ship in 14thcentury
Europe, steams ahead with powerful momentum and little prospect of abating for
many more months.
Thousands of further deaths are inevitable and no small portion
of them would have been avoidable but for the morally bankrupt and utterly
self-interested Republican political leaders who sucked up to, enabled, and
promoted Trump's most destructive behaviors. Hordes of maskless morons still
party for the TV cameras and others roam the streets encouraged and enraged by
those ignorant, feckless and hypocritical sycophants in Washington, still in
Trump's thrall.
The politicos' fraudulent rationalizations and outright lies are
continually augmented and amplified by a small group of right-wing media
commentators. Fox, Newsmax and other fraudsters have been only momentarily and
superficially cowed by the serious threat of litigation from the likes of
companies such as Dominion Voting Systems, which has been ceaselessly and
baselessly slandered and libeled by these on-air thugs, by Trump himself, his
flacks and flunkies, and by his "attorneys" Rudy Giuliani, Lin Wood and
Sidney Powell.
These people are beneath contempt and hopefully we'll soon be
rid of them and their stains on truth and democracy. But while the drama,
noise, tweets and lies may somewhat subside in the new year, we owe it to
everyone we lost to never forget who was responsible for these losses, and who
enabled, defended, protected, and benefitted from all of the trauma and pain.
Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are the worst of this slimy lot and
the most hypocritical; slugs such as Sen. Ron Johnson, Sen. Marco Rubio and
Rep. Matt Gaetz (forever labeled as "Matt Putz" by New Jersey Gov.
Phil Murphy) are pathetic and at least painfully overt in their phony
protestations.
And then there are the recently pardoned.
A pardon from Trump should forever be a scarlet letter of shame
in this country. Instead of righting a wrong, this narcissistic murderer is
systematically rewarding the wrongs of the grifters, thieves, murderers and
other scum who have been his partners in crime. We all sadly came to know that
there was no bottom to this man's willingness to disparage, diminish, degrade
and dishonor everything about our country that we hold dear, nor any depth to
which he would not sink in his vengeful pettiness, greed and nihilism.
The end to his shallow, selfish and shameless behavior cannot
come a day too soon. We shall then and ever hereafter know him as the world's
biggest loser.
DEC 31, 2020
The
opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of
Inc.com.
