The Rebirth of the "On The Mark" Blog

 

Consider it a sunrise: the beginning of a new day.

I have been very little active on this blog in recent years. Perhaps it was the divorce. Perhaps it was the medical condition requiring me to get two stents in my coronary arteries. 

Whatever it was does not matter now. The United States is being thrown into a dumpster fire of chaos, multiple ways:

• President Donald Trump is behaving more like a wannabe-Fascist dictator every day, trampling over Constitutional law and the Bill of Rights. Perhaps worse, his actions demonstrate that he is preparing to either ignore the 2020 election results, or declare them invalid, essentially making himself an actual Dictator Over America--perhaps for life.

• The COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. has resulted in 6.2 million infections and 188,000 deaths--all in a period of barely 8 months (August 31, 2020 figures). It shows no signs of stopping. To the contrary, with the opening of schools and the forthcoming Labor Day holiday festivities, and with the approaching cooler weather forcing activities indoor, we are only likely to see more infections and deaths. And yet, we still have no national plan for testing or containing the pandemic. Instead, Trump touts fake cures, encourages people to believe in a promised "miracle," and runs superspreader events as part of his presidential campaign (as he did at Tulsa, OK and the White House).

• Despite the grim reality of the COVID catastrophe, we see vast amounts of misleading information, disinformation, and outright lies being posted in social media and elsewhere online, discouraging people from taking the pandemic seriously and taking appropriate protective measures, and encouraging risky behavior.

• The U.S. real economy is in tatters. Tens of millions are unemployed. Double-digit percentages of small businesses have closed for good. Many of those originally "furloughed" from their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic are now being informed that their jobs are gone for good. To make it worse, millions have lost their employer-based healthcare. To make it even worse, tens of millions of Americans are in immediate danger of eviction.

• There is widespread social unrest in the U.S., stemming from only the most recent public shootings of unarmed Black men by police, particularly in the killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake; the way that police let escape an illegally armed, long-rifle-carrying minor--who murdered two protesters of the Blake shooting--has not helped the situation.

I've got kids. They're all long grown up, and now they've got kids. This is not the America I want to pass on to them. What I have to change the situation are ideas expressed in logic and words. 

That's what this blog is about: addressing the threats to America, Americans, and the best version of the American way of life. 

So may it be. And may you say, "so say we all."

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Copyright 2020 Mark Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.
Permission is hereby granted to re-post or quote this blog entry, if and only if Mark Koltko-Rivera, Ph.D., is credited as the author.