Renewing Hope

THE SICK PATIENT is the United States of America. The medical staff are all good, patriotic Americans. The prescription for the cure, I have come to believe, is Joe Biden and his agenda for national healing and rejuvenation. I personally have a much more progressive agenda, but we must all be willing to compromise in a democracy. We must also compromise in our form of government, which is an olagarchial plutocracy, government of, by, and for an elite wealthy class. Well, close enough. The day may come when we have an actual democracy in America, with power belonging to we, the people, or, as Madison described us, the "lesser sort". We'll take what we can get, which for now, is what our founders intended, a very limited republic. I can imagine Biden doing much good, even gathering together Iran, North Korea, and all the nuclear powers of the Earth and proposing a ban on all nuclear weapons in the world, like Gorbachev tried to do, but was stopped by Reagan. Somebody has to do it, might as well be "sleepy Joe" as the Republican reprobates call him.  As for me, there is no need to write dark essays attacking a corrupt criminal former president like there is a corrupt criminal sitting president. I feel a sense of liberation. The daunting tasks ahead for Biden are well known, arguably the most formidable array of difficulties ever to confront an incoming president,although we seem to say that every four years. Yes, Biden is too old for the job, but so are Top Brady and Drew Brees, so, you never know. To quote the new president LBJ the day after JFK was killed: "I cannot do this alone". Trite but true is that we must all work together to solve our country's huge problems. To paraphrase Franklin, we must all stick together, or we will all tank separately.And of course the great divide, engendered by Reagan, remains.Its gotten worse over the years, especially under Trump, who reveled in it. Now it seems insurmountable. I can remember when, before Reagan, there seemed to be not a dime's worth of difference between the two major parties. Then, the Republicans, under the influence of the ultra right wing evangelical Christian influx into politics, moved itself well to the right of Reagan, where it stands, or sits today. But we the American people know exactly what we can do about it; because we just got through doing it to Trump.