AMERICAN AMNESIA

 I'll never forget what happened in England when divisive former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died in 2013.  While there were some public displays of mourning, her political opponents openly celebrated, with the song "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" becoming one of the most popular songs in the country.  Contrast that with how America  dealt with the passing of former disgraced President Richard Nixon in 1991, with the man who had embarassed the country with his criminal behavior recast as a merely controversial figure.  Of course, the rehabilitation of Nixon's reign began the moment that Gerald Ford pardoned him, with Nixon writing books and columns acting as an elder statesmen and not a criminal.  And it seemed to mostly work for him, because Americans seem to forget about former presidents the second they leave office.  Look at George W Bush, who's now just seen as soft spoken guy who paints (lousy) pictures and not a man who stumbled the country into a disastrous invasion of Iraq. 

I think this phenomenon happens because our 24/7 news cycle puts so much emphasis on who the president is and what his regime is doing at every given moment, that former presidents are forgotten almost immediately.   The lack of white hot media attention causes the approval ratings of former presidents to rise the second they leave office, as the bad parts of their reign seem to be  forgotten, causing many Americans get nostalgic for those better days, forgetting all the bad parts.

This amnesia could have disastrous effects in the coming election, with all the terrible things that Donald Trump did while in office somehow being forgotten by the public, who are still slightly favoring him in the polls.  And to make things even more depressing, remember that Trump outperformed the polls in 2016 and 2020, and that these are the best presidential poll numbers that he has ever had in his political career, and the stage may be set for a twice impeached man facing multiple felony charges to somehow wind up the White House again!

But there is some hope: for months, polls showed that most Americans couldn't believe that Trump was going to be the Republican party's nomination again.  Now that nightmare has become a reality, with Trump barnstorming his way into the nomination.  Since there is no question of his candidacy, voters who don't follow politics that much will start paying attention again, which will hopefully result in a remembrance of what a deeply divisive and awful man he is.  For the past four years Trump has mostly been communicating to members of his cult through right wing media, but now the public will be subjected to his obsession with how the 2020 election was "stolen" from him, along with his usual stream of bigoted, misogynistic and downright bizarre ramblings (what is it with this man and low flow sinks and showers?).  Add to that his criminal troubles and the court cases that he's already lost to the tune of almost half a billion dollars in penalties, and it's possible that the public's memory will suddenly return to the wildly chaotic, incompetent and corrupt regime that ran this country from 2016 to 2020 and they will come to their senses and vote for the slightly older man who's actually capable of caring about other human beings.  I really hope they do.