Like many Americans – particularly old guys – I miss baseball. Today’s article could have been called baseball logic and purloined words. There are plenty of both but I guarantee you it relates to current American politics. Let’s explore.

Americans celebrate summer with three holidays. Memorial Day is summer’s unofficial start in late May. About a month later we celebrate Independence Day or as most Americans call it, The Fourth of July. We bring the season to a close with a big bash for Labor Day in early September.

This year way too many misguided Americans used the first two holidays to celebrate in defiance of the conoravirus pandemic. They were led by President Trump and many of his Republican sycophants. I see no reason to assume they won’t do the same thing come Labor Day weekend 2020.

Currently we are seeing a spike in coronavirus cases that were largely caused by the irresponsible behavior on Memorial Day weekend. Some of them will result in deaths; a few already have. Just last weekend we saw a plethora of people irresponsibly gathering for the Fourth of July weekend; including Trump-led Coronapalooza-Rushmore. Can any thinking person anticipate anything other than another spike in cases over the next few weeks?

That will take us to about Labor Day weekend where I suspect many will repeat the irresponsible actions which will cause another spike that will take us right about into the fall second wave. There are two major reasons America is by far doing the worse job of containing the pandemic of any major advanced country and they are a classic case of cause and effect. The cause is the lack of leadership at the top; the effect is the wide spread irresponsible behavior.

The way the United States is structured the president is the leader. Trump has failed the test of effective leadership; in fact he has led thousands of Americans to premature deaths and is continuing to do so in a loud and proud fashion.

Circling back to baseball; we have two strikes on us and appear ready to flail away at the next pitch on arm motion.

Republican political strategist Rick Wilson wrote a book entitled, Everything Trump Touches Dies. He may not be totally correct but he is very, very far from completely incorrect.

I’m of the generation that remembers the Country Joe and The Fish song, The Vietnam Song. (Yes, my fellow senior citizens they performed it at Woodstock.) One part went, “Five, six, seven open up the Pearly Gates… we all gonna die”.

Like Wilson’s title, those lyrics proved to be an exaggeration but thousands of American died in what proved to be a losing cause and useless war.

There is an old baseball expression, “Three strikes and you’re out”. I have to wonder if we are not bringing ourselves closer to that than we think. Trump may not kill all Americans – in fact I will bet that he won’t – but he will kill many more before this is over.

You tolerate your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner but you don’t put him in charge of the country. As to Trump’s enablers, including several senators running for reelection in November, who Dana Milbank brilliantly tagged as, “The handmaidens of white supremacy”. We have a chance at “redemption”, VOTE!!!!!!

This article is the property of tellthetruthonthem.com and its content may not be used without citing the source. It may not be reproduced without the permission of Larry Marciniak.