Remember Johnny One Note?

He was tone deaf. When he sang, his voice only had one pitch. He couldn’t move up, or down, with the notes in the melody.

Our President is tone deaf.

To him, it’s China — China’s economic power, over us, over the jostle for pre-eminence in the world. Trump saw China as our biggest threat to restoring and maintaining economic standing, and that’s why he still blames China for the 200,000 deaths of Americans. And, his supporters are right there with him singing that same, monotonous song.

I sat, last evening, fairly well stunned by many things. How intelligent people of any persuasion could support this President. How self-centered blindness prevents realization and acknowledgement. How it is that our judicial system caves to power, the insidious kind as well as the violent.

But, I also sat — as I do, now — and considered the stories, from those who have Armenian and Romanian friends who talk about rationed goods and services in the socialist countries of their memory. I contemplate the American workers, those who actually have skills, who use their hands – as I do – but, to build machines without which our country could neither sustain itself nor continue interacting with the rest of the world. To these Americans, the fear of the threats to social security and pensions and Medicare, sources of financial security older Americans have worked their entire lives to earn, is real. And, they rise up in defense of such security — as well they should.

I am among them.

And, then, I wonder why we elect Presidents who lack a well rounded mindset. You know, the kind who stump on one policy issue, preaching a selective gospel. They warp the picture that should provide for every American, especially those who have tried to fight against social injustice and who lead honest, productive, responsible lives.

Perhaps this man who completely repulses so many of us with his slippery movements, his vulgar mouth, his outed lies, his utterly selfish posturing, and his dismissal of individual life as “virtually nothing”, should have run for a seat on the GOP’s economic advisorship instead of the highest office in the land. Nobody can argue the economic gains his administration produced prior to the pandemic. That’s his one note. And, he sang it well.

But, his single pitch is far from a beautiful song. It’s not music. At all.

200,000+ Americans are now dead — more still dying. That’s what we got, in exchange. What a tragic transaction. What a gravely bad deal.

Now, how utterly unacceptable is our present situation. How dangerously divided are our people. How aggressively reactive our throngs. How combative the prevailing postures of those parading in our streets. We aren’t a unified country; we’re a provoked population, on the brink of deadly confrontation. It’s called war.

Who can save us from this apparently inevitable reality? Joe Biden? His character is also not above reproach. Video and audio evidence tell his tale. Party politics has its insidious agenda, and monied corruption has infiltrated all of it — including he, and his own.

I am just as fearful of a globalist mentality seizing my rights and possessions as any other hardworking American. Surely, we are all desperate for an honorable, honest, and well-rounded representative of every mind and heart who was born and bred here.

Jimmy Carter. Somebody call him. Get his word. We need another like him, right now.

Because right now is all we’ve got.

Sing it.

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© 9/24/2020 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. Feel free to share, but with acknowledgement to the author. Thanks.

Originally published as ” Why Our Politics Is More Than A One Note Song” at Medium.com