The real reason that I have made the trek to Wisconsin was not only my annual grouse hunt with my sons but also to attend my 50^th class reunion. Yup, I am not a young man anymore but hopefully still young at heart. In those 50 years since High School I have seen 10 different Presidents in the White House and lived through countless scandals. It has kind of been a wild ride for America. When I graduated Nixon was in the White House and he was still in his first term. The Vietnam War was still going strong and I was going to have to register for the draft. Life was very different back then. In the early 70s it seemed that political parties did not polarize the country, events did. The most polarizing event was of course the Vietnam War.

The Watergate scandal was the first real political scandal that I remember that really shook the nation. Nixon was forced to resign and in my opinion it was because both political parties put the country above the party. We did have the Tax Scandal of Spiro Agnew but that was not like Watergate. Watergate really shook the nation. Nixon was forced to resign and Vice President Ford was made President. That corruption made the way for Jimmy Carter. A good Christian man with very high morals.

I liked Carter but he was portrayed as weak. I was pretty republican back then and when our embassy was attacked and all the hostages taken. I wanted to go in with guns blazing. To this day I feel that if there ever should have been a military response to that. That perceive weakness led to Reagan. I voted for Reagan not because I thought that he was great but because I really like his VP George H W Bush. Reagan of course led to the Iran Contra affair were his administration negotiated with Iran, Terrorists and the Contras that were backed by the drug cartels. When you listen to some of Reagan’s great speeches and look at what really happened it is a little hard to believe. History will not be kind to Reagan or his administration.

As I have always stated I was a fan of George H W Bush. Yes, I know he made a lot of mistakes. He pardoned the Iran Contra criminals. He gave us Clarence Thomas, which we are suffering for to this day. But he was a man of principle in some ways. When Iraq invaded Kuwaiti he put together a real solid coalition that drove Iraq out of Kuwaiti with very little loss of American lives. With his mission accomplished he got out. He went in with a strategy to free Kuwaiti but he also had an exit strategy. Nothing prolonged and no nation building. That is one of the reasons that I am a fan of his today. There was a recession at the end of Bush’s first term and in the end that is what probably did him in so then we got Clinton.

I did not vote for Clinton because I just thought he would be another Jimmy Carter. The economy boomed and Clinton is the last President to actually balance the budget. Of course there was that problem of Clinton not being able to keep it in his pants. Sex scandals will follow him through his entire eight years in office. The nation prospered but our Politics began to become dirtier than what it already was. He was impeached for lying under oath about sex. It was the first real hint that I got that the Republican Party was being taken over by the religious right. I have always thought the Newt Gingrich’s contract with America was really a contract with white evangelical America.

Being a strong believer of separation of church and state and a strong opponent of racism I voted for Al Gore and to this day I am very comfortable with that vote. Of course George W Bush won and things turned to crap real quickly. Not even nine months into his Presidency 9/11 happened and our country was changed forever. Our response against Afghanistan who was harboring the terrorist was pretty quick but I don’t think that it was well thought out. There did not seem to be much of a strategy at all that I could see. There definably was no exit strategy considering that we were there fighting for another 20 years. Next he then invaded Iraq. Why? He had a lot of excuses that turned out to be lies but in reality I think he did it to finish what some people thought his father should have done with Desert Storm. Topple the Iraq Government. He accomplished that really easily but had no idea what to do next. It is a mess that continues today. Then came the great recession that almost toppled us.

On comes Barrack Obama. Now I really like Obama. He kept a cool head and an even disposition all through the financial crisis and the automotive crisis and I think that his leadership pulled us through. He was of course our first and only Black President. I do not think he was a perfect president by any means but Bush had really lowered the bar. At times I wish he would have been a stronger leader and less a diplomat but then he was a trailblazer and you could tell he was sometimes walking on eggshells because he was the first black president. One thing that his Presidency did in my opinion was mobilize the Religious right and the White Supremists. I could feel the racial tension building during his eight years in office.

Next came Donald Trump. I have always thought that if we hadn’t had a Black President we would not have elected Trump. If there ever was a President sent by Satan it was Trump. There was not a group that he did not insult. How evangelicals could think that a sex craved man was sent by god I will never be able to figure out. He made Clinton look like a boy scout. His wife was a gold digging topless model that the religious right tried to compare to Jaclyn Kennedy. His four years in office were the worst 4 years I have seen in my lifetime. The division that he was sown and continues to sow has done great damage to our democracy. His lying and misinformation has cost us many lives and there are now just too many people that just don’t care. He instigated a plan to over throw our constitution government and too many Republican went along. Party before country. Trump before country. The closest person that I know in history that compares to Trump is Hitler.

I think our country is at a crossroad and the 2022 election may be the most important election in the history of our democracy. I think we may be choosing between our Constitution and democracy or Fascism and America’s version of Apartheid. This stuff is real folks.