HOPE VS HELL

Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas. What we’re reading… The Biden administration has awarded nearly $454 billion in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including more than 56,000 projects across more than 4,500 communities across the nation. Fixing more than 165,000 miles of roads, 9,400 bridges and improving more than 450 ports and 300 airport terminals. Funding more than 1,400 drinking water and wastewater projects and projects to replace up to 1.7 million toxic lead pipes. Funding 95 previously unfunded Superfund projects to clean up contaminated sites. Improved the electrical grid and funded 12,000 miles of high-speed internet infrastructure. The Financial Times reported (5/9) that the CHIPS and Science Act, which provided a $39 billion investment in  the semiconductor industry, has “primed a torrent of private sector investment.” With the influx of both federal money and an additional $447 billion of private investment in 83 projects in 25 states, the report forecasts that the U.S. will increase its share of global manufacturing capacity for leading-edge chips from today’s rate of 0% to 28% by 2032. The Economist announced that the U.S. “is in the midst of an extraordinary startup boom,” and explored “[h]ow the country revived its “go-getting spirit.” Meanwhile back in the GOP apocalyptic wasteland… At a rally in New Jersey Saturday, DJT announced: “On day one we will throw out Bidenomics and reinstate MAGAnomics.” He promised to extend his 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But the gist was an angry, vitriolic vision of a failing nation full of “enemies” that are “more dangerous” than China and Russia and who are “going to destroy our country.” In his telling, the criminal case against him in Manhattan is “bullsh*t,” and President Biden has done more damage than the “ten worst presidents in the history of our country” combined: “[h]e’s a fool; he’s not a smart man…[h]e’s a bad guy…the worst president ever, of any country. The whole world is laughing at him.” He lied that other countries are “emptying out their mental institutions into the United States, our beautiful country. And now the prison populations all over the world are down. They don’t want to report that the mental-institution population is down because they’re taking people from insane asylums and from mental institutions.” Then he riffed into “the late great Hannibal Lecter,” the fictional murderer and cannibal in the film The Silence of the Lambs, trying to make some connection apparent only to him. In the immortal words of Hank Hill, “That boy ain’t right.” Oh, and a few GOP senators have introduced the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) act, which would establish a federal database of pregnant people. For their own good of course, so the federal government will be able to ‘help.’ Yikes. I know which vision of America most of us would choose. And will.