Protect American democracy. Restore our values. Fire Trump.

Dr. Jill Biden campaigns for her husband, former Vice President Joe Biden, outside Right Brain Brewery in Traverse City on September 29. Photo by Gwenne Allgaier

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

The Glen Arbor Sun is not typically a political publication. We celebrate this Leelanau community, feature its unique characters, places and businesses, and promote its events. As such, we’ve never explicitly endorsed a candidate for office before. We hope we won’t feel compelled to do so in the future. 

But this particular election season falls during dangerous times. The United States, our democracy, our code of honor, our ability to keep our fellow citizens out of harm’s way, our time-honored identity as a nation of immigrants, all seem more fragile than ever before. Day in, day out, we’re battling a five-alarm fire—an inferno that grows hotter each time Donald Trump opens his mouth or writes an offensive Tweet.

This man must be stopped. At the polls on November 3, or beforehand if you are voting by mail, we must team up and elect Joe Biden as our next president. For the future of this country, and to honor those before us who have sacrificed so much, nothing less than the future of our democracy depends on it.

The words in this editorial should come as no surprise to anyone who has listened and watched the past four years. Trump flaunts countless attributes that we wouldn’t wish to see in our child’s kindergarten classroom. He is a male chauvinist who brags about sexually assaulting women. He is a racist who whips his followers into believing that people of color and immigrants are dangerous, are undeserving, and somehow pose a threat to white people. He is a narcissist who wants only himself in the spotlight. As with all narcissists, he lacks self-esteem, which explains why he is so sensitive about crowd sizes and about how he is perceived. He is a bigot and a bully who openly mocks handicapped people, soldiers who died on the battlefield, anyone who wasn’t handed their fortune on a golden tray like he received from his father. He is also dim and incompetent: he doesn’t read books, doesn’t care to comprehend complex topics, doesn’t have the curiosity to listen. I could go on.

Trump’s occupation of the White House brought us 1,000 nervous nights, and countless ruined lives. The early images of this wretched presidency included children in cages, Puerto Rico helpless and dark following a devastating hurricane, foreign dignitaries and leaders somberly shaking their heads, a world growing more dangerous as time-honored alliances and treaties were shredded. Under Trump’s pathological bluster, we almost went to nuclear war with North Korea, we almost let Iran drag us into another quagmire in the Middle East. To save face, and to feed his petty ego, Trump staged a worthless cameo with Kim Jong-un in the Korean demilitarized zone; he even tried to bring the Taliban—the Taliban!—to Camp David. Despite all that, this nation nearly escaped the Trump nightmare without a full-blown existential catastrophe. Almost.

This nation is divided, entrenched, deeply tribal—perhaps more than at any other time since the Civil War. Think about that—the Civil War. We progressives and conservatives disagree on so much that we forget how much we still have in common with each other, how much we need each other, how much we enjoy each other’s company at the Thanksgiving dinner table. How much we ought to respect and love one another. 

Despite that widening divide, this consequential election of 2020 will be a judgement on one thing above all else—Trump’s utter mishandling of the Coronavirus—the worst public health crisis in a century, which has killed (as of press time) more than 210,000 Americans, and more than 1 million worldwide, with no end in sight—save for a vaccine that may be many months away.

As I write these words, COVID karma has caught up with Donald Trump, who now has the Coronavirus. Since the virus arrived on American shores he has (publicly) downplayed its risk. He has mocked those who wisely wear masks. He has resisted the necessary sacrifices we have had to make to our families, our communities, our schools, our economies. He has ducked his presidential responsibility to speak honestly to the nation, warn us off hard times ahead and implore us to sacrifice for the greater good, for a patriotic cause.

Think about this, could you imagine if previous U.S. presidents had treated a colossal crisis as if it were a conspiracy made to hurt them politically? If Lincoln had looked the other way when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, if Roosevelt yawned when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, if Bush hadn’t marshalled our patriotic will to empathize and sacrifice for each other after 9/11? No, you couldn’t imagine. Because those leaders ducking the responsibility of their office would have been unthinkable. Make no mistake, the Coronavirus in the United States in 2020 is a situation just as grave as those previous examples.

As I write this, Trump has left Walter Reed hospital and returned to the White House, telling us “Don’t be afraid” of the virus, even as more and more of his inner staff and his Republican allies in Congress test positive for COVID. At this grave hour, at his own grave hour, he has failed us once again. He has failed us nationally, he has failed us internationally, and he has failed us locally.

Here are a few specific ways Donald Trump’s caustic presidency has harmed Leelanau County during these past four years:

• In failing to exercise national leadership during the Coronavirus pandemic and stand with governors to keep their citizens safe, he has opened the door to a confusing hodgepodge of rules and policies. Some states are open, some bars and retail establishments don’t require masks, some emboldened anti-government, science-misunderstanding Trump fanatics think they can crash our community and rage on a grocery store clerk or a restaurant server, and even spit at them, when asked to wear a mask indoors. Shame on them. Shame on the leader who emboldened them. “That woman from Michigan” he mocked our governor for taking a stand against COVID. “Liberate Michigan” he Tweeted in April as gun-toting activists stormed our state capitol. 

How many more Americans have died for Trump’s lack of a cogent policy that took the disease seriously—in February or March? No, of course he can’t be blamed for the Coronavirus arriving on American shores. But many of those 210,000+ deaths occurred after certain regions of the country—like New York City—had flattened their curve.

• Trump is an unabashed denier of climate change, which is the other existential threat facing our civilization. As with other Republican leaders, he has pushed short-sighted and dangerous policies that would roll-back hard-won environmental victories and pollute our air and our water. He has stifled efforts to recognize and combat man-made climate change, on the state level, nationally and internationally. The effects of climate change are being felt everywhere, though the impacts don’t always mirror each other. The West Coast is literally on fire this fall. The Gulf Coast is hit by progressively stronger and slower moving hurricanes across warming seas which do more damage once they make landfall. Here in the Great Lakes, climate change means far more moisture in the system, more frequent and intense storms, and meteoric fluctuations. Lake Michigan water levels surged from all-time low in 2013 to an all-time high in 2020. The lake is eroding bluffs, eating up beaches and threatening to devour homes of those who built too close to the shore. Waterfront home owners up and down the coast are now choosing the expensive, controversial, and potentially short-sighted option of “arming” their shores with steel walls and boulder rip-rap. For farmers, climate change tampers with the growing season, making their livelihoods less predictable.

• Trump gloats in his caustic, hateful rhetoric. He shirks responsibility, some other group is always to blame. His rally cries and his Tweets are often tinged with racism and xenophobia, whether it’s Mexican and Latino immigrants he calls murderers and rapists, or African Americans manifesting for racial equity who he claims will destroy the suburbs. Those taking a page from Trump’s poisonous rhetoric are everywhere, including here at home. Behold Tom Eckerle, the disgraced, now former Leelanau County Road Commissioner who refused to mask during a public meeting in August and used the N word while blaming the Coronavirus on blacks in Detroit. One could almost feel Trump’s presence in the room when Eckerle voiced his disdain for wearing masks.

• His short-sighted and disastrous nationalistic trade policies caused a trade war with China, and caused global steel prices to skyrocket. That hurt important infrastructure projects here at home. Look no further than Leland’s historic Fishtown shanty village, a gem of Leelanau County tourism. Inundated with rising water, Fishtown knew it had to raise the most vulnerable shanties. Fishtown Preservation Society’s estimated pricetag for raising the shanties rose from $1.6 million in January 2019 to $2.5 million by the end of last year, in part because of the rising cost of steel, reported Gene Hopkins, a restoration architect who works with Fishtown Preservation.

• Finally, this election season Trump is inciting violence and threatening to undermine faith in the voting process. At the first presidential debate he called for the white nationalist “Proud Boys” to “stand back and stand by”—basically a call to arms. The specter of voter intimidation and outright voter suppression by armed groups faces us on November 3. That’s un-American, it’s un-democratic. It’s painful to even contemplate it happening here in this great country that gave the world so much when it embarked on American democracy.

Don’t let it happen here. This election, fire Trump. We must make Joe Biden our next president.