On Wednesday, February 5, 2020, the US Senate voted to find President Donald Trump “not guilty” on two impeachment charges.
The next day, Thursday, February 6, 2020, the first American died from the CoronaVirus, a 57 year old woman in California.
78 Days have passed from that first death on February 6, and today, 50,000 Americans have died from the pandemic, and in about two days, the death toll will pass the 54,000 killed in Korea over three years in the early 1950s, and in four days, the death toll will be 58,000, passing the number of Americans killed in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s!
All of the wars in American history, minus the three big ones (Civil War, World War II, World War I) add up to 130,832, a total likely to be passed, and World War I itself is 116,000. And certainly within possibility is the combination of these two listed numbers, for a total of 246,832 dead!
Hopefully, the World War II total of 405,000 will not be reached, or the Civil War total for both sides of 750,000!
But as stated earlier in my blog entry of April 5, 19 days ago, we could eventually surpass all wars combined, a grand total of 1,404,092. god forbid!
While we might not have avoided this crisis simply by Donald Trump being convicted and removed from office the day before the first death, it is possible to believe that the new President, Mike Pence, would have taken the advice of scientists, after taking office, and would have reacted in a very different and saner fashion than Donald Trump has done in the past 78 days!
Whatever Mike Pence has as shortcomings, it seems reasonable to think the present disaster would have been treated differently, as Pence has acted in a responsible manner since February 26, when he was appointed to head the task force to deal with the pandemic.
Pence can be criticized for being too sycophantic, biting his lip, and keeping a stiff face in public, but seriously working on the burden he was given in a manner that, under the circumstances, was likely the most that could be expected.
This blogger and author wishes to believe that history would have been different had Pence been President, and that he would have been much more proactive.
That reality, if it had occurred, would likely have been an asset in the election campaign, having come in with just nine months to the election and eleven and a half months to the inauguration, and the Republican Party might have been able to count on a possible Pence victory.
But, instead, except for Mitt Romney, the Republicans in the US Senate totally blew their credibility, and now will suffer defeats in Congress of historical proportions, and a massive defeat of Donald Trump on November 3.
To recover from this double disaster, the second Great Depression we are now in, and the greatest health crisis ever in American history, and reelect Trump, is simply impossible, if one goes by historical trends over nearly 250 years.
For the American people to commit, effectively, suicide and reward the person and party that brought about this tragedy, is simply unrealistic to imagine occurring.
If it does, then the nation will, rapidly, decline as a world leader and major power, a trend already provoked by the absolutely insane policies of Donald Trump!