Markos Moulitsas: The real Obama’s America

Poor Donald Trump. Despite (or because of) being born into luxury and ease, his brain is simply wired wrong. It prevents him from performing simple tasks, like processing reality. 

That’s why the real estate tycoon looks out his window and sees a dystopian hellhole. “Crippled America” screams the headline of his latest book, in which he promises to “make America great again.” His first ad in Iowa featured a black-and white montage of the shooters in San Bernardino, Calif., body bags, missiles being launched from ships, buildings being destroyed by bombs, people swarming across a border and an ominous voice warning against terrorists and immigrants who are out to kill us. 

{mosads}Trump is tickled when murderous fascists like Vladimir Putin fête him. He supports waterboarding even if it doesn’t work because “they deserve it.” He imagines hordes of African-Americans murdering white people. He thinks it’s funny to mock Hillary Clinton for going to the bathroom.

Trump had three young girls sing a campaign song at a rally with lyrics like “President Donald Trump knows how to make America great! Deal from strength or get crushed every time!” and “Enemies of freedom, face the music! C’mon boys! Take ’em down.” Utterly creepy. And if Trump is president, every store will say “Merry Christmas!” because apparently he plans to eliminate both the free exercise and free speech clauses of the First Amendment. 

So, given that Trump’s America is a bombed-out husk of a dead civilization, it follows that it’s President Obama’s fault. “They’re babies,” he said. “They don’t know what they’re doing … it’s so embarrassing.”

What’s actually embarrassing is, well, Trump himself. 

The Obama administration has delivered affordable healthcare to almost 18 million formerly uninsured Americans and has added 13.7 million new jobs in seven years, compared to a laughable 1.3 million during George W. Bush’s tenure. 

Diplomacy has thawed relations with Cuba and Iran. When two American gunboats were confiscated after drifting into Iranian waters, diplomacy resolved the issue in a matter of hours, to the GOP’s chagrin. America can’t be under siege if we’re being civil to our enemies, can it? And there’s that little matter of halting Iran’s nuclear program.

We’ve seen al Qaeda decapitated and a marked decrease in terrorism-related deaths in the United States — 101 during Obama’s term, compared to 3,279 during Bush’s. And despite conservative hysteria, the number of Americans killed by terrorists overseas between 2001 and 2013 was only 350. Every death is problematic, of course, which is why it’s bizarre that Republicans don’t care about the 406,496 people killed by firearms in the United States during that same period. 

Remember the Ebola panic? Republicans ripped into Obama for refusing to quarantine the entire nation and impose a travel ban. And then all of America died — didn’t it? 

It’s now easier to afford college, we’ve begun the transition to a non-fossil-fuel economy, we’re taking global climate change more seriously (because if Florida underwater isn’t dystopian, what is?), there’s greater oversight of Wall Street (though it could be tougher) and we are a far more tolerant and equal society today. Racists and bigots might hate that, but they are now the fringe minority. 

Is everything perfect in Obama’s America? Of course not, and liberals can be just as critical of the president as conservatives. The difference is, our criticism is based on reality, not a trumped-up ideological fantasy. 

Moulitsas is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos.