{"id":5729,"date":"2021-01-09T05:44:31","date_gmt":"2021-01-09T15:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/?p=5729"},"modified":"2021-01-23T08:54:48","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T18:54:48","slug":"goodbye-2020-welcome-2020-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/2021\/01\/09\/goodbye-2020-welcome-2020-2-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye 2020\u2014Welcome 2020 2.0?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Emil Guillermo

<\/em>Happy physically distanced New Year? Shoot. Believe me, I want to be in Hawaii again. But I\u2019m stuck in the Coronavirus epicenter of California where in my neck of the woods, there are zero ICU beds available and military docs have been sent in to help out.

If we don\u2019t want to make it 2020 2.0, then mask up, stay distanced, keep your guard up.

But one thing we must all resolve to do, is remember this: Trump lost.

Let him lie all he wants. Just avoid the gaslight. If we ignore him, he\u2019ll go off and play golf. Somewhere else. Maybe work on the Trump library. A handful of coloring books for his box of white crayons. Let\u2019s cut the ties to the last four years and rise from the ashes.If you can.I know there are still some Trumpy Filipinos out there, the 30 percent of us who cling to some Trump fantasy that his swamp is better than the existing swamp. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s worse. Politics and government aren\u2019t the \u201cDeep State.\u201d But the Trump swamp is \u201cDeep Chaos.\u201d At every point of a major transgression in the four years of Trump, I\u2019ve often wondered when will the blind loyalty end to Trump? Not just from the large number of Filipinos, but all Republicans.After the Muslim ban? After mothers were ripped from their babies at the border? After the first closure of the government? After his ignorant \u201csh\u2014hole nation\u201d comment? After the impeachment? After the convictions of his campaign manager and close associates? And on and on. Folks, we are dealing with arguably the least qualified, most corrupt president in American history, one who begins to make Duterte look like a real statesman.  And yet at least a third of all Filipino Americans supported Trump in the last election. But now it seems \u201cDeep Chaos\u201d has managed to screw himself.Just in the last few weeks, Trump vetoed the Defense authorization bill because of a provision within it benefiting his arch enemies. You mean Russia? China? Nope, the social media companies.Trump also dragged his feet on a $900 billion pandemic relief bill that his last remaining allies like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin helped get passed before Christmas. And then he betrayed Mnuchin and other Republicans and went home without signing the bill.The art of no deal? I was celebrating my very Zoomy Christmas when news broke that Trump finally did cave and sign the bill on Monday, Dec. 28, 2020.

Why? Beware. He\u2019s setting us up for his final Trump con. You can\u2019t be the hero of the pandemic you helped spread if you don\u2019t pass out some money to the people you\u2019ve hurt.And there are a lot of them. The millions of jobless in desperate need of assistance. The renters staving off eviction. The small business owners forced to shut down. The hungry Americans going without a meal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to mention the friends and families of the more than 333,000 people who have died in our country in the COVID-19 War.

Call it what it is. And all those going out and gathering without a mask are parading around knowing full well the viral enemy is stalking you.

It\u2019s stupid. Like Trump.

If you\u2019re Trump, you\u2019ve got to say that as commander-in-chief you did something more than play another 18 holes.

You\u2019ve got to do something that really makes you the anti-populist populist that you are.

Trump could\u2019ve vetoed the Pandemic Aid bill and let the Congress override him. But that gets him nothing. He\u2019d have to brag about losing. And it doesn\u2019t even matter about the additional $2,000 the House voted on Dec. 28. Nor does the possible override of his Defense bill veto.

Like I said, all it does it set up the real con.

The Denial Of 2020. The New Trumpthink For 2021.<\/strong>
It\u2019s coming. Just you wait. The big story of 2020 will be this\u2013it never happened<\/em>.<\/em>

Just like the election. Just like the decisive Trump loss in the electoral college and the popular vote.  Just like climate change. And anything else you want to add to the Trump-molded season of denial.

People will bend over backwards to ignore 2020. They will skip it, go straight to 2019, and 2018. 2020?

It\u2019s like the Filipinos who don\u2019t want to talk about bad news. They \u201cskeep it.\u201d \u201cBahala na.\u201d It\u2019s already starting.

You saw how many people didn\u2019t wear masks and insisted on traveling and gathering for the holidays. The deniers are real.

It will be the story of 2020, the year truth was challenged again and again and never fully restored. It will be the ongoing story of our times. We\u2019ve got a few more weeks of Trump, and it\u2019s likely to get worse, if the first batch of pardons are an indicator.

Pardon Me?<\/strong>
Pardons aren\u2019t meant to allow bad behavior and shoot a middle finger at the rule of law.

Pardons are for showing mercy and understanding. Not for the self-dealing to reward loyalists willing to break the law to further the president\u2019s interests. Flynn, Manafort, Stone, Kushner? Trump could have pardoned any number of people. How about those being held in immigration detention centers, or those being \u201ciced down\u201d for deportation and separation from families? That would show empathy, mercy, and understanding.

But the Trump pardons all come as if granted by the accomplice in the crimes being pardoned.

And to make it all more unseemly, they\u2019re topped off with a wink and a nod to white privilege.

Watch for more of the same to Trump family, friends, and even to himself, which would be the ultimate erasure of bad behavior in keeping with the 2020 theme.

It never happened. But it did. We lived through it.

The Denial Of 2020<\/strong>
As I review the year, from last January to now, the stories are similar. They\u2019re just variations of the con\u2013the unfolding, ongoing con of the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

We kicked off the year with the impeachment of the president and his military killing Iran\u2019s second in command, essentially an act of war done without Congressional approval.

Normal? No. But everyone went along with it. And those issues are long forgotten.

As long as Trump is president, by virtue of his position, we must pay attention\u2014to him. He\u2019s also managed to make every story about him, his reaction, or our reaction to his reaction, because he keeps acting unpredictably. Without empathy or care about his office, his people, our country, our democracy.

In an ordinary year, George Floyd, and our country\u2019s continuing reckoning on race, would have been the top story. It still is important.

But beyond the image of Officer Chauvin\u2019s knee to Floyd\u2019s neck, I will remember Asian Americans tear-gassed on television while at a #BLM protest at the White House.

That\u2019s when Trump brought in the military to move out the people so he could hold a bible at outside a church as a photo-op.

Even the biggest story, the pandemic, is all about what Trump did or did not do.

He managed to make Asian Americans experience the ultimate in xenophobia\u2014to be Asian in American and scapegoated for the virus, mask mandates, and lockdowns.

All of it. And Filipinos were among the most caught in the middle of all the hate.

For Trump to joke about the \u201cKung flu\u201d or to continue to use the phrase \u201cChina Virus\u201d or \u201cChinese Virus,\u201d was inflammatory and reckless. He knew what he was doing. And the results were detrimental to our community. More than 3,000 Asian Americans experienced transgressions from others that ranged from angry epithets to violent knife-wielding rage.

And when we weren\u2019t being maligned for being Asian, we were on the front lines fighting the virus<\/a>, like the nurse Gem Scorp<\/a> in Elmhurst. Queens, who tested positive for Covid while being forced to work without proper PPE.

Our Asian American communities were among the hardest hit and most neglected by the pandemic.

That\u2019s 2020. It happened. Filipino Americans know it. Asian Americans know it.

But save this column because it\u2019s coming. The denial. 2020? He\u2019ll l say it never happened. Not the way we saw it.

This column is your free inoculation, to reassure you that yes, it all happened.

Trump will say he saved us all by getting the vaccine to us in record time. But he didn\u2019t save us all. In fact, it\u2019s still unclear if there will be enough of vaccine for everyone and whether the distribution will go smoothly. Experts say getting one dose is a waste. You need the second. At this point, we are short of the vaccinations goal so far, by about 20 million, or so.

Trump will continue to say he acted quickly to deal with the virus, even though as Woodward\u2019s book \u201cRage\u201d points out, he didn\u2019t<\/a>.

Trump will look back at 2020 and continue to claim he is a victim of election fraud, even when the courts say he wasn\u2019t. He will claim he won, even when the votes say he didn\u2019t. He will continue to lie persistently because at some point, people just give up and forget.

Don\u2019t let that happen. 2020 happened.

We can\u2019t let the deniers win. Not on Jan 1, 2021. And not in 2024. The threat to democracy remains real as long as Trump is in power. Don\u2019t forget that, especially in January, when I imagine Trump will make some last-ditch effort to hang on to the office he hates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He should know by now that though he may no longer be the president, despite his denials, he\u2019ll be wearing that 2020 sash forever. It was Trump\u2019s ghastly and garish year. He made it happen, with the help of ninety-nine percent of the establishment Republicans. And the consequences are too real.

We\u2019ll all be paying for it for a long, long time. But for now, it\u2019s time for the country to unite behind one big idea: Trump is done. We\u2019re not having a 2020 2.0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EMIL GUILLERMO<\/strong> is a journalist and commentator. A former host of NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered,\u201d he\u2019s covered race, politics and media for more than 30 years. Since January 2020, he\u2019s been the museum director of the Filipino American National Historical Society Museum.  See his vlog at <\/em>www.amok.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Emil Guillermo Happy physically distanced New Year? Shoot. Believe me, I want to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?fit=1600%2C1066",1600,1066,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=150%2C150",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?fit=300%2C200",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?fit=640%2C427",640,427,true],"large":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?fit=640%2C426",640,426,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?fit=1536%2C1023",1536,1023,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?fit=1600%2C1066",1600,1066,true],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=1200%2C800",1200,800,true],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=870%2C570",870,570,true],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=600%2C900",600,900,true],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=600%2C600",600,600,true],"covernews-slider-full":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=1077%2C715",1077,715,true],"covernews-slider-center":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=522%2C500",522,500,true],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?fit=1024%2C682",1024,682,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=540%2C285",540,285,true],"covernews-medium-square":["https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?resize=375%2C250",375,250,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Candid Perspectives<\/a>","tag_info":"Candid Perspectives","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/candidperspectives.jpg?fit=1600%2C1066","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5730,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729\/revisions\/5730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}