#fouryearsago — Public Fediverse posts

Nobody should look back on 2020 with anything but a mix of relief that it’s over and dread about what we watched. And yet Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump keeps asking voters if they’re better off now than they were four years ago.

So I had to go look up my receipts from back then. Here is what they reveal about where things in my life stood on Oct. 25, 2020 versus today:

• The nation and the world were in the grip of the deadliest pandemic in more than a century, and those of us hunkered down at and near home could only hope that vaccines would arrive and work. Today marks a week since my latest covid booster; four years ago, I did not expect to keep getting vaxxed every year, but I don’t mind that brief annual investment in helping to ensure that a case of covid feels no worse than a mild cold.
• I did not leave my house at all that day four years ago, per my Google Maps timeline, and had last ventured out for a work event in March of 2020. Today began with me landing at Dulles International Airport on a red-eye from Los Angeles that in turn followed a flight from Maui, where I’d been covering Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit (with that company covering my airfare and lodging).
• My interactions with people beyond family members on that Sunday in 2020 consisted of a Zoom appearance before a friend’s college journalism class in the early afternoon, followed by the Sunday Dungeons & Dragons game via Zoom with friends that had become the only way I would see many of those guys until 2021. This Friday began in a crowded LAX.
• The Vanguard S&P 500 Index fund that represents my primary investment vehicle closed at $320.02 a share on the previous business day back then. Today it’s at $536.30.
• My income though that point of 2020 was about 20% below my income so far this year–and the previous three months of 2020 had been especially brutal, with my income over that span barely over half what I made in the most recent three months (which still falls below my most profitable period of freelancing, around a decade ago).
• My own recollection and Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that some groceries–for example, milk and eggs–were cheaper back then.
• After three years of seeing the Trump administration luxuriate in lies, corruption, bigotry, incompetence and cruelty, my optimism about my country was fraying like the worn American flag hanging from our front porch (pictured above as it looked in July of 2020). Four years later, the Biden-Harris administration has disappointed me on occasion but has not had me cringing about the state of the union; more often, this White House has surprised me with its progress in such areas as building out infrastructure and greening our economy.

Looking over all of this anecdata, none of it makes me pine for four years ago.

But in this election, none of that should even matter. Beyond Trump’s open fondness for fascism, weird Hitler admiration, unhinged incoherence onstage, and relentless lying–traits notably absent in Democratic nominee Kamala Harris–he instigated the Jan. 6 insurrection because he could not accept getting fired by the American people in a free and fair election. Attempted murder of democracy is among the most serious crimes an American president can commmit, and Trump’s guilt there should alone rank him as the worst president in American history and disqualify him from any return to that office.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/10/25/four-years-ago/

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