The current political and social upheaval unsettling our nation includes Americans of Italian descent on both sides of the turmoil.  I don’t find all of them noble or worthy of praise just because they are “Italian.”  It is their actions and ideology that should concern us.  Let’s see what comes out in the wash:

Last week, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s own Attorney General reported that the Cuomo Administration tried shorting the death rate in nursing homes some 50% by shifting the body count to hospitals.  Some 13,000 elderly residents succumbed to the China Virus after Cuomo directed ill-equipped nursing homes to accept Covid patients.  The AARP noted his dire March 25th directive in its special December issue. Cuomo eventually realized his blunder on May 10th and reversed the order.  Notwithstanding, he wrote a book on pandemic “leadership” and received an Emmy from a fawning media for his daily “science & data” briefings. 

One governor the unbalanced media hasn’t fawned over is Republican Ron DeSantis of Florida.  Considered by conservatives as the anti-Cuomo, DeSantis ordered nursing homes, early on, not to accept Covid patients.  With 40% more elderly than New York, Florida has lost 26,684 inhabitants to New York’s 44,140. 

New York’s Mayor Bill DeBlasio is presiding over a disturbing increase in gun shootings (up 100%) and homicides (up 40%) since he “defunded” millions from the NYPD.  He will be praised for instituting pre-kindergarten in city schools, but horrid public safety policies will haunt his legacy.

On the national level, Machiavelli could learn a thing or two from Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). I sing her praises for being the first female Speaker of the House, but she spent much of last year resisting any compromise with Republicans over a stimulus package to help the American people.  She eventually accepted half the amount first offered, and only after Joe Biden was elected.  She famously said, “nothing is better than something” to justify her callous strategy.

I sided with Pelosi against Trump’s infamous rally-turned-riot on January 6th, and felt her trauma that day as she hid from Capitol marauders.  But, we now learn that the breach into the building could have been prevented if her Sergeant-at-Arms had accepted warnings from the FBI and others to reinforce the Capitol.  Speaker Pelosi commands those House guards, and Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is in charge of the Senate guards.  What did they know and when?

Also clouding Pelosi’s legacy is her unrelenting pursuit to destroy now-citizen Donald Trump through multiple impeachments.  The first one knowingly failed, unintentionally distracting the entire government and country from the invading China Virus.  The current impeachment is so blatantly unconstitutional that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has decided not to preside.  Instead, Senate Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who has denounced Trump forever, will preside as the “impartial” judge.  Leahy is Italian American (mother: Zambon, as in Zamboni). 

Vengeance is now mixed with paranoia, as Speaker Pelosi requires a force of 5,000 armed troops to protect the Capitol well into March, and sees violent conspiracies within the House.  Even the stage-managed National Guard is being vetted to weed out Trumpites. 

Are we awaiting a doomsday Trumpist insurrection, or are Pelosi and the Left so traumatized by January 6th that we must all share their nightmares?  So-called “moderate” Joe Biden is neither damping down this hysteria nor defusing the root causes.   His Executive Orders, imposing a new American culture, fly in the face of his call for “unity.” Allowing transgender boys to compete in girls’ sports, re-energizing illegal immigration, prefiguring Black reparations (“equity”), killing thousands of jobs by halting the border wall and Keystone Pipe projects, disbanding the restorative 1776 commission, and banning “China Virus” and “Wuhan Virus” from federal lexicon.  This last edict didn’t ban the “Spanish Flu,” or “German measles.”  Biden’s wife Jill (nee` Jacobs/Giacoppo) might have asked him to ban the words “mafia” and “crime family” out of respect for Italian Americans.

Two Democrats with traditional values – Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, nominated for Commerce Secretary and Joe Manchin (orig: Mancino) of West Virginia – may be the only brakes on the “change America” radicals.  Manchin has already put his party on notice of his independence.  Raimondo, once a venture capitalist, admitted that Biden’s Green New Deal needs to be paid with new taxes.

Maybe, their integrity will restore national sanity. -JLM