Goodness me. I hate talking politics but let's not make the mistake of getting into false equivalency.

The Trump presidency has gathered a cesspool of supporters and sycophants who:

1. Have at best maintained prosperity and growth (mostly by keeping interest rates low and patching economic holes with deregulations and/or short-term protectionist policies). The BBC(1) had a nice collection of charts showing -- essentially -- that the rate of change in the well-being of the economy did not deviate when Trump took office.

2. Have increased spending and absolutely ballooned our national debt (see "short-term" policies) (2). While I do not mind spending money to solve structural economic problems (automation removing jobs, the transition from polluting industries to cleaner ones), much of the funding went to solve problems the Trump administration created themselves!

3. Have absolutely demonstrated a complete dearth of moral and ethical values. This is an absolute killer in my book. From forcibly creating orphans (3) or allowing an enemy state to promote the hunting of American soldiers, it's clear that the administration has no moral qualms regarding their actions.

When it comes to COVID, the United States has a per capita COVID death rate that is insanely disproportionate when compared with other developed countries. The US has a per capita COVID death rate that is 66x Japan, 18x Australia, and almost 6x Germany. While the rallying cry has been, "But saving the economy is more important than saving lives!", this is absolutely unsupported by data. The delta in GDP between the end of Q1 and the end of Q3 is roughly a loss of 9% in the United States (5). In Germany, that same period of time resulted only in a loss of 2.5% (6). The willful spread of lies and misinformation have caused much death not only in the United States, but in many other countries which historically have looked towards the United States as being a bastion of truth and information. Trump and his cronies have enabled many other leaders around the world by normalizing an unethical and immoral response to a crisis.

Beyond the reduction of some federal taxes (which has admittedly saved me some money) and a stronger stance against IP theft (which I think is better for the United States but perhaps worse for the world), I struggle to come up with cases in which the Trump administration has improved America, the American people, or society as a whole in any meaningful manner.

For four years, Trump and his assembled cohort causing a regression in American ethics, integrity, world standing, and education. They have done this intentionally. From the beginning, they've approached the governance of America like a popularity contest where the end goal was to satisfy sycophants and fill their own pockets. I am not calling all who support Trump racist or evil, but Trump and many of those he associates with have absolutely promoted hate, demonstrated unethical behavior, and upheld the highest levels of greed and degeneracy.

If these people were my acquaintances in my personal or business life, you would not fault me for "ejecting" them from my life. I would imagine that if you had a friend who cheered when five hundred children were not only ripped from their families, but then kept in fear and isolation away from anyone they knew, and then were told that they would never see their parents again...you would not want to be associated with them at all. The fact of the matter is that there were people who did cheer this type of degenerate behavior and there were people that actively enabled the destruction of American integrity. Those people should absolutely be excised from "polite society" as pariahs to set an example so that others do not tread on the path of wickedness. Becoming socially undesirable is not even in the same realm as enabling the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, allowing American soldiers to be killed, accepting foreign bribes to influence the American government, creating concentration camps where children are made to be orphans, fanning the flames of racial tensions, and so on.

Sources:

1: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-45827430

2: https://www.thebalance.com/trump-plans-to-reduce-national-de...

3: https://coppercourier.com/story/545-children-trump/

4: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-pandemics-effe...

5: https://www.bea.gov/news/2020/gross-domestic-product-third-q....

6: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth#:~:text=GDP%....