Are you better off than you were four years ago?

It's a great question but the answer really depends on where you're perched.

Four years ago, we’d just lost Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and before she could be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, then-Pres. Donald Trump nominated the conservative anti-ruth, Amy Coney Barrett to take her place.

Are we better off with the addition of Judge Barrett? I would argue no, and that’s not just me being mean. She is in the process of, as this New Yorker article argues, playing the long game for Christofascism.

Four years ago, by the end of September 2020, we were on our way to losing 200,000 people to COVID. That figure would rise to 400,000 by the time Let ‘Em Drink Bleach inelegantly left office. Hospitals were using refrigerated trucks to store corpses. We didn’t have proper protective equipment. We didn’t even have toilet paper and we all learned the phrase “supply chain.” Teachers everywhere were learning to teach via a weird technology called Zoom. We wore masks (those of us who were paying attention) and avoided crowds (ditto).

(We’ve since lost more than a million people to COVID so far and while studies disagree how many would have survived with better country leadership, perhaps we can agree that Trump lied, and people died.)

JD Vance had already backtracked from his earlier criticisms of the convicted rapist because the shillbilly was beginning his end run toward the U.S. Senate.

Traitor Josh Hawley, Q-Mo., was standing in front of a mirror practicing the fist-raise that would make him infamous, as he was preparing to use his position as a U.S. senator to interfere with a free and fair election.

California was battling wildfires, this time with the help of Mexican bomberos.

Four years ago was before the election, before the insurrection, but seeds were being laid online for the latter with the damnable hashtag #StopTheSteal.

People want to talk about grocery prices — and that’s valid. But they’re missing a significant part of the picture. Four years ago, gas prices were on the increase, as were food prices, and now they are going down again. Four years ago, child poverty rate hovered at 16.1%. It is now at roughly 15.3%.

Four years ago, there were wars and rumors of wars and unfairness and atrocities. But are you better off than you were four years ago? I certainly am. And I will vote accordingly. As one colleague said recently (in a campaign slogan that will get zero traction): In the choice between democracy and rape, democracy wins every time.