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My Point of View, By Jennifer Vogt Erickson

Happy New Year! We are more than ready to turn the calendar and put 2020 behind us. Thanks to medical science developing effective vaccines against COVID in record time, we have hope of returning to normal life sometime in 2021.

This year has taken a heavy toll. Over 2,500 Minnesotans have died of COVID in the past two months, doubling the total number this year to over 5,000. One of them was my aunt, who lived in a care facility, and my uncle wrote in his Christmas letter to us, “Be careful, be safe, stay healthy.” He couldn’t be with his wife of over 50 years when she was sick and dying, which is perhaps the cruelest aspect of COVID.

Even with vaccine rollout, it will be months before the pandemic subsides. December has been the deadliest month so far in the U.S., and this winter will be tough. We must remain vigilant as we await our turn to receive the vaccines that are a passport to resuming our regular activities.

Next year will also be the year president-elect Biden takes office. I am hopeful for a competent administration that will restore the White House’s permanent pandemic team, as well as rebuilding other essential policy areas that have been upended or neglected under Trump.

Comparing this transition to four years ago, it’s interesting that Aaron Farris spilled ink on “slander” and “canceling” in his GOP column last week.

Farris accuses the local DFL of trying to “cancel” people who offend them, when that is what I experienced in actuality from his party. Farris may not be aware of this, but local Trump supporters made an effort to ban me after I wrote a column critical of President Trump’s and his inner circle’s habit of lying from day one of his administration in 2017.

At first I was summarily barred from submitting new columns, but after many people contacted the paper, I received what amounted to a four-week suspension.

I re-read my controversial column from January 2017, and I stand by every word I wrote in it. Since then, the Washington Post has documented over 20,000 false or misleading claims by Trump.

Let’s also look closer at this statement by Farris, in reference to an unnamed local DFL member: “He accused Republicans of spreading misinformation, made six completely laughable claims about me, a 16-year-old, while trying to slander my reputation for expressing my opinion. These claims included accusations of racism, homophobia, climate change denial and even sexual assault.”

I assume Farris is referring to Ted Hinnenkamp. I have looked through Hinnenkamp’s letters to the editor, and I found nothing of the sort. I did find a letter (“Don’t demonize teachers” from May 31, 2019) in which Hinnenkamp criticized Trump’s behavior on each of these specific issues, and he wondered how Trump could be an acceptable role model to young people, particularly in the GOP.

Consider the irony.

Farris accuses the person of slander (actually libel, because it’s in print). Most seriously, he said the writer accused him of sexual assault, a violent crime. I request Farris either provide documentation of where this accusation is printed, or he should issue a retraction in the paper and also apologize to both the person in question and the County DFL. If Farris doesn’t have supporting evidence for his claim, he is the one who, in fact, has engaged in defamation.

Recall that I was suspended from writing columns for merely offending Republicans, not because they could point to any misstatements I had made.

Farris is also mistaken about youth support for conservatives. Voters ages 18 to 30 supported Biden over Trump by a margin of 2-to-1 according to exit polls. This is similar to the strong liberal tilt that Pew Research has measured among Millenials (born 1980-1996). Among Generation Z (born after 1996, including Farris), Pew Research found overwhelming support for the idea that government should be used more to solve problems.

Young people are, in fact, the age group least likely to support GOP positions.

I agree with Hinnenkamp that Trump has been a terrible role model for our children. Joe Biden is far from perfect, but he is kind rather than curmudgeonly, empathetic rather than ego-centric, and fact-driven rather than prone to retweeting crackpot conspiracies. Our politics are truly broken and debased, and I hope that Biden can help restore our faith in self-governance and in each other.

The world has changed so much in the past four years, and we’ve got to face facts that are hard to swallow. Operating on “alternative facts” is not sustainable if the U.S. is to remain a world leader.

To all our frontline healthcare workers, our first responders, police and fire and rescue, a special thanks. Be careful, be safe, stay healthy.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.