Make America better again

Already I've had it.

I've been back home for just a weekend but I'm ready to get back on that cruise ship and get away from America the Angry.

The ship my wife and I cruised on recently in the Caribbean was like heaven.

No political arguments at lunch. No one ranting about $6 gas prices. No TV screens filled with Fox or CNN talking heads.

Only one person on the ship tested positive for COVID — you remember COVID?

Enjoying time on the blue ocean, getting off the ship in Jamaica and playing golf — it was a truly great vacation.

But then you come back to America, where it seems everyone needs to be enrolled in an anger management program.

America has become a depressing, unhappy place to be and it's all because of woke politics.

It's getting so you're not allowed to laugh anymore.

When we got back home we learned the wokesters who run Twitter were suspending the conservative Babylon Bee satire site.

Why?

For the politically incorrect crime of deliberately "misgendering" U.S. Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine by awarding her the Bee's title of "Man of the Year."

And this last week I've had to watch a supposedly brilliant and super qualified nominee for the United States Supreme Court tell a U.S. senator she couldn't define what a woman was because she is "not a biologist."

Was I allowed to laugh at that absurd answer? I hope so, because I didn't check first with The Washington Post editorial board.

But seriously, there's nothing funny about what's been happening to the country since the Biden-Harris-Pelosi gang has been in charge.

We've always had incompetent or ideologically misguided Democrats in Washington who royally screw up the country at home and abroad.

But the current regime has managed in just 14 months to wreck our energy sector, whip up the inflation rate to nearly 8%, spike the crime rate in cities and turn America into an international weakling that can't be trusted or respected.

On top of these ongoing Democrat fiascos, look at what's become of our society.

People can hardly talk to each other or eat meals with each other anymore without arguing about politics. You have to sit with people you agree with 100% or they cancel you for lunch.

Everyone's so worried about being woke, even private schools are joining public schools and pushing sex education on young kids.

And of course Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is being blasted as the bad guy by the liberal media because he doesn't want kids being taught about sex and gender fluidity in kindergarten.

Seeing all these unnecessary economic and social troubles makes me sad, but I'm not sad for me.

I'm sad for the country. I'm sad for my son who is 43 and my daughter who is 38.

But mostly I'm sad for my granddaughters, who are 6 and almost 4. What kind of future are they going to grow up in?

Sometimes — especially if you are not as old as I am or watch too much TV — it can all look hopeless.

It looks like there's nothing we can do to get back to being the America where people are happy, prosperous and civil to one another even when they argue over politics.

As I tell my kids, remember 1979.

That was a year the whole country was bummed out. Inflation was roaring, interest rates were in the teens, the Soviet Empire was still dangerous and cars were lined up for blocks at gas stations.

But all that misery ended almost overnight when Jimmy Carter was replaced by Ronald Reagan.

So remember, as I tell my kids, it only takes one election to change America for the better again. We proved it in 1980 and we can prove it again in 2024 — first with a little help this fall.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation.