“I mean to say that every day it’s just another rotten mess. And when it’s going to change, my friend, is anybody’s guess. So I’m watching and I’m waiting. Hoping for the best. You can think I’m going to praying, every time I hear ’em saying that there’s no way to delay that trouble coming every day…” — Frank Zappa, 1966
Long ago, but not far away, a former friend told me one huge problem with religious zealots and idealogues being elected to public office is that they get everybody bogged down in issues that actually don’t really matter. Some political observers have been critical of President Donald Trump for that very reason, driving political discourse on such questionable topics as:
- The condolence call to Sgt. Johnson’s widow.
- The lengthy, fruitless debate about taking a knee for the national anthem.
- Picking a fight with the mayor of San Juan.
- Challenging Rex Tillerson to an IQ contest.
- Name-calling exchanges with Sen. Bob Corker.
- Making unsubstantiated claims about Obama wiretapping him.
- Refusing to shake hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
- Elbowing his way past an Italian official ahead of him at a European political gathering.
- His many golf outings after insisting Obama golfed too often.
- Failure to call out white supremacists at Charlottsville.
- Referring to North Korea’s leader flippantly as “Little Rocket Man.”
- Crowing about bringing back “Merry Christmas” to greetings over the holidays.
There’s more, but you get the idea. There are serious problems confronting this nation and planet, but we seem bogged down in attacking and defending Donald Trump’s personal behavior. We’re not properly dealing with serious issues such as climate change and three devastating hurricanes and numerous wildfires out West, a possible nuclear war with North Korea, the War on Terror, the worst mass domestic shooting in our recent history, a growing gap between rich and poor and dealing with the most expensive health care system in the world.
I’ve heard some say Trump and his legions actually want us to be distracted and diverted. The president more than two weeks after the reports of the ambush deaths of four special forces soldiers has refused to talk about what happened and why. And even GOP senators have admitted they didn’t know we had troops in Niger, Mali and Chad.
One report I saw noted that Trump’s latest travel ban list included Chad, which was so outraged it pulled back its support for our troops just before the ambushes occurred.
And while we’ve been focused on Trump’s perceived foibles, 51 Republican senators have announced support for a budget with huge tax cuts for the rich and increasing the deficit by a trillion dollars.
The most important issue for me, and I hope it can serve as a lesson learned for many, is that we’ve often been told we need someone to run government like a business. Now we have a businessman at the helm, and his approach is undemocratic, top-down, just like a corporate CEO. A business is not a republic, not a democracy, It is an autocratic institution, governed by its top dog, and everyone serving under him must do as he says or be fired.
I sincerely believe that Tump indeed is unfit to be president of a republic or a democracy, that he is incompetent in the job. He is unable to negotiate with our enemies and projects a leadership style of “my way or the highway,” which may work at a private business, but not a nation that supposedly values freedom.
The real fault lies with us. We elected him and too many of us don’t understand the folly of our actions. Too many also tenaciously want to stay the course, which will take us down a path that perhaps our Founding Fathers couldn’t have seen coming more than 200 years afterward.
But I recall Thomas Jefferson say that when you hear a speaker talk about silencing the press and free speech, you are listening to the words of a tyrant.” And don’t forget Benjamin Franklin’s warning: “He who would sacrifice freedom for security deserves neither.”
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