Sunday, January 29, 2017

A Political Rant

This is Not Normal – people keep saying and writing, and it’s on a T-shirt I acquired last week at a Litquake reading by writers against Trump. I am not the only one who noticed back in July, or earlier, the authoritarian and fascistic tone of Trump’s campaign. It’s only getting worse.
Every other word out of his mouth is a lie and now his executive orders forbid federal agencies from sharing information with the public, and his press secretary spouts clear untruths while advising the public to reject all sources other than Trump for news and information.
And it’s starting to harm our country. Not only with the wave of misogynist assaults, racist violence, swastikas and bomb threats against Jews, and general open bigotry. But Trump’s mixture of careless, thoughtless, defiantly ignorant words and tweets is offending foreign countries that have been reliable trading partners of ours, and is destabilizing already shaky structures that keep the planet from stumbling into World War III.

And don’t get me started on his disregard for national security. Orange Twitler uses an unsecured phone to spew his babblings onto the world stage. He chats with world leaders with his family (business partners) in the room. He refuses to release his tax returns, which would reveal the extent of his business relationships with foreign powers and which business would profit from his role as President, or to divest from his businesses, making it perfectly clear that the presidency is already being used to increase the profits of the Trump Organization. That’s not just a whopping great conflict of interest, that’s treason.

Technically, treason is actions taken to help a foreign government to seriously injure our nation, and his careless tweets that damage America’s standing among nations arguably qualify. And then there’s the Emoluments Clause, which bars federal office holders from being paid by foreign governments. Well, foreign diplomats stay at Trump hotels all the time, putting money directly into Trump’s coffers. As it happens, the fee to join the Mar-a-Lago resort has just been doubled because the prospect of access to Trump raises its value to citizens and foreigners alike. The president is supposed to be a public servant, not a public plunderer.

Trump’s continued bullying braggadocio about making Mexico pay for a border wall has already caused the Mexican president to cancel a planned visit to America. Any self-respecting nation will decide to ignore America until we get a sane adult for a leader.

And why do news organizations keep reporting on his middle-of-the-night tweets? They need to pare down that coverage to the absolute minimum, and focus on his actions. Such as the pile of executive orders that’s on pace to outstrip the (so-called by Republicans) executive over-reach of President Obama in no time flat, orders against the Affordable Care Act, sanctuary cities, and government scientists.

And how about the henchmen and women he’s chosen to run the government? How about Rex Tillerson for our Secretary of State? His entire career working for the oil giant Exxon, and he’s been so helpful to Russia than they gave him the “Order of Friendship.” The role of Russia in the election and its treatment by the Trump administration raise many more questions than answers.

And he’s bestowing cabinet posts on half a dozen Wall Street Goldman Sachs alumni instead of keeping his promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington insiders in power. And, apparently to get an African-American on board, he appoints Dr. Ben Carson, who first declined a cabinet post because of his lack of experience, to be in charge of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for which he is totally unqualified. Among the very few female nominees is Betsy deVos, a billionaire campaign donor who’s never attended or taught in a public school, to head the Education Department. She’s a big fan of unregulated charter schools, and would funnel money there instead of to the public schools where some 90% of our children are educated.

I guess my fears fall into three main piles. One pile would apply to any Republican administration, which would do its best to undo the last eight years of progress: to wreck the economy, throw millions off health insurance, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, end marriage equality, and ban abortion. Their goal would be to take the country back 50-100 years.

Pile two is the special threat posed by having for President a narcissistic, megalomaniacal, dictatorial ignoramus who is surrounded by yes-men and sycophants, who spews crass, bigoted, self-obsessed, demonstrably false garbage instead of learning about his job and America and the world. He’ll cut us off from the rest of the world or trigger a nuclear holocaust with complete unawareness of the consequences of his actions.

Pile three is the trouble that could be caused by the power he is giving to bigots and haters who now feel free to assault, disparage, and disregard folks who are different from them. More to the point, I fear the rise of a new American fascism. There is evidence in a Trump divorce proceeding that he studied the speeches of Hitler. And his own speeches strike similar notes and are eerily effective at calling on peoples’ worst natures, getting them to vote against their own self-interest and to act badly. And he has managed to convince millions of people to believe propositions that are demonstrably not true. Or, worse, to convince them that the actual facts are not knowable or are unimportant. Just believe what Trump says (or what he’s saying today), and all will be well. Because he is the strongest, smartest, bestest person in the room, and thus is the only person who can save America from the horrible, disastrous state it is in. Pay no attention to the facts—that the economy is vastly improved from eight years ago, that American auto-makers are thriving, that the hemorrhaging of jobs stopped, and that private sector jobs have grown every month for a historically long period of time. That the stock market is blooming and even wages are starting to rise.

Republicans refuse to acknowledge any of this progress, but nevertheless want to reverse it, in the name of “small government,” and deficit reduction. Problem is, at the same time, the GOP is extending ever more government power into bedrooms, bathrooms, doctors’ offices, and women’s bodies (no men’s bodies, of course). They want to cut spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in order to buy excessive military weapons, a border fence, and millions of deportations, that will, at the very least, make America less safe from terrorism. What happened to all the promised spending on roads, bridges, airports, and other infrastructure?

Many purported Christians voted for him because they thought he was one. They thought he would enforce their values, and resist the spread of tolerance for diversity. The First Amendment comes first for good reasons. Everyone has the right to exercise their own religion in this country, as long as they don’t harm others or prevent others from exercising theirs. Congress must not pass any laws establishing one religion over another. You are free to uphold your own morals only upon your co-religionists. If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one. You have no right to deny me the right to have one. You don’t believe in same-sex marriage? Don’t have one; don’t officiate when your own members seek one. But if you conduct a public business, you must serve all customers: black, brown, straight, or gay. And doctors do not have a right to refuse to treat patients they consider unworthy. Free exercise of religion does not include a right to discriminate against other religions. And if you run a business, you must provide health insurance to your employees under the same rules that apply to all employers. And pay women and men the same wages for the same work, and so on.

And let’s consider the Second Amendment, shall we? Although it explicitly concerns militias, a Republican-dominated Supreme Court has found a constitutional right for individuals to own guns. The most powerful lobby in our nation, the National Rifle Association, has blocked any and all legislation that could keep guns away from people who should not have them. And the NRA blocks research into how to address our epidemic of handgun deaths. Hell, we can’t even keep guns out of the hands of toddlers, who shoot somebody every week in this country, often fatally. And the NRA protects arms manufacturers from even trying out safety measures that could keep a gun from being fired by anyone other than its owner. During the last decade or so, gun ownership in America has doubled from two weapons for every man, woman, and child to four weapons for every man, woman, and child. Nobody needs that many ways to cause injury and death. Is it not clear by now that the NRA does not serve citizens? Its obvious goal is to maximize the profits of gun-makers. This is underlined by the fact that not even the slaughter of school children could get past its influence to institute the mildest rules on background checks or assault weapons.

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