Trump’s America Is Difficult To Understand

 



How far can this administration go? As someone who often isn’t playing with a full deck and sometimes has trouble seeing things for what they really are, I’ve ridden the crazy train that is the Trump administration about as far as I can go. It’s never made a lot of sense to me but it’s completely gone off the rails of late and my fragile mind just can’t take the nonsense anymore.

The trainwreck started during his candidacy. Nearly all political candidates lie but Donald Trump raised the art of lying to an Olympic level event. And no one seemed to care. Even his opponents, whom he told some of the worst whoppers about, after the initial shock, just grimaced and said oh that’s just the way he speaks. He’s being direct with the American people. Bullsh*t! He’s just crude and cares not one wit about anyone else. A video was released where he bragged about harassing women and grabbing them by the genitals. There was brief feigned outrage but it didn’t erode his support in the least. Even among the the religious community, and more importantly to me- the evangelical Christians, the support for Mr Trump was and remains strong. The reigning theory is as long as he gives them what they want: judges, conservative laws, relaxed banking restrictions, relaxed EPA regulations, etc... they don’t give a rat’s fanny about his lack of morality, his constant lies, his verbal and emotional abuse of anyone who dares disagree with him, his disparaging remarks about the country’s leading law enforcement agencies and his denigration of the free press. Anyone else calling for the stifling of the free press would have been run out of town . But not Trump. In his case his supporters only grow bolder and and have physically attacked the “fake” news during his rallies. Who else could get away with calling for having press credentials suspended, reporters barred from briefings, stating facts that are easily proven wrong and then blaming the media for reporting on the lies. This strategy is actually causing his approval ratings to rise. Who have we become as a society?

Mr Trump is certainly making the business community happy. He provided some the largest tax breaks for the in generations. This is supposed to lead to greater employment, greater wage increases and a better, safer life for us all. And I give him credit. The economy is booming. But how much of that is actually due to his policies. The economy has been on an upswing for the past 7 years. Job growth was equal to or greater than that of the Trump era during most of the last several quarters of the Obama administration. The increased upswing in the economy started just after the election, long before Mr Trump was capable of enacting any of his visions, simply because business believed he would be pro business and remove all, or most, regulations put in place to protect the public. Never mind those regulations were meant to avoid another catastrophe such as the banking collapse of the late 00’s. On a more personal note, his EPA has rolled back many of the clean water regulations in the coal fields, regulations that took generations and blood to get enacted. The time had finally come when you seldom saw sludge running through the stream beside your home or the mine behind your house could empty their silt ponds into any surrounding ground water. The health of future generations is in serious jeopardy. They also saw fit to roll back several occupational and safety regulations for the mining industry. According to his mining industry big wig friends, this was imperative if the mining industry was to be brought back to greatness. So far, in the short time Mr. Trump has been in office, mining jobs have increased meagerly and mining deaths nationwide have doubled. Even the rate of new black lung diagnoses is on the rise.

And now. Now! The president has the nerve to rip children out of parents arms, place them in oversized warehouses, jails maybe too harsh a word but not by much, and having a very poor plan for reuniting them. The agency responsible for these children even lost track of where 1500-2000 of these children were for a time. And to make matters worse, he doesn’t have the courage to claim this atrocity as his own. No. He’s trying to lay the blame at the feet of the Democrats, claiming they passed inhumane laws that he has no choice but to follow. A flat out falsehood. Even leading members of his own party have said so. It is entirely within the scope of his discretion to end this abuse. But if you listen closely, he doesn’t want to end it that way. He’s using these children as pawns, trying to make the Democrats pay for his damned foolish wall that the Mexicans are making fun of. Much more formidable walls, think East Germany and China, have failed to yield the desired effects, even with dedicated, ruthless, totalitarian regimes behind them. Again, think of Russia. Then again, if things continue as they are, that may be where we’re headed. After all, most of Mr Trump’s best friends on the world stage are despots.

Breaking Fake News! Contrary to Trump’s claims that family separation could only be stopped by through congressional efforts, he signed an executive order effectively doing so earlier this afternoon. Funny how he was suddenly able to accomplish that task after it became apparent that even his own party found this practice reprehensible.

There is so much more about the Trump administration to be outraged about, oh so much more. Think of the Charlottesville white supremacists, calling our allies liars, withdrawing from agreements negotiated in good faith with our trading partners, or denigrating his own Attorney General. But per his plans I believe, the indignation of one event doesn’t have time to fully sink in and the consequences become truly apparent before he does something else outlandish. Always driving the news cycle to a new story, never letting one settle too heavily. Except the family separation one. Somehow, this one bit him in the butt and wouldn’t let go until he corrected course. Only time will tell if he is sincere in this effort.

Yes, for someone with a mind in a continuous foggy state, where the world often appears to be swimming by in a thick film of molasses, the crazy train that is the Trump administration truly appears to have jumped the tracks. And it’s becoming more than I can comprehend, I’m ready to get off this train. To be clear this is not a partisan thing on my part. I’ve voted conservative almost as many times as I’ve voted liberal. I don’t vote for the party, I vote the issues and for the candidates I believe are most capable of dealing with those issues. I have never, and almost certainly will never, voted a straight ticket in my life. No, this is about the cancerous lesion attached deep in the bowels of our national consciousness called Trump’s America that most certainly must be cut out for the very survival of our country. Our congressional leaders must provide the profiles in courage to provide the constitutionally provided congressional oversight that has been so sorely lacking to this point. They must stop shirking their responsibilities out of fear of Mr Trump’s Twitter feed. If they can’t be true to their values and represent the wishes of the constituents who sent them to Washington then of what use are they? This is another thing that really scrambles my mind. One of the most common refrains concerning Trump’s election is that the electorate was tired of the same ole same ole. If this is the case, why were so many incumbents returned to Washington? Why are term limits so difficult to enact? We, as a country, must find the intestinal fortitude to stand up to this wanna be king and his ineffectual congressional court jesters and let them know this tyranny is unacceptable. 

Comments

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