So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly......
....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how....Donald J. Trump
...it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!"
There in one fell swoop, or more accurately, in three fell tweets, the president threw down the gauntlet, tossed away the dog whistle, and made a clarion call out to his constituents, the 60 million or so Americans who voted for and continue to support him. While it was only in my imagination, I could hear the response of many of them clear as a bell: "right on Mr. President, you tell those bitches to either love this country and tow the line or get the hell out!"
There are many Trump supporters who are deeply hurt by the accusation that everyone who supports this president is a racist. They respond just like their man who tweeted the other day: "I don't have a racist bone in my body."
Whatever.
In my book, if it quacks like a duck, if it waddles like a duck, if it craps like a duck, it must be a duck.
Despite denials from both the man himself and his legion of sycophantic, anatine followers, President Donald Duck Trump in those tweets from last Sunday showed his true colors. Heck some, not a lot, but some Republicans in Congress even had to admit, those were outright racist comments.
In case you've been asleep this week the targets of his latest tantrum are four freshmen members of Congress, all women of color, all with ethnic heritages that have been dissed by the president, and all very much at odds with him. Obviously they're also all American citizens because you don't get to serve in Congress if you're not. With the exception of Representative Ilhan Omar whom the president would like to send back to her native Somalia, it is unclear where the president would like to send the other three representatives. Rashida Tlahib was born in Detroit, U.S.A., Alexandria Ocasio Cortez comes from the same place as Trump, New York City, U.S.A. and Ayanna Pressley originally hails from right here in Chicago, U.S.A. As a person of African American descent, one can assume that her ancestors were in this country, albeit many of them against their will, far longer than the president’s. And it turns out that Ilhan Omar has been in this country longer than the First Lady.
When confronted about the tweets the following day, the president doubled down saying that people who hate America as the four duly elected officials apparently do according to him, are perfectly free to leave.
I haven't heard the slogan "America, love it or leave it" in a long time. It was popular back when I was a child during the years of the Vietnam War, directed at folks who were opposed to the war and the men who did whatever they could to avoid serving in it. Ironically the most celebrated Vietnam War draft dodger we have in this country right now is none other than Donald Trump.
Of course this country has a long, proud history of people fighting for what they believe is right, even if it runs counter to the official policy of the government. In this piece I refused to criticize Trump for his actions during the war because given my feelings both at the time and now about that war, I might have done the same. I did however say that if you chose to avoid service, you’d be wise to keep a low profile when it comes to commenting on other people’s service. The funny thing about Trump is that his supporters are so enthralled with him they believe HE is the true patriot while someone like one of Trump's harshest critics, the late senator John McCain who served with distinction in Vietnam and was a POW for many years, was a traitor.
That is why I have by and large given up on trying to discuss the president with his supporters because verifiable facts, logic and common sense play no role in their thought process, at least regarding this subject. In other words they are going to believe whatever they want to believe, such as more people showed up to Trump's inauguration than any other, Barack Obama put little children in cages on the US/Mexico border, Climate Change is a hoax, John McCain was a traitor, Robert Mueller is a Democrat, Donald Trump is not a racist, and the sky was yellow and the sun was blue, if they also happen to be Grateful Dead fans.
As far as I'm concerned, it's still a free country and by golly people have the right to believe whatever they want, even if it is nonsense. It says so right in the First Amendment. And in a democracy, the people have the right to vote for whomever they choose, from members of the local school council to president. That is their prerogative.
We on the other side can point our fingers until they fall off at Trump supporters, Fox News, the DNC giving Bernie Sanders a raw deal back in 2016, the lack of credible choices of candidates on election day, Russian interference in the election, the Electoral College, or a whole number of other issues. But the truth is this: Donald Trump is president today for one and only one reason, not enough people voted for Hillary Clinton on November 8, 2016.
Granted, Clinton was not a universally popular candidate. She and her husband, the former president have a lot of baggage between them. Because of that she was never able to shake off the constant barrage of bogus attacks from Republicans, some of which stuck even with Democratic voters. The final nail in the coffin of her candidacy was FBI director James Comey's eleventh hour announcement that he was re-opening the case concerning her use of an unapproved email server to do government business. Comey immediately backtracked saying there really wasn't much proof of malfeasance after all, but the damage was done. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands Americans who would never in a million years have voted for Donald Trump, decided they couldn't in right conscience vote for Hillary Clinton either. So rather than choosing "the lesser of two evils", they either sat out the election or voted for a third party candidate.
Trump supporters on the other hand, didn't have the same ethical compunctions about their man. I don't believe there has ever been a presidential candidate with more of a documented history than the current president. He had been a public figure for at least forty years before he ran for president. From dozens of allegations of criminal sexual assault, to his associations with organized crime, to his multiple business failures and bankruptcies, to his stiffing of contractors, to his role in perpetuating the birther myth, you name it, Donald Trump's life is an open book, and not a pretty one. His campaign suffered an eleventh hour blow as well when the infamous tape of his bragging about molesting women surfaced. Even that wasn't able to sway his supporters, especially women and Evangelical Christians who simply averted their eyes from his endless moral lapses. "We knew who he was..." they continue to say to this day, "...we just wanted someone who would clean the swamp." Whatever cleaning the swamp means, today those people are perfectly happy with the job Trump has been doing, which this week now includes making openly racist remarks which have in turn been mimicked by many of his supporters. No one should be the least surprised by this, he based much of his campaign on white Americans' fear of the other, whether they be immigrants or long standing citizens who happen to not be white.
We on the other side hope for a miracle, a deus ex machina that will come down and sweep away this president and his administration. Every time I'm at my mom's place and turn on Rachel Maddow (her favorite talking head), she presents some kind of horrible revelation that makes me think: "OK, now they're really gonna get him." However we are delusional if we think that one day soon, some bombshell of damning evidence will come out that will once and for all destroy this presidency. It won't matter (as many have already alluded) if Trump was one of Jeffrey Epstein's clients in the nineties and had sex with young teenagers, or if Robert Muller rides into Congress next week on a white steed and proclaims that yes Trump is guilty of collusion with the Russians and obstruction of justice, or even if it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the president did indeed shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Forget about it, even if those things are revealed, it won't matter in the slightest. Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the lion’s share of Republicans in Congress will all find a way to spin any allegations against Trump, and as sure as it rains in Indianapolis in the summertime, you'll be hearing your Trump supporting friends parroting their words the next morning on Facebook.
As I see it, there are only two ways that Trump won't be re-elected a year from November. One is that we slip into a deep recession and self-interest will shake at least some of the less devoted members of his base. Hopefully that won't happen. Much less painful and far more pragmatic would be if those of us who do not like this president make a concerted effort to get out and vote for the Democratic candidate, whomever that should be. Like it or not folks, that's the way it works. It may make us feel morally justified to not cast a vote for a candidate we don't feel meets all our expectations, but in the end, that only enables the victory of a potentially far worse candidate. I know this very well because in November of 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader, and I am perfectly willing to admit today, that was a dreadful mistake.
At this writing there are 25 candidates running to represent the Democratic Party in the 2020 presidential election. Some of them I admire, many of them I am indifferent to, and a handful I cannot stand. What they have in common is that all of them have at least one issue, position, act committed in their past, or character flaw that will prevent scores of people from voting for them. On the other hand, in the upcoming election, there is one issue that stands above all others worth considering, Donald Trump.
So here’s the deal: the person taking the oath of office on January 20, 2022 will either be Donald Trump. (assuming he will be his party’s nominee), or one of the 25 Democratic candidates vying for the top spot on the ticket. Therefore any non-vote, or vote for anyone other than the Democratic nominee, will help enable the re-election of Donald Trump.
In other words, if you cannot in good conscience vote for Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders because one is too conservative, the other too liberal, and both are too old, how will your conscience handle your enabling the continuation of the humanitarian crisis taking place right now at the US/Mexico border? If you cannot in good conscience support Kamala Harris because you favor strict gun control and she is the proud holder of a conceal-carry permit, how will your conscience deal with enabling four more years of the current president appointing judges who will do everything in their power to do away with every resonable gun restriction? If your conscience won't allow you to support Amy Klobouchar for her regretful treatment of her staff, how will it deal with enabling a president who has openly bragged about committing unspeakable acts against women? If your conscience won't permit you supporting Pete Buttigieg because he hasn’t been able to resolve his city’s conflict between the police and the African American Community, or Elizabeth Warren because of her exaggeration of Native American ancestry to get a job at Harvard, how will it handle enabling four more years of this president's making racism fashionable again?
You get the idea, none of these candidates are perfect, candidates never are. True, the Democratic Party has work to do in order to convince the public that this time, the selection process of their standard bearer is on the up and up. I don't see a problem as many have suggested, with the candidates waging trench warfare against each other in their campaign for nomination, after all as they say, the strongest steel is forged out of the hottest fire. If the last election is any indication, the next one is going to be a no-holds-barred winner-take-all street fight and the standard bearer and his or her running mate are going to have to be warriors able to withstand tremendous punishment. After the convention however, the Democrats will need to make sure that everyone, from the most conservative to the most liberal member of the party is on the same page as far as supporting their ticket.
But the party can only do so much, the rest is up to us, the voting public. Politics is about coalition and compromise, not my way or the highway. If we pack up our toys and go home because we don't get the candidate of our dreams as so many Democrats did in 2016, we can expect another four years of Donald Trump, pure and simple.
The election is in our hands. Let's not blow it this time.
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