More on Anti-Trump Rhetoric
A friend writes: I don’t “believe that all this anti-Trump rhetoric is actually vital to the needs of America.” On the contrary, history shows that America must have its people united to prosper. This anti-Trump stuff, promulgated by the far-left, tears us apart.
Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree, if you’ll pardon the cliche. IMO, the Americans who are sitting around in silence watching this outrageous stuff happen are no different than the common German citizens in the 1930s, quietly keeping their heads down as their neighbors were carted off in boxcars.
Fortunately, I think all of this stuff has a very short shelf-life, i.e., we’re watching “the beginning of the end.” I predict Trump will be legally and peacefully removed from office long before this term is up. He might just quit, when he sees that even his supporters have been pushed beyond their limits. What’s going to happen when 61 million people start to realize they’ve been conned, that Trump is brazenly and illegally profiting from his position, and that the toxins we’re dumping into our rivers have turned our whole country into Flint, Michigan?
I don’t know, but it’s sure going to be interesting to watch, and, again, all this is happening at an incredible pace. At the end of all this, we “anti-Trump rhetoricians” will be both happy and proud that we’ve helped keep this “experiment in democracy” on the rails.
Craig,
I agree with you. However, we cannot be certain what will happen. It could be something totally unexpected. It may even be that this episode in American history will in the long run alert people to the dangers of voting for someone like Trump. Also, now that it is clear that racism and religious prejudice have been exposed, we may be in a better position to combat them.
One of the most shocking things is the support that Trumpet has received from evangelical “Christians”. An inescapable part of Christianity is Jesus’ response to the question of which is the most important command. The second part of His response, in which He quoted from the OT, was to love one’s neighbor as oneself. To expand the definition of neighbor and define what was meant by love, He recited the parable of the Good Samaritan, then stated, “On these two laws hang all the law and the prophets.”. Thus, it is clear that Christians must obey that but somehow some Christians seem to think that they have a special dispensation which exempts them. Thus we have problems with racism and religious discrimination.
Frank, “some of the most horrible things in history have been done in the name of Religion.”
Also John Stewart and probably others point out that our experiment in Democracy is different in that it is being attempted with a diverse nation of people. And so we not only lack much of the “tribal” sense of sameness but striving to maintain Democratic institutions is at odds with a tribal sense of preservation while destroying all that is not part of the tribe.
I am sure that King George must have mused “I wonder how long this is going to last” when first seeing the fiction that “all men are created equal” from a bunch of “upstarts.” It seems in many ways we are still debating what this means today.
“America must have its people united to prosper” requires having a leader that understands what it takes to unite the people. Trump seems to only understand divisiveness. If what you say is true get ready for a huge lack of prosperity for the next four years.
Speaking of prosperity, “Using less energy is great for the economy, which, between 1980 and 2011, expanded by 230 percent while the energy intensity in the United States fell by 45 percent” from this article https://ilsr.org/broadly-sharing-the-benefits-of-decarbonization/
Carter understood this and his policies led to a 15% drop in our energy use over the next ten years.
Bruce, the Bush era was characterized by massive deficit spending and lax regulation that precipitated the collapse of 2008. The present administration seems poised to make that seem like child’s play in perhaps the most massive fiscal irresponsibility this country has witnessed. The present administration seems poised to openly transfer massive amounts of taxpayer money to private corporations floating above the laws and ethics.
So I would tend to agree that “lack of prosperity” is likely but for perhaps different reasons.