Sept. 22, 2019, Blog #33
According to Hubris, the last Democratic debate ended with a whimper—and there was no ‘bang’ of any sort within it. That’s only ‘sort of’ how I assessed it. Except for Beto’s exclamatory, highly emotional threat to take all AK47’s and AR15’s away from our gun-crazy citizenry, and Julian’s staged, amateur theatrics, ‘put downs’ of Uncle Joe’s confusion as to what he had or had not said, the contestants’ rhetoric was polite and UN-informative to the point of almost being boring. I do have to give Bernie credit for being able to maintain the high level of intensity with which he continues to shout solutions to only a very few of our societal problems without ever explaining how he is going to implement or pay for those solutions. I always say a silent prayer that he doesn’t experience a heart attack during his feverous presentations during a debate or while shouting his few platform elements during one of his fund-raisers. His heart is certainly in the right place but his brain seems to have missed the root causes of our social inequities which I have defined as our society having ‘lost’ its’ moral compass and the incredible failure of our political, financial, and moral leadership during the past thirty plus years. I also gave Amy Klobuchar high marks for her level of common sense in her position on issues.
I was going to continue the above paragraph with my observation that, unfortunately, none of the current, remaining candidates, seemed ‘presidential’ until I caught myself— my fingers hesitated over my computer keyboard—and I realized what our current ‘President’ has done and said just during the last several days, not to mention his conduct in the entire time since he was elected. Our ‘Donald’ is, without a doubt, the most UN-presidential President that our country has had in my adult life! Just a week or so ago, he dis-invited the Taliban leaders to Camp David for a secret (from the American people) peace conference—proposed by ‘Himself alone—over Afghanistan. Then, after firing his National Security Advisor just days earlier, some country that doesn’t like Saudi Arabia sends bomb-laden drones into their biggest oil refinery, and Donald calls up none other than MBS to politely ask him what the USA should do about this ‘act of war’!.
If my memory is correct, Saudi Arabia is where the majority of the 9/11 terrorists and the basis for the Taliban came from! Perhaps ‘The Donald’ just forgot about 9/11? And, days later, ‘the President’ comes to New Mexico to raise money for his 2020 re-election campaign and in his opening remarks to the ‘unbelievable throng’ (he claims) attending his rally, (only about 9,000 Trumpians, a smaller number than the attendance at one of our new soccer teams’ home games—as a writer on the Albuquerque Journal staff observed) he shouts, “We love our Mexicans!” My first question was, “Who is the ‘we’?” And my second was, “Why did he claim they are ‘ours’?”. As best I remember, the last time he spoke about ‘Mexicans’ he said, “They were all rapists and murderers!” So, I have to doubt that the ‘we’ included himself, the immigrant and Mexican hating, Donald Trump. The “ours’ is another mystery. Did we buy them? I doubt that anyone outside of the state of New Mexico will care that he claimed he was in Albuquerque when he was really in a Hyatt developed resort/casino on the Santa Ana Pueblo reservation, about 25 miles north of that city. If Donald Trump is ‘Presidential’, I’m the chief editorial writer for the New York Times and Hubris is the son of the Lone Ranger’s horse, ‘Silver’.
Thus, in this new state of ‘presidential normal’, we have to add to the previously known and now-accepted ‘qualities’ of being qualified as a President which are; being a liar, thief, sex-obsessed, ego-maniac, and a morally and ethically bankrupt person, the qualities of being geo-politically naïve, word usage inept, and geographically ‘limited’ in intelligence. Forget being a quality ‘team builder’. Trump earned the title of ‘#1 Team Destroyer’ within his first year as President. I’ll probably have to wait a day or two before the next survey of our electorate is reported in any reliable (is there still one out there?) media publication to find out just what percentage of that select group still accepts and endorses those ‘qualities’ in a President. However, I’m very afraid that the number will be much higher than I would like to believe possible. I keep reminding myself that this is the electorate who voted 50% for Hillary and 49% for Donald in the last election. Probably only God, and Cokie Roberts (may she RIP), knows what the electorate will do in the 2020 election. I have good reason to believe that neither of those two will tell us.
I was hanging over Hubris’ stall wall while he was chomping away on his evening flake of hay when the thought occurred to me that I should try hard(er) to be fair in my assessment of our electorate. After all, they had been patient with, or oblivious to, the damage being done while Nero (alias, “HW”, “Bill”, “W” and “Barack”) fiddled as the fires of destruction of the American middle class went from smoldering campfires to raging infernos. Just imagine ‘Paradise’ California happening for over thirty years and no fire department ever comes. If you lived in Paradise, California, or St Louis, Missouri you might have been paying attention. I didn’t live in Paradise, I lived in St. Louis. I watched and participated in the last glory years of St. Louis as its’ industrial economy, on which its’ health was based, began to deteriorate in the 1980’s and that deterioration accelerated during the 90’s and continued to where its’ industrial economy hardly exists today. St. Louis wasn’t the only victim. Almost every industrial city from Appalachia to the Rockies had the same problem–and destiny. Presidents, Republican or Democrat, made no difference in their level of ineptitude and lack of awareness (or concern) as to what was really happening to our middle class while on their ‘watch’. How can I blame the electorate when their Presidents didn’t know, or care, about the difference between economic shit and shinola during their term(s) of office? Maybe that explains our electorates’ desire to throw the inept ‘sweet talkers’ out and give a real thief, whose personal balance sheet probably looks a lot like our country’s national debt-heavy financial statement, a chance to run the country just like he ran his failed casino?
Friends, the damage to our economy and society—our levels of debt and disparity of income—was bad enough before Donald Trump was elected. The fact that he is making our problems worse instead of better is, as I see it, just a confirmation of a society that has really lost its’ moral compass and is willing to accept the total failure of inept leadership. However, it’s not what the electorate did yesterday that counts. It’s what it does ‘tomorrow’ that could really matter! ‘Tomorrow’ is all the time between now and November 4, 2020 and for a very long time thereafter. I’m terribly worried that ‘tomorrow’ will be much too late.
Lou
Copyright, Sept. 22, 2019, Louis J. Christen