July 3, 2020
I was searching for an appropriate title for this week’s blog, in which I intended to summarize our current political condition, and I wasn’t having any luck until I remembered a military term from World War II. Although I was in my very early teens at that time, I was an avid reader of the big city newspapers. My home town of Ferguson, Missouri, on the outskirts of St. Louis, didn’t have a newspaper. St. Louis had two newspapers at that time. One was the Globe-Democrat, a morning paper featuring local news but was really a Republican rag, and the other was The St. Louis Post Dispatch, an evening paper which spoke for a broader section of the electorate, but was considered to favor the Democratic side of issues. The ‘Globe’ was delivered, i.e., thrown into our front yard in Ferguson, every morning, and the ‘Post’ every afternoon. I liked the Post-Dispatch better because it had a much bigger ‘Funnies’ section, provided more coverage of the International conflicts (wars), and best of all, carried Bill Mauldin’s cartoons, usually in its’ ‘Editorials’ section. Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin provided most of my ‘understanding’ of WWII.
However, neither Ernie Pyle nor Bill Mauldin ‘invented’ the term ‘SNAFU’. As best as I have been able to learn through limited research, is that somebody in the Marines, early in WWII, used it to describe military disorganization at its’ worst. It became the acronym for (a) Situation Normal: (that was) All Fucked Up! The word police in the media, not the Marines or regular ‘GIs’, tried to change it to ‘Situation Normal: All Fouled Up!’ But, no one who has been in the military would ever, in good conscious, accept that change because it was not strong enough to describe a really terrible situation! When I remembered it, I immediately realized that it was the perfect term to describe our government today. When and if it even tries to function, it’s one big SNAFU!
It is hard to imagine that it could be otherwise when we now have; a totally dysfunctional President (who is also mentally deranged), Congress, Supreme Court, Attorney General, and most ‘red’ states’ governments. I was going to include our electorate but, watching their recent protests over police killing of Blacks and terrible, long-term, racial injustice, I’m going to give them a temporary pass. Let’s hope they come out to vote in the next elections. They didn’t in the last one! Parades, demonstrations, rioting and looting won’t change anything except the number of people who are in jail. But by voting, they can bring change—if they really come out to vote—and ‘if’ they are allowed to do so.
That last line is no joke! Anyone with reasonable intelligence should be able to see that our President, Donald Trump, and his Republican enablers are already doing everything they can to make it either very difficult or impossible for people of limited means, or of color, to vote in the coming presidential election. The ‘Donald’ and his friends have figured out how to use the Covid 19 pandemic to limit voting in one last ditch attempt to increase their possibility of being re-elected. There is absolutely no humor, but there is a significant amount of irony, in that situation. Donald Trump is, most probably, personally responsible for almost half of the total deaths in our sometimes ‘United’ States that have occurred, or will occur, due to the pandemic—which now seem to reaching for the 200,000 level. This is due to his absolute failure allow our country to be prepared for or take responsible actions after the virus was first realized to have traveled from its’ China beginnings to infest almost every country in the world. Now, this totally evil and self-centered excuse for a human being is doing everything in his power to limit absentee balloting and reduce polling places, so that the need for ‘social distancing’ plus un-realistic, artificial inconvenience, make it almost impossible for people to vote. If he and his Republican Senator ‘friends’ get the Supreme Court to allow them to do that, we will have the most un-democratic and the most corrupted presidential election in our history—all to get the person who was the major cause of the severity of the pandemic in the United States of America to get re-elected as its’ ‘President’. I doubt that—if our electorate, our Congress and our Supreme Court allow this to happen—God will take it upon him/herself to ‘bless America’ and throw Trump and his friends out of office and into the fires of hell. And so, if you want to pray, pray that a belatedly awakened electorate will have the energy and courage to fight through the impediments that Trump and his equally evil friends will throw in their way to the polls, and VOTE those evil idiots out of office! That, short of another revolution, is the American way!
And, to add to Donald Trump’s record of evil, if not treasonous, actions since he became our President, we now have the revelation that Trump has, or should have, known about Russia’s arrangement with the Taliban in Afghanistan to pay a ‘bounty’ on their killing of American soldiers that was put in place possibly six months ago! All the while Mr. Trump has continued his favorite strong-man, special-friend, relationship with Mr. Putin and has, very recently, been promoting Russia for membership in the G-7! With a President like Donald J. Trump, we don’t need enemies. He alone, is dangerous enough!
So, with apologies to the poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning; ”How do I find thee, Donald J. Trump, treasonous? Let me count the ways. Soliciting and getting Russia’s help in the 2016 Presidential election. Using the threat of and withholding Congress-approved funds to the Ukraine in return for the promise of their investigation of Hunter Biden in hopes of improving his 2020 re-election chances. Destroying America’s relationship with our NATO allies, Germany and France, just to satisfy his ego and self-gratification needs. Using his hotel and country club properties for personal financial gain only possible because of the political office he is holding. That is ‘taking emoluments’ which is strictly prohibited in our Constitution. Destroying the government agencies that would have helped the United States be prepared for, and which would have properly guided us through, the Covid 19 Pandemic. Continually lying to the American people about anything and everything he has done or is doing. His insistence on building a wall between us and our neighbor Mexico, and his shameful treatment of refuge families, and especially, their children. Trump’s treatment of the refuge children was, to me, absolute proof of what a mean, heartless, evil person he really is. Throwing our ally, the Kurds, under the bus, just to please Erdogan and Putin during the war in northern Syria. Telling the American people that the Covid 19 virus would just ‘go away” and that it was not a serious health threat—when his health advisors were telling him just the opposite. Using every evil trick he can find to make the 2020 Presidential election as un-democratic, and voter-restricted as possible. And last but not least, ignoring and pretending not to know about Russia’s agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan to pay them a ‘bounty’ for every American soldier they kill, while doing everything possible to further Russia’s ambitions including promoting their membership in the G-7. —–And, Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States of America??????
I asked Hubris if he thought Mr. Trump deserved a second term to allow him to try be a ‘good’ President. Hubris didn’t pause a minute before saying, “The only term that Mr. Trump deserves is to be sentenced to an endless time in hell.” Horses have a way of saying exactly what they mean. I happen to agree with Hubris. No ‘Hi Ho Hubris’ tonight! The monsoon season is finally here and we could get thunder, lightning, and rain—this evening. We hope! Have a safe and happy 4th of July!
Lou
Copyright, July 3, 2020, Louis J. Christen