Louisiana Voice

Donald Trump, Jr., you pampered little daddy’s boy mealy-mouthed sonofabitch!

I could stop there and my description would be sufficient, but I won’t. The little twit committed what I consider to be an unpardonable sin when he described teachers as “losers” at his daddy’s rally in El Paso Monday.

I can take just about anything from the Trumps and even laugh at them but when they start calling teachers “losers,” that’s a trip-wire for me.

I had the same reaction a few years back when another little dips**t named Jindal had the audacity to tell members of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) that the only reason some teachers were still in the classroom “is by virtue of their ability to breathe.” You will note that he would never have had the guts to say such a thing before a teachers’ group—only some half-baked organization like LABI which drinks the Republican Kool-Aid while lobbying for billions of dollars in tax breaks for its corporate members.

That’s because Jindal, like Donald Trump, is a damned coward who will only go before one of his wacko LABI or MAGA crowds and say something so asinine. At the first sign of a hostile crowd, they’d run like the wimps they are. Now that’s the definition of a loser—I don’t care how rich and successful one is in monetary terms, that’s still a loser.

And before you Trump supporters start in with your comments about how wonderful our Buffoon-in-Chief is, don’t even bother. You can say what you want, but you’ll be wasting your breath because I’m not about to back down on this. It’s kind of the reverse of trying to get you to see through how idiot Trump is making you think he gives a crap about you.

It seems that Daddy Trump has latched onto another catch-phrase to ignite his brain-dead supporters: socialism. And that’s the word Donnie invoked Monday as he warned students against “loser teachers…trying to sell you on socialism from birth.”

What a crock. First of all, I love it when people throw around the word as if it were synonymous with the word communism. It’s not. Social Security is a form of socialism. So is Medicare. So are public highways, garbage pickup, municipal sewer and water lines, police and fire protection.

Hell, the very idea of health and life insurance—and auto and fire insurance—is a form of socialism: it’s the idea of shared risk. Everyone pays a little into the pool so that those among us who have losses or health issues can benefit.

Trump proclaims to love the military, even though he dodged the draft with a stone bruise on his heel—and couldn’t remember which heel it was when asked a few years later. But that aside, military housing, military clothing and mess halls represent applied socialism in the purest sense of the word.

And for those who equate socialism with welfare, the most successful corporate citizens in this country are the beneficiaries of what we affectionately refer to as corporate welfare that dwarfs all the benefits received by all the low-income citizens of this country combined. The tax breaks, incentives, write-offs, and exemptions received by our fine corporate citizens are the epitome of classic socialism.

For that matter, the biggest advocate of socialism in history was a fellow named Jesus Christ. His ministry taught us to care for one another, to heal the sick and comfort the poor. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these brethren, you did it for me.” (Matthew 25:40).

But back to Donnie’s NONSENSE. “You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth,” he told Monday’s rally in El Paso.

Indoctrinated? Give me a flipping break, you little moron.

I’m 75 and well past my school years but I still remember the wonderful teachers I had at Ruston High School like it was yesterday: Coach Perkins, Coach Garrett, his wife, Mary Alice Garrett, Charlotte Lewis, Maggie Hinton, Mrs. Edmunds, Earvin Ryland, Morgan Peoples, Ruth Johnson, Oscar Barnes, Denman Garner, Moose Phillips.

Then, later at Louisiana Tech: Dr. C.C. Chadbourne, Dr. Phil Cook, Dr. Winters (the hardest professor I ever had, but one helluva teacher) and Morgan Peoples (again, after he moved up to Tech).

These people had a profound influence on me, a poor student who was taken under their wings and nurtured until I came out with first a diploma and then a degree, the first in my immediate family to do so.

There was another who, though I was never in his class, taught me a lesson with only five little words.

Registering for my first semester at Tech, I was directed to the desk of Dr. Tony Sachs, head of Tech’s English Department to sign up for my English course (under Dr. Chadbourne). “What’re you doing here?” he asked.

“I was told to come over here, so this is where I’m at,” I replied.

Signing my registration card without ever looking up, he corrected me: “This is where I am.”

Lesson learned. Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. I’ve never forgotten that brief exchange.

But the real lesson that Donnie (and Jindal) obviously are too dense to absorb is this:

• Columbine High School, April 20, 1999: teacher Williams Sanders, 47, among those shot and killed.
• Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 14, 2012: teacher Anne Marie Murphy, 52, shot and killed while covering the bodies of children to protect them; Victoria Leigh Soto, 27, shot and killed when she stood between shooter and children; Rachel D’Avino, 29; principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, Lauren Rousseau, 30, and Mary Sherlach, 56, all shot and killed.
• Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida, February 14, 2018: Scott Beigel, 35, shot dead while trying to get kids to safety inside his classroom; Aaron Feis, 37, shot dead when he threw himself in front of students to protect them, Chris Hixon, shot dead.

How’s that for being a loser, Donnie, you idiot child? Think you could ever muster the courage to be that brave? Ask Daddy, if he’s still nursing those stone bruises on his heel that kept him out of the military during Vietnam —if, that is, he can even remember which heel it was.

Here’s something to ponder: There are 3.2 million members of the National Education Association, and 1.7 million members of the American Federation of Teachers and another 1.7 million college teachers.

They all have family members—parents, siblings, children.

They vote.