If you think for one nano-second that I’m going to gloat, you’re dead wrong.
What we witnessed in Helsinki yesterday is nothing for anyone to gloat over—unless your name is Putin. Yesterday, a day when an American president turned his back on his own country in a shameless display of deference to a tyrant, a murderer, and an enemy of this country, was a day that should have infuriated all true Americans.
On the other hand, for those of us who have been subjected to names like libtards, Clintonites, Obamaites, bleeding hearts, socialists, and worse, I have to admit watching the Trump train wreck in the last few weeks has provided a measure of, if not comfort, at least redemption.
So, allow me just a moment of self-indulgence:
If being a “libtard” means that I have an aversion to locking innocent children in cages, then libtard it is.
I’m all for law and order but if criticism of over-zealous cops who get their kicks tasing and beating handcuffed prisoners (see Iberia Parish) and shooting unarmed citizens makes me a bleeding heart, then so be it. There has to be a balance between protecting the public and running roughshod over people’s rights. My grandfather had a simple rule: “Never take a man’s dignity from him.”
If being more concerned for our environment than I am for corporate profits makes me an anarchist, then you and I have vastly different ideas of what anarchy is.
If my wanting to see everyone have access to decent medical care makes me a socialist, it’s a label I accept. After all, the biggest socialist of them all was a man named Jesus. He championed this radical philosophy of love for our fellow man.
I never cared for Hillary Clinton, but yes, I voted for her because I could not stomach the idea of voting for Trump. I didn’t want her as president, but I absolutely feared Trump. I split my vote on Obama, going for McCain the first time around and for Obama the second time. If those votes make me something akin to a scumbag in your eyes, then I guess that’s the way it has to be.
I reiterate that even for those of us who have consistently warned that this man Trump is an out-of-control lunatic, a dangerous commodity, whose attacks on the press and his persecution of certain ethnic groups is reminiscent of other dictators of the 20th century are not funny but portentous, it’s not fun being right. In fact, it’s downright frightening when you consider the prospects for what still may lie in store for the rest of his term.
Kim Jong-un took Trump for the fool he is and that “de-nuclearization agreement” turned out to be nothing of the sort. His triumphant boast that North Korea is “no longer a nuclear threat” ranks right up there with “Mission accomplished,” and “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.”
Trump managed to insult Canada and the members of the G-7 summit for no good reason that I can see. He then infuriated the European Union with a barrage of insults en route to the fateful summit with Putin in Helsinki where he managed to commit nearly every blunder imaginable short of stepping on his own long red tie.
There are those, of course, who will continue to pledge loyalty to him in the mistaken belief that he “is doing what he said he would do” when in fact, he certainly is not. So far, he’s managed to convince Harley-Davidson and BMW to relocate American plants overseas. He’s overturned net neutrality. He is repealing one environmental protection regulation after another and doing the same with consumer protection laws. He’s destroying medical care while doing nothing to replace crumbling infrastructure. (Okay, he did promise to dismantle environmental and consumer protections and medical care—but are those really good things?
And let’s break down the issue of illegal immigration. Question: Why are so many Latinos trying to get into this country? Answer: To seek a better life. Question: How can they do that? Answer: They will work. Question: Why are we letting them take jobs from Americans? Answer (two parts): First, many of those jobs are jobs Americans don’t seem to want. Second, no immigrant EVER took an American’s job. American employers take those jobs and give them to illegal/undocumented immigrants who will work cheaper so they can make higher profits at the expense of your job and to the detriment of you and your family, so if you have a gripe, take it up with your former employer. It’s kind of like the drug smuggling problem. If there weren’t buyers, there would be no smugglers. Question: Why don’t they enter legally? Answer: See answer to previous question.
And even if he did accomplish what he promised, the results would, for the most part, be catastrophic for the very ones who continue to support him. That’s the cruel irony of the entire Trump experience: the ones who love him most are the ones he has promised to hurt the most.
Finally, let’s look at his support in Congress—the Republicans, a pretty shameful bunch in their own right, Louisiana’s own delegation included.
Most of you are far too young to remember and to tell the truth, I was only three when Richard Nixon first ran for Congress in 1946. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Nixon plagued the Truman administration in a constant search for communists under every leaf in Washington and in every movie studio in Hollywood. Four years later, he ran for and was elected to the Senate. His entire 1950 campaign was based on red-baiting his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas.
Then there was the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s, stoked by one Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, another Republican, and in 1964, one of the foremost Republican communist fighters, Barry Goldwater, was swamped by Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election. But Goldwater’s nomination laid the groundwork for what was to become a major anti-communism campaign for the Republicans, capped off by the Nixon comeback of 1968 and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, who carried on the anti-communism crusade with his classic line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
Of course, with the new millennial, came a new enemy, Islam. But the threats of communist China, Russia, and North Korea always lurked in the background.
So now, saddled with the long-standing tradition of being the party to stand up against the Red Menace, Republicans are suddenly suffering massive whiplash from the party’s sudden lurch to the left, engineered by one Donald Trump.
What to do, what to do? Talk about a quandary. On the one hand, there’s tradition to uphold. On the other, there’s this misplaced loyaty to the party which somehow has found itself beholden to a man who has, by some accident of fate, been placed in the position of leader of the GOP and whose head is in such a position now that Putin is going to need a proctologist to find it.
