Now, this did not begin with Donald Trump and his campaign of big lies (think Mexico will pay for it and your health care will be better and cheaper) and tweets which increasingly reflect an unhinged mind as he calls his attorney general weak and beleaguered for not investigating a political opponent and his whining about the lack of loyalty to a group of boy scouts.
You can say this began with the total Republican obstructionist campaigns in both the Clinton and Obama administrations personified in part by Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell who adopted strategies from suggesting conspiracies when government officials committed suicide (Vince Foster), shutting down the government, causing our nation's credit rating to drop, stealing a Supreme Court seat, to downright unhinged opposition to the point where their uninformed followers, as reflected in the political cartoon from Clay Jones below, love the Affordable Care Act but hate Obamacare (They're the same thing in case people had a doubt). This behavior preys on people's fears of the other as evidenced by wanting a wall on the southern, but not northern border. I guess the white people from Canada are not as threatening as the brown people from Mexico. This behavior even extends to the more virulent radical forms of conservatism (if you can imagine that) where a failed Senate candidate earned rightful condemnation, calling for John McCain to retire in the hopes that the Arizona Governor would appoint her to his seat. The sad part is this individual will not lose her small base of support.
This sort of opposition may bring short term power gains and even result in policies that temporarily do not move the country forward. But the American people do eventually catch on and put these people in their proper places.
To illustrate, the President has become the George Steinbrenner (the 1970's and 80"s version) of politics. Now both men were friends when the Yankees Owner was alive and they did share friends, notably the former Joe McCarthy legal counsel Roy Cohn who advised both of them. Now Trump acts like Steinbrenner from the period when he first owned the Yankees. After a period of success rebuilding the team and bringing it World Championships in the late 70's, Steinbrenners abrasive behaviors became more bombastic when the team did not repeat throughout the 1980's. He fired managers and general managers on whims, sometimes only after the season was two weeks old. He fought his players and managers in the media, making comments both on and off the record. Does this sound familiar. Now Steinbrenner did mellow after getting suspended for paying someone to get incriminating information on Dave Winfield, and his team is now a perennial contender year in and year out. Maybe the President will mellow and change. It is a dream we should all have because the country needs a leader who is stable and respected.
Right now political decency, thought and etiquette are on the decline among our public servants. This is not acceptable and we need to hold our leaders to higher accounts and to lead by examples and high standards, not behaving like bullies and an uncontrolled mob.
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-george-steinbrenner-yankees-relationship-2017-2
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/343615-ex-cia-chief-trumps-boy-scout-speech-felt-like-third-world
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/donald-trump-boy-scouts-speech/index.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40715185
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-renews-twitter-attacks-on-attorney-general-jeff-sessions/2017/07/25/003d15ca-7124-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.5b90bed22183
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/donald-trump-twitter-attack-on-republicans-not-backing-president-obamacare-repeal/news-story/7413bf50a48973c2e058397cc8a5cf89
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arizona-republican-says-mccain-should-resign-adds-she-d-be-n785436
No comments:
Post a Comment