We seem to have a problem . . . one might call it a serious
problem.
We have a sitting President who seems rarely to speak the
truth. Instead, some estimates suggest that he lies 75% of the time he
speaks---75%. That means he rarely tells you something that is factually
correct.
He also, perhaps because of his personality disorder, is in
the habit of routinely accusing others, his opponents mainly, of committing the
sins that he commits routinely. For example, he seems to know that he lies
routinely, so, to distract attention from that little problem, he accuses
others, again his opponents mainly, of lying. When he called Hillary, “lying Hillary”,
or “crooked Hillary”, he was really trying to shift attention away from his
common problem, that he lies, and is of a crooked mind.
Now we all assume that politicians tell “porkys”, or that
they, at the least, exaggerate. But with
our President, something different seems to happen. He lies, even when it is
patently clear to even the most disinterested observer, that he is lying. It
was raining, during his inaugural address, yet he asserted that God had cleared
the air for him. He lied about the size
of the crowd watching him, even when photo evidence said that the crowd was
modest at best compared to the crowd that had watched Obama. He lies about the
issue of illegal voters casting votes for Hillary, even though he has no
evidence, and all observers tell us there is no such evidence.
He lies about issues such as murder rates, unemployment
rates, when we have fairly objective evidence, available to one and all,
telling us that he is lying.
So, we have a new bottom line regarding our President. That
is:
We cannot trust anything Donald Trump tells us.
Nor can anyone with whom he comes into contact. That would
include:
Congress persons,
Judges,
Foreign officials,
Military leaders,
Business leaders.
I failed to mention church leaders, but that seems
unimportant, since so many of them no longer tell the truth either.
Now, why is this serious, you might ask? Well, in normal
human encounters, we all make certain assumptions about the encounter, assuming
it includes some form of human communication.
One assumption is that the people with whom we converse, will
communicate most of the time in words that bear some semblance of reality. That
is, they will not simply make stuff up out of thin air and pretend they are
communicating factually. We might look askance, for example, were we to meet a
friend at night, and have him comment on how wonderful the sunshine was at the
moment, when in fact there is no sunshine and the night is very dark. Or should we meet a friend who is 450 pounds,
and he comments on how slim he is looking, and would I not agree?
See, I am not talking about opinions, where there is some
room for multiple views. No, I mean that there is an objective truth, and the
other person denies that obvious truth. That is our President.
So, why is this important?
Well, the President speaks to the people periodically to
tell us about the state of some reality—the world, our relative safety, the
state of our economy, or the state we observe in the world outside our nation. He
“informs” us about those states of reality. And, although, those realities are
always subject to multiple opinions, because they are neither black nor white,
we need to able to trust that our President will at least approximate the truth
of those reality states. That is, even if he shades the truth to one side or
the other, he will not simply lie about the truth. If we cannot trust what he says, then he
cannot and must not be our leader. He must be led outside and removed from his
high office. Mainly, if you cannot believe what some person tells you, then you
cannot have a human relationship with that person.
Again, we know that periodically most folks will tell “porkys”,
bend the truth in some way that favors them, or their perspective on something.
But most folks do not simply lie about almost everything. Mainly, lying is too
burdensome. It requires complex webs of tales that attempt to support the lies,
but only make one appear terminally stupid.
So, why would someone, especially someone as public as our
President, tell us so many obvious lies? Well, apparently, this is what he has
always done, so he simply is continuing his normal pattern of abnormal behavior. But in
the past, i.e., before he was President, it mattered less. Oh, it mattered doubtless to his contractors,
when he hired them to do some work, and then, on completion, he simply refused
to pay them, inventing some tale about their inadequate work, forcing them to
sue him in order to retrieve their money. But largely, the public was unaware and
unharmed by those lies.
He apparently lies, because he is mentally out of touch with
reality much of the time. His reality
differs from most of the rest of us. His
friends and associates keep making excuses, telling us that he “believes”
things and so speaks according to his altered state of reality belief
system. And we are not to take him
literally. We should evidently take him seriously but not literally. Now what
in heavens name does that mean? He says
he will act so as to have a wall erected between the USA and Mexico. And we are
to deduce that the wall might be a fence, a wall, some other kind of electronic
barrier, or maybe just make believe. He says he will Make America Great Again,
implying that America is not now great. But he fails to tell us in what way he
will make us great again. He says he
will rearm us, return our military to its former great state, instead of
whatever pathetic state it is now in. He
says he will abolish “Obama-Care”, but introduce an even greater health care
system. His hyperbolic language is so extreme, that it is now the stuff of
comedy dreams. Comedians everywhere are being handed a daily dose of comic
material such as they could only dream of.
And this pathetic state of affairs has occurred in less than
a month. Whatever are we to do for the next four years?
He has appointed arguably the worst cabinet in the history
of our pathetically ungreat nation. Almost without exception, he has appointed
people who are antagonistic to the very purposes of the institutions they will
lead. One can only assume that he
intends ridding the nation of Education, Energy, Environmental Protection,
Health Research, and health care for the elderly, income assurance/supplementation
for the elderly, protection of the working man through labor protections, and
the entire judicial system (he does hate those pesky judges always interfering
with his whims).
And this is what the entire Republican Party has come to. It
is now the pathetic party of Donald Trump and his circus clown car rule. Wouldn’t
Lincoln be proud? One might imagine some stirrings of a sense of horror and
doom out of at least some of them. But no, they are no longer a party of
principles. Instead, they are the great destroyers of a once great nation.
They cannot even address the relationship between Trump and
Vladimir Putin, or even perhaps between Trump and the Russian mafia. They seem incurious about his tax returns,
even while absorbed for years about Hillary’s e-mails.
Curiouser and curiouser.
What are to make of all this? Well, for one, it seems clear
that money has taken over our political system completely. The current party in
charge is the best government money can buy—thank you Citizens United. Thank you Supreme Court.
We can and doubtless should continue to protest the ongoing
stupidities perpetuated by Trump, Ryan, Bannon and the rest of his corps of
pseudo-Nazi leaders.
We can hope that leakers will continue to leak information
being withheld about the inner doings of the Trump carnival or the republican
serfs who now serve his purposes, whatever they may be.
Mainly, we will need to work on voting and getting folks out
to vote in 2018 and then again in 2020.
Voting is truly our last refuge, assuming republicans do not remove our
ability to vote . . . and they will and are trying, since they no longer have
any shame.
So, think and work on 2018 and then on 2020, assuming we are
not all dead by then.
Til then, continue watching anyone on TV who still is
allowed to make fun of our dilemma and of the Drumpf especially. He is a
buffoon, and we all need to make sure he realizes that, on a daily basis. Maybe begin to write the Drumpf frequently,
telling him that he is a clown. He won’t like that, but it doesn’t matter any
longer. He is what he is. Call a clown a clown.
Ta ta . . .
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