Trump incites us to hate him

We used to say we are living in interesting times. Today, the times are downright nightmarish.

Traditionally, American presidents (aka “leader of the free world and the world’s most powerful person”) have modelled themselves on the likes of Lincoln and Churchill. Some have been more successful than others. 

Today, the 45th person to hold this powerful office is more the doppelganger of Jack Nicholson in his role as the deranged patient in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The media is focused these days on the debate over Artificial Intelligence, its potential benefits and warnings that humanity is doomed if we fail to bring this technology under control. Some of the best brains in the world are struggling to meet this challenge. 

Well, hello! The immediate and greatest threat this dear Earth faces is the crazy man in what remains of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. 

Under direction of the current occupant, the White House---home of presidents and their families since 1800-- now features a gilded Oval Office that could pass for a high-priced bordello and a giant construction site as Donald J. Trump fulfils his dream of creating the world’s most beautiful ballroom where he can wine and dine the world’s worst despots.

What used to be called “The People’s House” and a showcase of American history, tradition and values, is now inhabited by a man who considers it his personal fiefdom to do with it what he wants. (This includes banning media people who criticize him.)

Where presidents’ kids and their dogs once romped on the White House lawns, Trump last summer hosted a $60 million mixed martial arts event to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary---and his 80th birthday. A massive 600-ton metal cage called “the claw” housed the savage, blood-spattered slugfest and attracted thousands—some who reportedly paid a million dollars for a front-row seat with the worthies.

Trump has fouled everything he has touched and caused the death and suffering of untold millions of innocent people at home and abroad while personally getting richer by the day. He is a major threat to our democracy, sovereignty, prosperity and security and holds in contempt science, culture, human rights, a free press, our environment, opponents and laws that get in his way—including the U.S. Constitution.                                                          

He is a man devoid of empathy and conscience. He thinks only of himself (and family and friends who reap the spoils of his corrupt administration)

How else do you describe a presidency riddled with conflicts of interest and which dispenses pardons and appointments to loyalists and the highest bidders?

This is not the first time that the U.S. has suffered through major political scandals, but nothing compares with this current doozy of a mess.

He is sure to go down in U.S. history as the worst and most corrupt president ever.

Historians generally agree that James Buchanan, the 15th president, ranks among the worst for his failing leadership leading up to the American Civil War. Warren G. Harding (1921-23) presided over what up to now was considered the most corrupt administration in U.S. history. 

Watergate was the Oscar-winning scandal of our generation. President Richard Nixon was forced to resign to avoid being impeached when it was proven that he tried to cover up his knowledge and direction of the burglary of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington.

The most titillating scandal dates back to the 1990s when it was revealed that President Bill Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was impeached by the House of Representatives (but not the Senate) for denying and lying about the affair. 

(If the files of convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are ever made public, expect the Clinton imbroglio to pale mightily by comparison.) 

More recently, in this decade, Donald J. Trump became the first former president to be convicted of felony criminal charges tied to falsifying business records regarding hush money records.

That didn’t stop him for getting re-elected to the White House for a second term. Pity.

These past two years of Trump’s second term have stunned the imagination in how, in modern times, one person can inflict so much misery on so many. As the expression goes, you can’t make this stuff up.

World economies and international trade are destabilized by his obsession with bruising tariffs. Jobs are here today and gone tomorrow.

He has conducted one long spending spree, chalking up record debt in the trillions. The latest example of his hubris is to admit to using public funds to produce an advertising campaign starring himself, desperately begging voters to prevent the Democrats from winning the upcoming midterm elections and taking over both the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

Meanwhile, in another illegal act, to help finance the unending war he started in Iran, he has cut billions in congressionally approved spending on social and economic programs ordinary Americans depend on.

His cuts to foreign aid have been disastrous in countries like Africa where kids are dying from hunger, starvation and disease.

Cuts to research in cancer and other diseases have shut down critical studies and driven skilled researchers out of the field and, in some cases, out of the country.

Trump does not respect science unless it produces results he wants. Why else would he appoint Senator Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his health czar? Kennedy’s own highly respected family long ago disowned him and for good reason. He is a wild man and, as one of the leading vaccine skeptics, led the campaign against measles inoculations in children. Under pressure in his new role with Trump, he walked that back somewhat, but the damage is done. Unvaccinated people are dying from measles. Not that many years ago, the disease was declared eradicated.  

Trump’s contempt for the entertainment industry is well documented. Sadly, the once thriving John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is bankrupt and shuttered since his controversial campaign to force his own name on the memorial built to honour a saner and more popular former president.  

Trump has ravaged democracy. Research tracks how respect for democracy and its institutions is on the wane, especially among young people. In Trump they see all its weaknesses and failings on display.

Trump was democratically elected not just once but twice. He is a ruthless and revengeful bully and a serial liar, vulgar braggart and prone to temper tantrums. Great role model, eh? 

Merit means nothing in Trump World.  Loyalty is paramount and he has plundered the U.S. public service by eliminating tens of thousands of long-serving employees to save money or eliminate people or ideas he deems disloyal. The loss of senior, experienced military leaders in this time of war is considered downright dangerous.  

Trump’s cabinet is a collection of misfits and sycophants who scramble to stay on message and praise the supreme leader while he rules by executive order-- votes by elected members of Congress and court orders be damned.

The poster child for lunacy in high places is his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News staffer who wears his far-right Christianity on his sleeve and has added “spiritual fitness” to military training manuals. He has pledged that on his watch the American armed forces  will be remade with “no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals….just warriors.”

OMG.

Meanwhile, tales of horrific brutality and even deaths of immigrants at the hands of Trump’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement department (ICE) play out on the nightly news. Americans voted for immigration reform, and Trump has given them state-sponsored terrorism.  

Trump considers himself a master deal maker and will continue to bully and pick fights as he chooses. He will punish, threaten and try to embarrass his greatest ally—Canada—while glad-handing and rolling out the red carpet to welcome foreign dictators whose power he envies and who are plotting and laughing behind his back.  

Make no mistake. He has admitted that he is coming after us.

Unfortunately, there is no immediate solution to ending the black cloud that hangs over the legendary land of the free and home of the brave.

Upcoming midterm elections provide hope, but there is no guarantee that Americans have the courage, fortitude and capacity to end this peacefully.

I was taught to love and not hate.

I was also taught that we should forgive those who trespass against us.

Alas, Donald J. Trump incites hate, and what he is doing to this already troubled world is downright unforgivable.