Month: August 2019

The presidency is often referred to as the bully pulpit, and that’s never been a more apt description than when Donald Trump has occupied the office since he is absolutely a bully.

MAYBE THEY CAN GO TO BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA

Trump took to Twitter to recommend that the country of Israel ban Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering.  Because when someone expresses sentiments with which you disagree, naturally you don’t fight to the death for their right to say it.  No, you use all the power at your command to punish them.  And Israel happily cooperated, right up until it was clear that they were preventing Tlaib from visiting her ninety year old grandmother and so reversed themselves, at which point she turned around and told them to shove their permission.

I must admit that I’m as familiar with their opinions on Judaism in general and Israel in particular as I should be…possibly because they’re from Minnesota and Michigan and don’t represent me or my views.  It doesn’t really matter to me.  Mitch McConnell could be the most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish guy out there and I’d still think he’s an áššhølë.

But when you’re the president, you’re supposed to be everybody’s president.  That’s the aspect (well, one of the aspects) of the job that Trump does not get.  He’s supposed to represent everybody, not just the people he likes and the people who praise him.  The concept of singling out two representatives and instructing another country to boycott them is as unpresidential as it gets.

POT. KETTLE.  BLACK.

Trump, who is clearly the least fit president we have had in decades, had the nerve to select a guy at a rally and attempt to fat shame him.  “”That guy’s got a serious weight problem!  Go home!  Start exercising!” said the red haired tub of lard whose idea of a gourmet meal is a Big Mac, fries and a Coke.

It gets better. The guy he shouted at who he believed was causing a ruckus was actually a Trump supporter who was busy shoving protestors and their signs away from the site.  So you can be a Trump fan attempting to trample on the first amendment rights of Trump haters and he’ll still condemn you.  Here’s the capper:  the guy’s such a Trump fan that he laughed off the verbal assault because hey, it’s Trump, what else can you expect?

MAYBE THE MURDERER IS HIDING IN A PIZZA SHOP

When Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell, naturally the conspiracy theorists went nuts. That’s to be expected.

Unfortunately we have a conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office, and Trump retweeted, i.e., endorsed a groundless, baseless notion that the Clintons were responsible for his death.  Because of course a couple who couldn’t keep a White House bløw jøb under wraps has managed to be so masterful in concealing their crimes that decades’ worth of investigation hasn’t resulted in a single charge (as opposed to the dozens of charges, crimes and sentences from Trump.)  

The fact that the autopsy confirms suicide naturally will shut down the conspiracy theorists just as Obama’s birth certificate managed to cease the endless claims that he was born in Kenya.  Trump, who has according to the Washington Post lied more than 12,000 times in the past two and a half years, lives purely in his demented world of falsehoods and lies. He is the literal personification of the old joke about  you can tell when he’s lying because his mouth is moving.

EMPATHY FOR ME, NOT YOU

Of all the disservices that the Trump administration is foisting upon the country, the most significant is this:  He and his people are rewriting what this country stands for.

That stems from Trump’s utter lack of empathy.

He has made it abundantly clear that he has no sense of empathy.  He doesn’t care about other people’s needs or wants, families or desires.  The notion that people want to come to this country to build a better life is the underpinning of our nation, but his non empathy renders him incapable of understanding that.

And he keeps hiring people who support that message.  The latest is his acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli.  Cuccinelli is simply the latest of something that is all too typical for Trump.  He puts people in charge of agencies whose histories put them in opposition to the tasks of the agency.  He put someone who combated the environment in charge of the EPA.  If he could find a flat earther who could string coherent sentences together, he’d put him in charge of NASA.  Cuccinelli told NPR that he wasn’t a fan of the Emma Lazarus poem that has defined the country’s immigration ethos:  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  Cuccinelli disagrees, saying that it would be far more appropriate to declare, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”  

When my father came to this country, he was not rich.  Trump’s people would likely have been standing at the border, determined to stop him from coming in.  My mother’s dad was rich, so she would have been fine, but my dad?  Not so much.  

GREENLAND? REALLY?

Trump has floated the notion of buying Greenland.  Has anyone told him that three quarters of it is frosted over?  What’s he want it for?  To have a permanent supply of ice for his Coca Colas?

DID HE DO ANYTHING RIGHT THIS WEEK?

Not that I’m aware.

I’m back from almost a solid month of traveling, of ricocheting from one convention to another and having only limited computer and on-line access.  But I’m back and of course Trump has been a model of decency and presidential behavior, just as hopeful and optimistic news agencies claimed he’d be.

It’s really hard to know where to start with his idiocies because, really, there’s so much to try and process.

SHOOTING HIS MOUTH OFF

Let’s begin with the most recent shootings.  Now I feel the need to point out that the most recent assaults in Texas and Ohio are the most fatal attack on Hispanics in our history, just like the shootings in Pittsburgh were the most fatal assault on Jews some months ago.

Trump is of course declaring that anyone who blames him for the shootings is just a political type trying to score points.  Of course, the immediate counter to that is that anyone who isn’t blaming him is a political type who is endeavoring to score points with Trump, which is of course the case.  If we had a Democratic president who was spewing the litany of racist crap that Trump has been spouting, the GOP would have launched impeachment proceedings and labeling him as the most dangerous person in the country.  

Because he is. He hasn’t managed to wrap himself around that simple fact.  The truth is that he openly spouts white supremacist philosophies, trying to do everything except condemn the bášŧárdš behind the assaults (“I’m against all Supremacists.”  What the hëll does that even mean?  It’s bad enough that he declared there were fine people “on both sides.”  Now he’s trying to diminish white supremacy as just part of some wider movement of a variety of supremes?  Unless he’s referencing Diana Ross, I’ve no idea what he’s talking about.)

Furthermore, I’m reasonably sure that his dismissal doesn’t apply to me because I’m not running for political office.  So when I say that he is at least partly responsible for the upswing in racial mass assaults, with whom would I be trying to score points? Appreciative fans who already agree with me?  Angry fans who declare that they’re going to stop supporting my work because how dare I disrespect the Second Amendment?  You remember the Second Amendment:  the one that protected the right to bear arms in order to form a militia, something I’m reasonably sure the majority of gun owners do not belong to.

The fact is that since the very beginning when he described Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists, he has been a single-minded supporter of racism.  That is indisputable.  And racists who have been hiding in the shadows believe that they’ve finally got a like-minded supporter in the White House who is sounding the call for them to wage war against “the invasion.”  So let’s gun down the Jews, the Latinos, the Mexicans, the Hispanics, the people who have absolutely no right to be here because this is America, dammit, a country founded by refugees who killed as many of the natives as they could to settle it.

Certainly Trump is not solely responsible for the rash of shootings.  But his racism, his insensitivity  and his constant divisiveness plays directly into the mentality of these gun wielding racist psychopaths.  The simple fact remains that what the President of the United States says matters.  JFK said we’d get to the moon by the end of the 1960s and he was right. It sometimes make people think in different ways, but in Trump’s case it exacerbates the worst instincts of racists and white supremacists.   

It’s also worth mentioning that in the year 2000 I wrote an issue of YOUNG JUSTICE in which a teacher with whom Cissie/Arrowette was very close gets murdered by a former lover. A politician at the scene asserts that the real blame for the murder should fall on violent video games and comic books rather than guns.  At the time I was condemned for writing what was seen as an anti-gun screed. Yet now it’s two decades later, guns are killing more people than ever, and they’re still blaming video games, not to mention gay marriage, Democrats, and Obama.  Everything except the gøddámņ guns.

Trump is of course paying lip service to the idea of background checks and other methods of gun restriction that are embraced by ninety percent of the population. However the only people that matter are the five million members of the NRA whose leaders are warning Trump and company not to screw with them.

The bottom line is that when children were slaughtered at Sandy Hook and nothing changed, that was effectively the end of the gun debate.  When our government was willing to protect the rights of assault gun owners over the right of children to live, that finished the discussion. The only way things are going to change is if a Democratic President steps in, declares guns to be a national state of emergency, and unilaterally makes assault rifles illegal while beginning a country wide gun trade in program.  That will help end it.

WHAT’S IN A NAME

To prove his utter lack of devotion to the concept of putting aside racism and fostering unity, Trump continues to use his bully pulpit to assault anyone he doesn’t like. Strangely, he slammed the Mayor of Dayton for “misrepresenting” his visit to the hospital, which was odd considering she said nothing but positive things about it.   So did he actually think it went badly and wanted to know why she put a positive spin on it?  Who know?  He certainly doesn’t.

Most recently he snarked at Beto O’Rourke, claiming that the whole reason he was nicknamed “Beto” was to sound Spanish.  Two things:  First, he’s called “Beto” because it was a nickname given him in childhood.  And second, a guy whose family name used to be “Drumpf” doesn’t get to criticize other people’s names.

DID HE DO ANYTHING RIGHT THIS MONTH?

No.