No decent human being would rejoice in what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13, 2024; but, equally, no half-sensible, half-honest human being can deny that Donald Trump has been one of the major vessels of violence, bigotry, and lawlessness in recent American history.
And the tragedy of modern American politics and life is not so much that Trump is bad. No, the tragedy is that he has struck a chord with religious right fanatics, Zionist fanatics, white supremacists, and a hefty wedge of the poorest people in America who are the collateral damage and victims of the very things that Trump espouses, and Black and Brown people who, from Trump’s record, ought to know how he feels about them.
But in fairness to Black and Brown people, it’s not just how he feels about them. It is how he feels about all people. He sees them as his tools.
And look at all of those unprincipled invertebrates who populate the US Congress. He has them all in his pocket. From the demented Mitch Mc Connell to the decorticated Margaret Taylor Greene.
Speaking of dementia and decortication, Trump is more forgetful than Joe Biden, and he is an extremely disordered personality. Dangerous for America!
Trump is so bad that the worst former US President in his grave would make a better president than Trump.
Nevertheless, Congressional Republicans realize that Trump has struck a chord with the party base, and they, almost to a man and a woman, they have chosen political survival over principle.
Beyond the Congress, look at judges in the US system, right up to some in the Supreme Court! What a disgrace!
With respect, you guys are no example to follow, much as we love you. And under the Trump presidency, although you may have been fooled to the contrary, America lost a lot of respect in the world.
Trump has contaminated every facet of American governance.
And the picture of today’s America is not much different to that of Hitler’s Germany 90 years ago. Trump embodies, and he has revealed, and he exploits the ugly underbelly of America.
He has European decision makers worried sick because of he simply and foolishly does not understand the value of NATO to America’s strategic interests. This is a man who says he wants a strong America, but is actually the most deadly threat to America.
He beats his chest belligerently and plays tough unless it relates to Putin, Netanyahu, Kim Jon Un, and other despots. He has condemned his own military and intelligence leaders, and organizations while he sits like a handcuffed hostage to the despots. It is more than odd, and troubling, for the leader of the so-called free world to grovel in hero worship before some of the world’s most notorious dictators.
He has disgraced the USA and the office of President perhaps more than all of his predecessors combined. And no person has gained greater personal wealth from being President than he has.
His economic policies, such as they are, are a socialist plan for the rich, and he doesn’t believe in global warming and climate change.
He doesn’t grasp the trite concept that if American entrepreneurship and partnerships were prudently and strategically inserted into Latin America and the Caribbean ( and elsewhere), there would be an expanded footprint for the US economy, Latin American and Caribbean and other economies and societies would be more stable, there would be less pressure and expense with illegal migration, etc., and we all would be better off for it.
Instead, he preaches American isolationism and exceptionalism, a concept that can only weaken America and diminish its goodwill in the Americas and throughout the world.
Trump does not fit into the world of 2024, yet he goes merrily along with his Pied Piper story to you Americans.
People who see and embrace the villain as a victim deserve the consequences of their folly. A flock that chooses a wolf to be its shepherd is a flock that has signed its own death warrant. Remember Hitler in the 1930s and World War II.
An American acquaintance of mine, a Trump supporter, told me that America got into no new wars under Trump, and that Trump is the only person who can prevent World War III from happening. I tried to explain to him that under Trump, America got into perhaps its most consequential war in recent times, that is the civil war which he began, and which he keeps stoking.
You all, go ahead and elect him president. But plan to leave a death note to your grandchildren, explaining to them what you did and why you did it.
Maybe America deserves Trump but we in the rest of the world surely do not.
By G.A.Dwyer Astaphan
