I Have Met the Enemy and I Don’t Want Him to Be Me
Let me start out by setting the record straight. I don’t like Trump. Actually I guess I hate the lying little ignoramus. I don’t like most of the yes-people he has around him either. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller, most of his cabinet, all toadies, all the kind of folks who would condone gas chambers if the boss wanted them built, good little Nazis, all of em. These are the lowest people who ever inhabited the White House. Or infested the White House. They would happily oversee the dismantling of a democracy and they may actually achieve that sad distinction. I want them gone. I want Fox News and Breitbart to go with them. And those GOP congressional cowards, afraid confronting the President and his yo-yo policies would cost them their jobs, they give government the bad name they’ve been calling it for years. Vote me out! So yeah, I got an ax to grind, just so you know.
But it bothered me to have some restaurant owner come out from the kitchen and ask Sarah Sanders to leave. Mid-meal. And now there seems to be a call to action from some legislators to confront and harass these people I don’t like at their cafes or homes or plane rides or anywhere they can be shouted at. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to predict where this animosity leads. It leads to public beatings or even assassinations. The rhetoric is scalding hot right now and you bet, I get it. Some of us see Trump as a wannabee dictator, a bully who would gladly sell out this country if it would make him a few million richer or it appealed to his enormous ego. He needs to be voted out or kicked out or impeached.
Oh, I do take pleasure in the victims’ cries for decency, for some civility, knowing they have dragged politics down to the lowest levels I’ve seen in my lifetime. And I’ve seen the Chicago riots of ’68, Viet Nam protests, Nixon, Watergate, Newt Gingrich, an epic cast of creepy idealogues. But nothing quite like Donald J. Trump and his minions. Bullying from the pulpit, disregard for anything factual, self-aggrandizement at others’ expense, the list is numbingly long and my sympathy is commensurately short.
I can imagine worse yet to come, trust me. I’m not Pollyanna about what is happening to this country. Gerrymandering, corporate welfare, a rise in racism, a rightwing Supreme Court, union-busting, income disparity, a very uncompassionate conservatism, trade wars, economic upheavals, border walls, another list too long. Sure, it scares me. It alarms me. It makes me lose sleep and it disturbs my peace of mind. The thing is, if we stoop to these people’s level, we’re lost. We’ve become them. The Obamas always said, when others go low, we should go high. Sounds glib, sounds corny, sounds like a Sunday School sermon. But … I don’t want to wake up one morning and look in the mirror to find myself staring at exactly what I despise.
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Tags: Casting Stones, Sarah Huckabee Sanders Indigestion
It really does feel like a dilemma, how to behave if and when you might run into one of these people in person. Because they do seem to be able to mostly wall themselves off from having to see the effects of their cruelty on others. I cringed a bit about the SHS restaurant rejection, I’ll admit. But I can’t help wonder what I would do if I was somewhere one of them was eating or playing. Do they really get to wall themselves off from the people they serve so thoroughly?
Michael Moore is a pro at this confrontational politics, even going so far as to mock Charlton Heston, Moses, I mean, when he was in the throes of Alzheimers. I found it a little beyond the pale and totally unnecessary to making valid points. For God’s sake, he was Moses….