What is the difference between "my way or the highway" and religious fanaticism?
Executive orders pour forth from the Oval Office,
banning Muslim immigrants from seven countries of largely Muslim populations,
while the White House shouts, “This is not a ban against Islam!”
The botched raid in Yemen, in which an American was
killed and others seriously injured is falsely blamed on a Deputies Meeting on
January 6 which “easily approved the idea and sent it on up” (by the White
House press Secretary) while a ‘deputy’ who attended that meeting says there
was no discussion of the specific raid, leaving it to the next administration.
The House of Representatives, through a 97% Republican
vote, this week agreed that mentally unstable persons should have better access
to guns.
The North Dakota legislature voted this week to trash
the ethics office for legislators, a measure already signed by the state’s
governor.
The phone system in Washington was broken by a tidal
wave of protest calls from constituents to Senators protesting the nomination
of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Her family’s wealth, based largely on
profits from Amway, is estimated at $5 billion by Forbes, and her efforts to
champion vouchers for schools are, for many, a profound threat to the very
existence and stability of public education. Her Christian Reformed faith adherence
also is a red flag for those holding to the separation of church and state,
again a model on which the public education system is based.
Judges in Brooklyn and Seattle have issued ‘stays’ on
the Executive Order on immigration, while the White House has promised an
immediate appeal to reinstate the order, as just and lawful.
Millions of normally silent and compliant ordinary
citizens are marching in the streets in many cities against many of the flurry
of “power orders” coming from the new American administration. While the Acting Attorney General is fired for refusing to enforce or defend the immigration
ban, and is declared to be “weak on immigration” by the vengeful president.
The president’s choice as the next justice on the
Supreme Court comes, albeit with platinum education credentials (Columbia,
Harvard, Oxford), out of the same “culture vat” in which millions have been
nurtured to favour corporate values over consumers, to favour the 1% over the
other 99% and to reject the Obamacare mandate of providing contraception by
employers. A clone and fierce fan of deceased Justice Antonin Scalia, Gorsuch
would likely sustain the Trump legacy for decades, should he receive Senate
confirmation.
The thirty-five year old son-in-law of the president,
Jared Cushner, is now a ‘senior advisor’ with credentials that point only to an
inheritance of real estate holdings and their management….his appointment
testing the boundaries of “nepotism,”
credibility and confidence among the ordinary American citizen. Loyal perhaps
he is, but deserving of the throne of power, hardly. He has been reported as
being deputized to secure an agreement and peace between Israel and Palestine,
as if sending a “boy” to do a job that generations of serious, and brilliant
men and women have failed to complete is just another sign of the “miraculous”
self-declared competence of the new chief executive.
A growing pattern of Trump’s thumbing his nose,
thereby dismissing all irritants from his universe, is developing:
· Vanquishing
all media reporters a the most dangerous liars on earth
· Generalizing
all protesters as paid thugs
· And
all existing trade agreements as “disasters”
· And
Obama administrators as weak and kind (reference to the Iranian nuclear deal)
· And
all women as “willing” to let ‘stars’ do “anything”
· And
all women who have abortions as deserving “punishment”
· And
all military generals as knowing far less that “I” do
· Telling
all civil servants who do not agree with the “program” to choose between submitting
or leaving the federal government’s employ
· Characterizing
the New York Times as a ‘failing and dying” newspaper
· Demoting
the Joint Chief and the Secretary of Defense from the National Security Council
and elevating Bannon to the inner circle
· Telling
Israel to stop announcing plans for new settlements in the West Bank
· Threatening
heavy new import taxes on autos manufactured outside the U.S.
· Challenging
the one China policy of the legacy of many U.S. administrations of both
governing parties
· Issuing
clawless sanctions on Iran following their testing of a missile
· Berating
a refugee agreement with Australia, in a “meet-and-greet” phone call with the
Australian Prime Minister, from which the president exits by hanging up barely
half-way into the conversation
· Announcing
‘we must keep ‘evil’ out of the United States, as if there were no ‘evil
already within the country
These are signs obvious and available to anyone
watching and listening. And, even the most inexperienced coach, counsellor,
therapist or even serious and independent advisor would note the pattern of
both self-sabotage and potential danger for the nation. When a single person
presumes to be the “only solution” to the fake degradation of the country, and enough
of the country buys the “pitch” it is not only in the Oval Office that Peter
Pan resides; he has taken over the voting patterns of so many voters that the
results of the election threaten us all.
Neverland is not a place the people in the street
wanted to inhabit. Neverland is not a place they even dreamt they might like to
visit, when they entered the voting booth.
Yet, Neverland is the place we are all now expected to
willingly join or, just as the Islamic terrorists said to the Queen in Great
Britain, “You have two choices, convert, or leave Buckingham Palace which we
will convert to a mosque!” So too has Trump told the thousands of diligent and
loyal Americans who have worked for presidents and administrations from both
Republican and Democratic parties. So too has Trump told the main media
outlets. So too has Trump, inferentially told the thousands of educators in
public education: convert the schools to ‘christian’ models to grow the “kingdom”
or leave (should DeVos be confirmed).
Whether one wants to characterize the developing
tragedy as an incipient theocracy, autocracy, dictatorship, coup, or oligarchy….supply
your own word…the early signs are all “warning signs” of things to come which
do not have a scent, or a shade, or a hint of safety, security and competence.
Little boys who refuse to grow up were never
envisioned or expected to be rewarded for their arrogant immaturity.
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