Unemployment down. Number of people crossing the border down.
Stock market way up. Number of people entering the job market way up.
Woohoo for Trump, right?
He has scared us straight! His tough talk is evidently working. People are falling in line.
No time for questions. No need for the press. America is great again! Whoohoo!
Military might reaffirmed, check. Police power enforced, check. Communications controlled, check… Trump is trumping the world!
Increase the military budget. Embolden police to be more aggressive. Discredit the press.
Don’t you just feel it in the air? Can’t you just sense that we are back? We have the power again!
We knew it all along, right? All we needed was tough talk and scaring others with ‘in your face’ display of power.
Oh you wimpy liberals, progressives, and do-gooders! You thought you were in control. Ha!
We should have seen it coming. We never counted on the vile revenge of the combination of uneducated whites and educated dogmatic evangelical believers. We never counted on the last hurrah of these two diminishing demographic groups that were not about to give up without one final fight… So they came together to form this toxic concoction that is the Trump administration.
Now, you’d better go back home you illegals. Behave boy! Hombre, pick those apples and shut up! Fix that tail light lest you be charged with driving while black or brown… The Jews? We’ll scare you too with a little fire here and there… Don’t you know your place? Ah, the sweet smell of making America great again!
… or is it the sickening stench?
Oh, how different would it be if we were talking about rebuilding schools at home and abroad; about staffing clinics with addiction counselors in America and building clinics in the third world; about cleaning up the water system in Flint and providing food for the famine in Africa; about celebrating the arts in local communities and throughout the world; and, encouraging neighborhood sports programs and engaging in sports diplomacy…
But no.
Those are frivolous, feel-good, non-essentials priorities of the Left that left and is no more.
We have to show strength. We have to let the world know America is for Americans first. We have to save our own…
“Our own”, that is, as in our own wealthy and wealth creators. Our own owners of the American pie; our own military complex… Never mind that they are the 1% who have been in power all along and our military continues inventing enemies to justify their ever increasing appetite for larger budgets…
Too bad.
For a short while there I truly thought we had turned the corner and America was on its way to shedding its egoist past as it became a member of the world family. For a moment there I thought we would respect other peoples, nations, and cultures and pursue diplomacy from the perspective of mutual support rather than from the zero-sum game of ‘I win you lose’. For a moment there I thought diversity was truly a national value. For a moment there I thought we cared.
Oh how foolish of me.
We are no different, no better, no more caring than anyone else in this dysfunctional crazy world… (At least for now. Under this Administration.)
Our time will come. We will do what it takes to make it be sooner rather than later…. (America is better than this.)
Onwards. Protest. Resist.