Thursday, July 18, 2019

Trump Diminishes All of Us

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

If political storms were rated like hurricanes, the one currently whipping its way across the United States of America would be a Level 5 Plus - off the charts!  We are in wild, chaotic, turbulent times and democracy itself hangs in the balance.

Last week Donald Trump inserted himself into a disagreement within the Democratic Party, one in which the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was trying to bring four minority women representatives back under what she envisioned as her control.  In making the effort to rein-in the four, Pelosi marginalized their influence and referred to them as a "squad" with little in the way of actual political clout - other than their social media followings.

Trump, with a history of playing to white supremacists (remember Charlottesville?) jumped into the fray, uninvited, and sided with Pelosi.  Trump painted the four women, again - all minorities, as being ungrateful  immigrants who were attacking a country that had accepted them - and then he suggested that they go back to the places that they had come from.  After the media quickly pointed out that three of four members of "the squad" were born in the United States and the fourth came here as a child and is now a citizen, Trump continued to describe the four as un-American.

On Tuesday the House of Representatives voted to "condemn" Trump for what it deemed to be his "racist" remarks regarding the four House members.  Four Republicans and one Independent joined Democrats in passing that resolution by a vote of 240-187.  The toothless measure did little more than twist Trump's tail, and he continued to roar.

Later on Tuesday, Texas Rep. Al Green, a Democrat, introduced an Article of Impeachment in the House.   It was Green's third attempt to bring about a vote on the impeachment of Trump.    He based this one on the House's vote to "condemn"Trump earlier in the day.  In justifying the move, Rep. Green said:

 “This president has demonstrated that he’s willing to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. And we have seen what can happen to people when bigotry is allowed to have a free rein. Look at what happened in Charlottesville. 'Blood and soil,' they screamed. They screamed, 'The Jews will not replace us.' And one of them took a person’s life who was exercising her constitutional right to protest. We cannot wait. As we wait, we risk having the blood of somebody on our hands—and it could be a member of Congress.”

The Article of Impeachment was voted on in the House yesterday where it failed by a vote of 332 to 95 with one member voting "present."   Of the 332 voting to table the measure, 137 were Democrats. All 95 of the votes favoring impeachment were cast by Democrats.  Speaker Pelosi and her "moderates" were successful in applying the brakes to the movement - for now - but the impeachment strength has been measured, and it is at ninety-five - also, for now.

Donald Trump took that vote as a victory and raced off to an election rally for himself in North Carolina where he spent the evening praising himself and attacking the more prominent Democratic presidential candidates as well as members of "the Squad," and in particular Rep.  Ilhan Omar, the black Muslim woman who had immigrated from Somalia as a child - and who has been a naturalized citizen since before Melania Trump took her oath of allegiance to the United States Constitution.  As Trump barked his jingoistic vitriol to the crowd, his supporters began chanting "Send her back!  Send her back!"

Donald Trump has dropped all pretense of being a concerned leader of all Americans, and he has solidly and irrevocably aligned himself with those who wallow in ignorance, and bigotry, and hatred. He is not worthy of the public trust that he has been given.

If Donald Trump is allowed to remain in office and mock ideals that were once proudly associated with the United States of America, we will have lost the moral high ground and dimmed the U.S. beacon of freedom that once shone proudly around the globe.

Trump has no shame, and he is proud of it.  

He diminishes all of us.

1 comment:

Xobekim said...

Meanwhile we aren't talking about Trump being named persons number one, Hope Hicks' jeopardy of having committed perjury, daily violations of the Emoluments Clause, Trump's failure to respond to Russian attacks on our sovereignty by continuing to interfere with our elections, or the treasure trove of indictable offenses that may stem from the Epstein case.

Trump's criminal enterprise operates like a gang of shoplifters. While Donald creates a distraction the rest of the gang is busy carrying away the loot.