Happy anniversary.
A year ago, Americans did what had been considered both unthinkable and impossible and elected Donald Trump president. Since then, one head-spinning news development has been followed by another, and it’s hard to tell what kind of country we’re living in now.
The latest in a series of gun-caused tragedies, in a small church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, left 26 people dead – including eight from a single family – and 20 more injured. Predictably, President Trump blamed “mental illness” rather than guns, as if he had access to the health records of the gunman, as if all mentally ill people are violent, as if all violent people are mentally ill. As if he had been pushing for adequate insurance coverage and adequate funding for research and treatment of mental illness.
And the National Rifle Association and conservative Republicans continue to promote a bill requiring every state to recognize concealed-carry permits of gun owners from states where concealed-carry is legal.
In international news, on Sunday the Times’ Nicholas Kristof quoted several Korea experts who warn that the odds of a US war with North Korea are much higher than most of us think. One of them – Richard Haas of the Council on Foreign Relations – puts the odds at 50-50. Senator Lindsey Graham, Kristof wrote, has said that if North Korea continues to test its intercontinental ballistic missiles – which it surely will – war is “inevitable.”
A few days earlier, the Times informed us about yet another scientific report confirming that global warming is happening and saying that “there is ‘no convincing alternative explanation’ that anything other than humans – the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, the forests we destroy – are to blame.”
The same week, the Secretary of Energy for the United States, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, talked about Africa’s serious need for better access to energy – and said fossil fuels are the solution.
“It’s going to take fossil fuels to push power out into those villages in Africa,” Perry said at a forum. He cited a girl who told him she needed electricity so she wouldn’t have to read by the light of a fire. Then Perry added his own touch: electricity is also important, he said, to prevent sexual assault, by shining “the light of righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts.”
Republicans try to take access to affordable health care away from people, and craft a tax bill that rewards the rich and penalizes the middle class. The president complains about not being able to influence the Department of Justice and the FBI.
I’d like to think this is not the kind of country that most Americans want. And indeed, while Trump’s base still supports him, his overall approval ratings are extremely low. But we’re a long way from the next presidential election. Most Republicans in Congress apparently figure they’re getting enough of what they want that they’ll continue to tolerate him. Impeachment is no solution, because Mike Pence would promote many of the same policies from a less volatile West Wing.
The carnage that guns are causing, the causes and catastrophic effects of climate change, the risks of Donald Trump’s ill-informed approach to foreign policy: the facts are available, and credible news media are reporting them daily. But for too much of the American public, truth is what we want it to be, and social media and Fox News are as credible as the Times.
A year and a day ago, I could hope that the country was better than this, that the election results would shock political leaders of both major parties, that we would all pull together and get back on track. Now, I’m not so sure. Donald Trump didn’t spring up out of nowhere. The Republican leadership knows what it is doing. And the Democrats are fragmented and seem thoroughly confused.
Happy anniversary.
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2017.
But of course Demagogue Donny also has his humorous side. Like when he tweeted his belief that Frederick Douglass was still alive. And the other day when he told the Japanese that they should be building cars in the US.
Dems, don’t forget to go outside and howl at the moon over loosing. A Washington Post poll showed that Trump would win again if there was an election today. American is looking up.
“… President Trump blamed “mental illness” rather than guns …” I’m certainly not absolving the guns of any blame, but in this case, it does look like the shooter had a history of very significant mental health issues. So Trump, in this case, wasn’t totally wrong.
“The latest in a series of gun-caused tragedies…” Really? Gun-caused? So using the author’s faulty logic, when the Uzbekistan terrorist (a product of the Diversity Immigrant Program…thank you Chuck Schumer) recently used a Home Depot truck to violently kill eight and injure more than a dozen innocent people in New York City, it must have been a simple truck-caused tragedy.
And yes, President Trump was correct. When you fracture your stepson’s skull and violently attack your wife, I think that might qualify as a mental health issue. And once again, the gun-laws were already in place. Due to an Air Force clerical error, he was not entered into a federal database that would have, because of EXISTING GUN LAWS, precluded him from purchasing a gun. And isn’t it quite ironic that the hero of the day, a quiet neighbor named Stephen Willeford who saved many more folks from being murdered by putting his life on the line (the murderer was shooting back at him), was a gun instructor for that terribly evil conservative organization known as the NRA. It has now been established after autopsy that Patrick Devin Kelley was stopped by three bullets, one self-inflicted, two not.
Thank God for real heroes like Willeford and thank God that the liberals’ paper hero, Hillary Clinton, who bragged about running through sniper fire after arriving at the Bosnian Airport, was defeated. In reality, she was greeted on the tarmac by smiling officials, not gunfire. But then again, what would one expect from the most corrupt and dishonest woman in American history? The truth?
Bullet wounds are caused by guns.
And apparently untold mountains of angst and vitriol are caused by the mere existence of private citizen Hillary Clinton.
This editorial was obviously written before Tuesday’s election, a lightning bolt through the clouds. In discouraging times I think of a cartoon news anchor closing the broadcast with these words: “If you don’t like the news, create some of your own.” Clearly, many of our fellow citizens did just that on Election Day 2017. Our “Happy anniversary” ought to be a clarion call for us to “go and do likewise.”
the Rev. Richard S. Gilbert
Johnny, some recommended reading for you: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/35955…
And the Democrats are fragmented and seem thoroughly confused.”
I think the Democrats have to out trump, Trump. That is, they have to learn from the powerful media strategies that he used, and use this to promote their own causes.
Obama was, no drama, and Hillary was boring, compared to Trump. Time will tell is the Democrats are able to use the new media to build interest and excitement.
Trump, using fear, is waking us up. Can we turn fear into real concern and caring?
Gotta laugh at all the lefties. Blindly supporting a party that doesn’t give one iota about you or the country.
It never ceases to amaze me the amount of misinformation the left uses to support their convoluted logic.
There is so much in the author’s article that I could refute. I’ll choose
Global warming.
Global warming is a hoax. Check out Professor Spencer for REAL science. His web site is the Skeptical Science.
Climate change is nothing than a transfer of wealth scam engineered by people like Al Gore, George Soros,,which by the way is not his real name, the Tides Foundation , and the Annenberg Foundation.
Ever hear of the CCX? It stands for the Chicago Carbon Exchange. It was intended to create a stock market like enterprise where corporations and individual home owners would have to purchase carbon credits in order to use energy. The estimated amount of transaction was in the billions. The transaction carried a fee, Just like when you purchase a share of stock. Al Gore, Soros and others were to be benefactors of those transaction fees .
I’m for clean air and water as much as the most ardent greenie, but not at the expense of some SCAM called global warming to line Al Gore’s pockets.
The temperature has only changed a .o1 degree C. over the past 100 years or so. Not my number but the number of CREDIBLE scientists.
Here is great link by a CREDIBLE scientist if you care to read by Richard Lindzen.
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-plan…
The CCX went into bankruptcy, thank GOD! And by the way guess who was to be the head of the CCX? Barrack Obama.
Trump is not the problem, Elitist politicians and lobbyist are.
One last comment. If the GOVERNMENT had done its job the Texas tragedy would
have been avoided.
Have a great day!!
By all means DO go and check out:
skepticalscience.com
Spoiler alert – it isn’t going to make you feel any better about the present state of or future of climate change.