A Trump World

My feelings about our current president are no secret. I have posted about his position on the environment. I have posted about his treatment of women. And I have railed against his supporters for electing him in the first place. Today however, I want to look at things from a higher lever. Let’s climb up to ten-thousand feet and take a look at our country for a minute, shall we?

You see this is where things begin to look clearer. From way up here, past the media, past the conservative Far Right, and gun control, and women’s rights, and all the environmental issues, and past Russia and Putin, and election meddling, past Korea and past China (pronounced “GI-na”, apparently), and past healthcare, and past the damn tweet tweet tweets, there – way down there – lies America.

And in that America, all of our children are going to grow up and live their lives.

Think about that for just a minute. We all get so wrapped up in the NOW. We get caught up in the Twitter-wars and ridiculous fighting back and forth between the Right and the Left. We lose ourselves in the sound and fury that is Washington. We watch the news and all we see is that days story about that days disaster perpetrated by our President. And in all of that noise, we forget that there are real consequences here.

We – all of us – are shaping the world in which our children will live. If you come to accept that simple truth, you can then (and only then) begin to ask yourselves some of the tough questions:

• Do I want my children to grow up in a world where women can be treated as objects, to be used and discarded when you are finished? That marriage vows mean nothing, and infidelity is perfectly acceptable?
• Do I want my children to grow up in a world that disregards the value and importance of our environment, in lieu of the Almighty Dollar?
• Do I want my children to grow up in a world where it is OK to mock and ridicule the handicapped – or anyone less fortunate than yourself?
• Do I want my children to grow up in a world where the normal response to any challenge is to bully, and insult, and berate?
• Do I want my children to grow up in a world where the truth simply does not matter? A world where whatever you want to say – as long as you repeat it often enough – becomes the truth?

If you answered “NO” to any of the questions above, you might want to consider the kind of America that Donald Trump is building. While he openly pursues his own agenda of using the federal government like his personal ATM machine, he is also tearing apart many of the things that actually make America great.

See that’s the real crux of the biscuit here. Trump campaigned on a slogan of “Making America Great Again”, but the real truth is that America did not need to be made great again. We were already pretty great. It is a tried and true method in politics – first, create a problem that does not exist, and then assure the American voter that YOU are the only solution to the problem. This tactic has been used throughout our history. Hell, Reagan did it to save us from Gorbachev.

And it is not just this ideal of “America” that is being ripped apart here either. The other thing that Trump has seemed never to consider for a moment is the example he sets. He is more than just our Commander In Chief, he is also the Chief Tone Setter, the Director of Role Models and Examples, and the Leader of Our Impressionable Youth. Quite a bucket of job titles I know, but that’s the gig he ran for.

Trump seems to believe that he can say anything, can do anything, and can treat people any way he chooses to without consequence. And so far, this plan has been astonishingly effective for him. If somebody opposes him in any way, he bullies them – using the Twitter-verse to insult and embarrass them. If anyone talks about him in a negative light, they are disgruntled liars. And if the media reports on any of this, its “fake news”.

If you are a parent. If you love your children at all, please make sure you are countering these things with honesty, truth and love in your children’s lives. Teach them that no matter what they see our president doing, it is not OK to lie and misrepresent the truth. That no matter how our president treats women that is NOT OK, and that women (and all humans) should be treated with respect, dignity and kindness.

Teach your children most of all that Donald Trump most definitely does NOT represent the America we know and love. He does not represent the ideals of the people who live here and love this country either. Most of all, he does not stand in any way for those things that actually made America great in the first place.

Hug your children, and assure them that the bad man in the white house will soon be gone. That the damage he is doing to our country can be un-done. And that what is important is that we all love and respect one another. With that, we can solve any of the other problems we face – together, as a nation.