Recently, a conservative Facebook friend of mine posted a question to his friends, asking what grade people would give Trump.
I perused through the responses, trying not to take the bait. Of course, one person after another gave him A, and a few even gave him A+'s. Some were a bit fairer, giving him a C, and I recall one of these suggesting that his tweets were killing his grade.
There were, at least, a few failing grades, and usually a few comments added about how this president was dividing the country.
But people kept arguing with these points, and there were just so many people, including family members of this guy, who thought only positive things about Trump, that frankly, I felt sick to my stomach.
Predictably, the next thing I knew, I was typing fast and furiously.
How would I grade President Trump thus far after eight months on the job?
Easy.
F-
I am not kidding!
Seriously, this man is a failure. He might be rich, but as far as the country is concerned, he is completely worthless.
No, worse than worthless. He and people like him suck the resources, and the jobs, right out of the country. After all, who but Donald Trump would have the audacity to make all of his wonderful clothes (not the hats), that were made in impoverished nations, and then run for president with surely some of the proceeds from those clothes going towards his campaign. Of course, he would say that is being a savvy businessman, but I think it is being a ruthless, manipulative scumbag.
But that's just me.
Still, this man has failed spectacularly at being president! Look at the weak that this man had last week, for example. He gave a speech before the United Nations where he lent superficial praise to peace, while making all sorts of threats, up to and including threatening to wipe a country off the map, quite literally. He urged other leaders to be as insular and exclusive with their countries as he has been with his own. The next day, he went before African leaders, and discusses - at length - the healthcare system of a non-existent African country. Finally, he finished off the weak trashing some professional athletes - mostly football players, but also some basketball players (mostly the Golden State Warriors).
Just imagine another president doing that. Just imagine that another president would be busy talking about protests by professional athletes, while millions of American citizens just got slammed by consecutive hurricanes, and will be without electricity and other basic essentials for months. Imagine a president doing what Trump did, marveling at the historical strength of these storms, and then retracting those statements, or rather, pretending that he had not said them, because those statements could be used as evidence that climate change might have played a part, when this president has gone to considerable lengths to minimize the significance of climate change. But he outright denied that it was real just a few years ago, claiming it was a hoax invented by the Chinese, even though scientists have, for many decades now, confirmed that there really is something to this whole global warming/climate change thing!
Can you imagine another president threatening to totally obliterate another country before the leaders at the United Nations? Can you imagine another president claiming to be the leader of all Americans, even though he has shown transparent racist tendencies? He has a difficult time seriously criticizing white supremacists, but he has no problem outright referring to black athletes who protest as "sons of bitches" and urges NFL owners to fire them on the spot. He claimed that the NFL has grown soft, and suggested that this whole concussion thing is overblown. Can you imagine another president essentially suggesting that people should disregard facts that have emerged which reveal the more dangerous aspects of a sport like football? Do you think that Trump will encourage some kids to perhaps hit harder, perhaps lead with their helmets, which could lead to serious injuries? Would he be willing to do that with his son, Baron? Frankly, I am not even sure that this particular man would not, because he truly and utterly is a miserable human being.
How tens of millions of my fellow Americans came to view this man as not only fit to hold this nation's highest office, but felt that it needed him, and came to believe his obvious lie that he, and only he, could save this country, still is a source of incredible depression when I allow myself to think about it. It makes me wonder (in fact, I cannot help but wonder) what we have allowed ourselves to become in this country? How have we allowed our standards to fall to such an extent that the man who might be the most uniquely unfit to hold this highest office and the last man we should trust to hold it is, instead, precisely the man that we collectively vote into that office? How is it that millions of people came to believe his obvious lies? How is it that facts seem truly not to matter to tens of millions of Americans?
Yet, no matter what he does, no matter how idiotic and petty he has revealed himself to be time and time and time again, he has his loyal supporters, who apparently feel that this man can do no wrong, that he in fact can walk on water. The most preposterous of his supporters are those allegedly devoted Christians, the fundamentalist Christians, who seriously suggest, without a trace of a smile on their face, that Trump is a man of God, and that he was sent by God to save this country! How anyone can look at this man, look at his history, and suggest this is, frankly, so ridiculous as to be laughable! All kidding aside, he truly embodies the Seven Deadly Sins that we are supposed to be wary of, rather than the virtues and overall nobility that Christianity, and all major religions, are supposed to espouse.
Some believed (or more likely, hoped) that the office of the presidency, and the awesome responsibilities that come with it, might humble Trump. But no such luck. This man is too busy holding his damned stupid rallies (as if the presidential campaign were still going on) and tweeting at all hours to find any semblance of moderation. He will never modify his behavior, because this is who he is, and this is what we knew he would bring to the Oval Office. He is an irresponsible, overgrown child, every bit as boisterous and petty as a bratty child, except that he does not have the excuse of still being young and childish. This man is over 70 years old, and so he will never change.
Indeed, Donald Trump is the same man now that he was after he was first elected, and that was the same man he was well before he was elected, or well before he even announced that he was running for the White House. He is the same man he was when he was the face and voice of a stupid reality television show, and the same man he was back in the 1980's, when he was ruthlessly building up his vulture capitalist empire and putting his name up on towers dominating America's urban skylines. Donald Trump will never change. If anything should be clear by now about this man, and the policies and overall approach that he has taken towards the presidency, it is that he is adverse to change. Oh, he might talk the talk about a new approach to the presidency, which is his way of introducing genuine trashiness into it, such as the wrestling or the tweeting or the relentless petty dissing and shock comments. But fundamentally, this man is who he has always been, and he wants a country that never changes. And what seems also clear is that this is desired by a huge segment of his followers, who see the changing trends for the country, and do not like or trust it. He understands this, and caters to their fears. He manipulates these fears, and uses the divisions that he actively tries to make grow for his own benefit. It is the political equivalent of the vulture capitalism that got him his financial empire to begin with. Only now, instead of some people paying - those who have the misfortune of dealing with this man or with his businesses - now the entire country, and indeed, even to some extent the entire world - has to pay, and pay dearly.
What has been so wrong about the Trump presidency?
Well, to sum up, he has consistently making our country worse, actively dividing it, and taking pleasure in this process, as well as in deceiving his supporters. The entire world is horrified by his actions and decisions, and his lack of leadership has led some allies to decide that they can no longer rely on the United States as a reliable partner. In the meantime, other countries have made a point of signing cooperation treaties together also because they feel that the United States is not reliable. He threatens a country with nuclear annihilation as casually and automatically as he talks about football players taking a knee. And the casual racism, the inability to seriously ever question himself, let alone have someone question him, is a serious weakness and liability not only to his status as president, but for the entire country, not to mention being a serious source of embarrassment for the entire nation while this man's term endures.
Donald Trump's rise to the presidency symbolizes the decline of the United States in a very real sense. This man built his financial empire by ruining other people with countless scams and gimmicks. He lacks substances, he lacks objectivity, he lacks any real concerns about anything other than his own selfish interests. Not only that, but he is quite transparent about all of these things. Again, he casually talks about things with no serious reflection of the consequences of his words. When he suggests that he will be the president for "all Americans," it is just something that his speechwriters suggested he should say, not something that he truly means, let alone strives to live up to. Trump always has been and always will be a narrow-minded opportunist. While many Americans seem to feel that this kind of opportunism, the hungry pouncing for profit of anything remotely resembling some kind of profit, is exactly what the country needs, it is, in fact, exactly what is wrong with this country. It is the reason why corporations and excessively selfish and morally bankrupt individuals continue to profit off of other people's pain, as evidenced by our for profit healthcare system, or our for profit prison system.
Donald Trump does not symbolize a return to greatness for America. Far from it. In fact, he represents the very worst that the United States has to offer. he always has and he always will, and his presidency will reflect that, likely until the very end of his term in office, and perhaps even to his very last day on this earth.
Frankly, this man represents staggering levels of hypocrisy and paradox. He claims to be the president for all Americans, yet he nakedly seems to favor some Americans based on the color of their skin, and regularly dismisses anyone opposed to him as "losers.". He built a financial empire, although he downplays the help he received, including the fortune that was handed down to him without strings, in the process. His supporters believe that he can do for the country what he did with his financial empire, yet his history reveals an endless series of gimmicks and cons, such as the absurd Trump University. Thus, despite being filthy rich, he is completely worthless in terms of fixing this country's problems, or getting it going in the right direction again. He wants to be taken seriously, yet relentlessly engages in crass behaviors that undermine his own credibility and, frankly, maturity. He claims to be a man of peace, yet he threatens the complete annihilation of an entire nation. He points certain countries out as enemies, particularly China, and promises to get tough, but once in office, he suddenly backs down. He promises he will make Mexico pay for the ridiculous wall, then of course backs down when he cannot actually get them to pay once he takes office. He thinks fixing the broken healthcare system will be easy, then acts surprised when it is not, and his promises that under him, every American will be adequately covered suddenly goes out the window, as he merely tags his name and reputation to whatever healthcare proposals Republican congressmen try and force through to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act. He claims that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, then denies it during a national debate with Hillary Clinton, and then tries to impose a gag order on any federal employee who wants to talk about climate change. And probably the biggest paradox of all with him really is not about him at all, and it that he tries to portray himself as a man of solid Christian faith, when his entire history reveals that he has pursued all of the things that every major faith warn about. He has been guilty of most, if not all, of the Seven Deadly Sins, yet his Christian fundamentalist supporters believe that this man walks on water and can do no wrong, and some of them have even threatened to unleash a civil war if Trump is impeached.
Here's the problem as I see it: Trump truly seems to think that the presidency should be entertaining, at the expense of being serious. Serious things bore him, obviously. But catering to the demands of an affluent nation too used to having their every whim and desire to be entertained at all expense met? Well, President Trump, or someone just like him, was really an inevitability. After all, over recent decades, everything seems to need to be packaged in just such a way as to keep our ever waning attention span from straying, which means everything needs to be dumbed down and become a source of entertainment, including our news. After years and years like this, the idea of a clown like Trump running for the White House no longer seems like the truly laughable notion that we know it to be, deep down. And we went ahead and took the plunge, Yes, so addicted are we to needing to feel entertained above everything else, that we now have someone who clearly is taken with the notion of entertaining and getting good ratings now serving as our president.
When will this spoiled nation wake up? How much more does our standard of living have to decline, before we wake up and pay attention already? When will we get past our need to be entertained above all else? Will we perhaps finally snap out of it and realize that it is not a joke once President Trump has actually backed up his claims to nuke an entire country off the map literally, and it's millions of people along with it? Would that even be enough for Americans to finally wake the hell up, or will we still then be engaged in pointless debates about whether this guy really is as bad as so many have warned that he is? Will he still have his loyal legions of apologists after such an event? And how would we then cope with being perceived as the new, modern incarnation of the greatest evil of our time, like Nazis before us? Will we then shake our heads and claim that we did not know he was serious about using nuclear weapons, much like Germans shook their heads after the war and claimed that they did not know that all of those Jews who disappeared from their lives were indeed being exterminated, much like Hitler stated outright in speeches? At what point do we stop looking at this man as merely entertainment, but rather as what he is: a wildly unstable human being who should never, ever have been entrusted with the kind of power that is now at his disposal?
These are perilous times, and yet, we have some people who still are completely oblivious of everything, and who truly want to keep up with the Kardashians. Because, you know, they are just sooo entertaining, and their drama is real life, right? After all, they put the real in reality television, right?
Personally, I don't give a damn about the Kardashians, and am not entertained by the ridiculous, pathetic antics of a celebrity, reality television star president who many of his supporters suggest is "entertaining." Time and again, I have heard some of his supporters try to corner me in an argument by getting me to admit that at least he is entertaining. The country is divided like never before, our "leader" is threatening to wipe an entire nation off the map, and many still want to focus on crap, on fake drama like the Kardashians and on athletes protesting, while the world is on fire. And we have our own little Nero playing his fiddle.
Are you not entertained?
