All of this winning!
Yes, Trump and his big mouth will relentlessly try to convince anyone who will listen that the country absolutely needed him, and that it is going extremely well with him at the helm. He always, at every turn, tries to convince anyone who will not run away about how the country owes him a debt of gratitude for his genius and his tough negotiating skills. The world has been laughing at us for years, he suggested. But under him, the world will come to respect the United States again.
It has been almost three years since he was elected president, and he has been in office now for 2 ½ years. Some of the glaring failures have been obvious and oft repeated by his detractors, which includes me. He never managed to build his wall, let alone make Mexico pay for it. He never defeated ISIS fully, let alone within a month’s time span. The rest of the world is not bending over backwards to meet American demands and, in fact, many of the countries of the world are simply trying to sign trade agreements to go around the United States, to circumvent the nation that many of them feel they no longer can trust anymore. That incudes numerous European nations that, for many decades, were allied to the United States. When leaders of European nations are willing to go on record to warn their citizens that they can no longer count on the United States as an honest and reliable partner, that is a big deal. And it is far from my version of “winning.”
Indeed, perhaps Trump could have gained concessions from China more quickly and readily, if he had worked with other nations that share some of the same concerns. Instead, he chose to take a uniform approach of antagonizing everyone, and those countries responded in kind. European nations made it so that beginning in 2021, which is hardly in the distant future, Americans will need visas to visit European nations.
As for respect around the world, Trump is very openly mocked in numerous countries. Comedians have a field day in Australia and the United Kingdom with him, much like they do right here at home. There are balloons of Trump portrayed as a whiny baby that flew over London, and there are parade floats in numerous countries, similarly portraying Trump in most unflattering ways. And the laughter also came right to Trump’s face when he began, typically, to praise himself and his own accomplishments. World leaders literally laughed in his face, and he acted surprised.
In other words, the rest of the world seems to be laughing harder than ever, and the lack of respect is now very much directed at the very man whom Americans collectively put into the White House, partially in the hopes that he would keep his promise and get the rest of the world to stop laughing at us.
So much for that.
Even domestically, though, “45” has failed on an epic level. After all, he promised to create a new healthcare system that would lower costs, and which would cover everyone. He even had the audacity to suggest that creating such a system would be “easy.” No word on when he actually intends to lift a finger on that, although he endorsed plans that would have thrown tens of millions of people off of their healthcare plan, and which raised prices, to boot. What a hero, hard at work for the best interests of all Americans, eh?
The most egregious trespass, as far as I am concerned, has been his relentless attacks on the very Constitution that he promised to uphold. He keeps trying to grab more and more power for himself, seemingly intent on dismantling the time-honored tradition of maintaining checks and balances between the three branches of government. He also wants to undermine the Bill of Rights when it comes to freedom of the press – which he relentlessly attacks – and on freedom of speech, because he censors certain people from mentioning the very existence of climate change. He also is trying to bring religion back into the classroom, and has targeted Muslims on numerous occasions, which again seems to contradict the first amendment as well. Plus, he and Mitch McConnell are hard at work trying to bring the courts to effectively serve their narrow political agenda, and have at least bent the rules dramatically in so doing, if not outright broken them. And Trump remains willing to risk a Constitutional crisis in order to block investigations and try to cover up scandals, all pretty much in plain view. Indeed, Trump and his political allies are busy, hard at work in relentlessly attacking what has come to be the American way of life, which admittedly was already being seriously eroded by high-ranking government officials of both parties for decades now.
Trump’s incredibly long list of failures is not limited there, though. For all of his pomp and circumstance regarding his own supposed achievements and greatness, the fact of the matter is that under Trump’s elitist tax policies which gave huge tax breaks and incentives to the very wealthiest Americans, yet again, the national debt and the budget deficit both saw dramatic spikes. The national debt had increased by well over two trillion dollars, and it seems that Trump may add a trillion dollars to that national debt for each year that he is in the White House. An d the budget deficit keeps on growing. And here is the most glaring example of hypocrisy: the same Republicans who were railing against Obama and crying foul when he had to raise the national debt to try and salvage the economy that his Republican predecessor had left after eight disastrous years and a near total economic collapse are now quiet when Trump raises the national debt and increase the budget deficit. No criticisms or complaints. Complete silence from them. Crickets.
Such hypocrisy!
And they seem to be working together on this. This is their version to “Make America Great Again.”
The country is worse for it. We have not been this divided in a very long time – possibly since the days of the Civil War, and that might not be an exaggeration!
Remember, Trump promised that once he was in the White House, this country would just keep winning and winning and winning, to the point that we would grow tired of it, and ask him to stop winning, but he would refuse.
Now, with everything in the country falling apart all around us, and the signs all too clear and visible that we are going in the very wrong direction, Trump is assuring is that we are winning. Indeed, this is his version of “winning.”
You know what? He was finally right about one thing, and kept one of his promises. Because indeed, if this is the “winning” that he had in mind, then I am very tired of it, and would ask him to please stop. In fact, millions of American voices are asking him to stop, seeing the disaster that has been his presidency.
In very typical Trump style, he is refusing. Just like he said he would.
I guess that is one promise kept. Too bad it has to be that one, eh?
US budget deficit jumps 23.1% over last year as debt crisis loomsby By Donna Borak, CNN, July 11, 2019:
No comments:
Post a Comment