So I finish the crossword and Suduku and boot up this
desktop. After e-mail, the first thing I check is Facebook. A former student
had posted words to the effect that although he didn't vote for Trump as President,
he realizes that he is POTUS and he said
essentially: "I will start you off with the assumption that you will do
your best and I'll give you a preliminary grade of A, what happens to that
depends on your performance."
What appalled
me were the immediate comments from others, mostly older, (I checked) to the effect that "Trump
couldn't do much worse", "the bar is already low", etc. Then I
realized that my 24 year old friend was able to do something of which these jerks were incapable - he is able to
judge a person, even if he dislikes them, by their actions, not by preconceived
bias.
I was saddened
by statements of the emotional cripples who commented negatively, because I
realized that they never, ever, would be capable of such critical evaluation
because they are blinded, probably since early childhood, when race enters the
arena. I don't use the term "cripples" lightly. When one is incapable of assessing people and
situations as they are rather than as one's bias makes them feel they should
be, that person is socially and emotionally handicapped. When the only positive regard a white person
can hold for a person of color is if they help them win a sports bet, that
person is emotionally and socially crippled. There is no other word which fits.
When they get angry when someone points it out rather than self evaluate (they
can't) they are emotionally lame.
It was thus as soon as Barack Obama was
elected. He had not even been sworn in as President, yet in the eyes of these
poor critics, he was already a failure. Already the snide comments re: his
family were out there. Nothing he could have done in office would change that for them. This was
echoed by the GOP leadership's orders (public record!) to the rank and file to oppose every single
initiative of the Obama administration .
What differentiates
this from the Trump candidacy is that Mr. Trump, in fact, has done and said any
number of grossly inappropriate and quasi legal things and has foreign affiliations
which are actually pretty scary, yet his sycophants ignore it because they apparently
think he possesses a time machine. Oh yeah, and he's white (orange,
actually). Don't forget TV personality,
too.
When Trump
ignores the water carriers of his support group, and he will, they will
probably, like abused dogs, accept the abuse because they have been made to feel they
deserve it. When some of 15 or 20 million Americans lose their health insurance and the
accompanying coverage for pre-existing conditions, they will somehow accept it
as the natural order of things. If the GOP actually dismantled the Affordable Care
Act and replaced it with something similar, it will all be to Trump's credit in
their minds. For far too many Americans, by actual survey, those who hated "Obamacare"
thought the Affordable Care Act was just fine. As Ron White sometimes opines,
"You can't fix stupid."
So, yeah, old
white hate mongers, pile on the outgoing
Chief Executive, he certainly doesn't deserve it but sadly, he's used to it. The
truth is that persons who rate presidents, actually understand geopolitics and
foreign policy, and don't sift their
opinions through the dual filters of racism and Evangelical superstition, will
almost surely place Barack Obama in the top third of US Presidents. Let's hope Trump is less like
Warren G. Harding than he seems to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment