State of the Union by Jack, 4th of July Edition

When Donald Trump won the presidency over Hillary Clinton, my first thought was, how bad can he possibly be?  I'll admit that Hillary Clinton wasn’t my first choice for a democratic nominee, but she was definitely the more qualified of the two final offerings.  While it's true that most politicians have skeletons in their closet, Hillary’s walk-in looked more like Freddie Kruger’s with pants suits.  The Donald also had baggage that wouldn’t fit in the overhead.  Hell, his baggage could sink an ocean liner.  The thing that sold Donald Trump was probably the fact that he wasn’t a politician.  We have tried politicians as presidents and it was now time for something different.  Or so some thought. Anything had to be an improvement over what we had been doing.  We were faced with two not-so-ideal choices.  We ended up with one Donald Trump, real estate tycoon.

Hillary's Closet

With Trump in the White House, I looked for the unseen benefit.  I thought that maybe Washington could use a little shake-up.  Well, January 20, 2017, Washington got a rattling like the 1964 Prince William Sound 9.4 magnitude earthquake.  Maybe this was a good thing.  Perhaps America will wake up now to see that not only does the emperor have no clothes, but also that Congress is acting like a bunch of third graders with a substitute teacher.  I don’t need to reiterate here the numerous missteps of the Trump presidency.  They are the daily fodder of all the major news outlets.  Even the “fair and balanced” Fox Network has occasionally found fault with their Commander-in-Tweet.

Trump White House

President Trump is truly the Teflon Don.  He keeps swinging for the left field fence and hitting nothing but the hot air of Washington in the summer.  He, just like a Kansas twister, keeps changing direction, destroys everything in his path, and eventually heads for the comfort of his fan-base in the trailer park.  Yes, President Trump has followers that have raised him to deity status.  With religious fervor they will follow him through the valley of the shadows of Congress, and fear no evil. He is their designated hitter, to get back to the baseball analogy, and he gets a thousand strikes.

This is not another Trump bashing.  After years of public apathy and putting up with a broken system, perhaps it’s time to let our government find rock bottom so that it can be rebuilt with lessons learned.  Right now, the rest of the way to the bottom looks like it will be a short trip.  The Democrats don't appear to have a clue and seem to be pinning their hopes on the midterm elections of November 6, 2018.  All 435 House seats will be on the block along with 33 Senate slots.  The future looks rather bleak, unless you happen to be one of the wealthy beneficiaries of the current Republican largesse.

Just know that we currently have government officials who believe that:

•         anthropogenic climate change is a hoax
•         trickle down economics just needs more time to work
•         Americans should only get the healthcare they can personally afford
•         good education should be reserved for the more affluent
•         their Christian faith is the true and only course for America
•         schools should be profit centers for business
•         the earth is less than 10,000 years old
•         we need to deregulate those responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis
•         we need to deregulate those responsible for the dot com bubble
•         job-loss is to be wholly blamed on illegal immigration and our globalized economy
•         our national drug problem can be solved with more jails and a bigger fence
•         our jails should be profit centers for business
•         Congressional gridlock is in the national interest
•         clean air and water are secondary to the needs of business enterprise
•         our infrastructure is going to be fine for a few more years
•         our energy future lies with oil and coal

The election of Donald Trump, with all he stands for, seemed better to many than trusting the existing government structure.  The distrust of our government leaders is not unfounded.  We see the constant shift of power.  It is being taken from "We the People" and shifted to "We the Affluent Minority."   Donald Trump is not the problem.  Like blood in your toilet, he is but a harbinger of a more serious issue.

We can only hope that those who placed their faith in The Great White Hope, aka President Donald Trump, will see that he is not their savior.  They should all soon realize that:

·        the south will not rise again

·        coal mining jobs will not return to bring prosperity to West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, etc.

·        the retail job market has forever changed and will undoubtedly shrink even more

·        manufacturing jobs will continue to suffer from automation and cheaper foreign labor

·        the Great Wall on the Mexican border won’t be built as promised

·        the Obamacare replacement won’t be both better and cheaper

·        all politicians lie, even the new ones

Money is the root of all evil, Timothy 6:10.  You didn’t know I could quote the Bible.  I didn’t either.  Money is certainly the root of all evil in politics, Jack 1:1.  Until we can find a way to remove the influence of money in politics, we will all suffer the consequences.  The people no longer vote for the candidate of their choice.  They vote for the candidate that is offered by the financially well-endowed who can afford the most airtime.

Scariest Words in the English Language

I can wish the best for our country but, as a pragmatist, I don’t hold out much hope for our democracy.  I am still proud to be an American, but I am not proud of our government.  I am not proud of the Democrats.  I am not proud of the Republicans.  President Donald Trump may very well be the Mt. Vesuvius to the Pompeii we call America.  His explosive verbal eruptions and pyroclastic tweets foretell a bleak future.  The tectonic plates are rattling, the heat is building, and something has to give.

Mt. Vesuvius