Until we figure out what's going on...

I don't know what's worse, Trump's enabling of the always-there-but-we-denied-it racism; his disrespect of of women, the disabled, immigrants, Muslims, and any other group you'd care to name; his pandering to the far right (or alt-right as we call them these days); his unrealistic promises to the white working class; his lack of understanding of economics, the environment and the workings of a constitutional democratic republic with built-in checks & balances; his autocratic tendencies; the unreasoning hatred of President Obama & a  mindless jihad to erase all of his accomplishments; his pattern of lying about virtually everything; appointing people to run government agencies who either want to eliminate their agencies or don't know what they do; the Russian connections of his family, his businesses and his associates; calling the free press an enemy of the people; attacking judges who rule against him; his refusal to divest himself of his businesses and the creeping nepotism; his refusal to release his tax returns or his bullying and disrespect of longtime allies.

There. The very length of that list is in itself a huge problem.

One might dismiss one or two items  as the grumblings of disaffected electoral losers, but the sheer flood of problems and issues should give anyone but the most committed Trumpist pause. Even if you agree that the PPACA should be repealed or replaced or repealed and replaced because it is "a disaster"; even if you really believe that the EPA is a job killer and that allowing coal companies to dump their waste in rivers will bring back jobs despite automation and cheap natural gas; even if you're not a fan of the mainstream media and think they're biased; even if you think we need to "start winning" (again); you can't possibly believe that the major news organizations are enemies of the people; that all of his associates who not only have Russian connection, but lie about it, is just a coincidence; that the series of lies about inconsequential matters is indicative of a sane mind; that he has even the germ of a plan to do any of the things that he talked about during the campaign.

Donald Trump simply does not know what the hell he is doing. He has chalked up a few victories with executive orders, tearing down what President Obama tried to do with his own executive orders, but anything that takes any kind of knowledge about how the world works, about how governing works, he has failed. Apparently he thought that the Presidency was all-powerful and that he could get what he wanted just because he wanted it. His spectacular failure at repealing and replacing the PPACA with 'something better' showed his abysmal ignorance, as the details of the new law was at odds with what he promised during the campaign and he didn't seem to realize it. His two failures to institute his travel ban showed his ignorance of how the judicial ranch worked. And Mexico still hasn't ponied up money for that wall.

We were so worried about Clinton using a private server that we got a President who uses an unsecured Android phone to tweet his idiocy; we were so worried about Clinton's so-called pay-for-play as Secretary of State that we got a President who daily profits from the enhanced position of his businesses; we were so worried about some lies that Clinton told that we got a President who wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the ass.

America - we have a problem.

Immigration Ban

While I agree that we have to police our borders and keep terrorists out, there are some things about  Trump's recent Executive Order regarding immigration that just smell funny:

• During the campaign, Trump initially said that he would ban immigration by Muslims; he later walked this back. Rudy Giuliani recently said that Trump asked him to advise him on how he could do a Muslim ban legally
• Trump repeatedly claims that we do not vet immigrants, including refugees. In fact the process is long and detailed and applicants are by no means assured of entry. Trump used the term "extreme vetting" during the campaign, but did not expand on what that meant. Apparently it meant "no one gets in"
• Numerous green card holders, which meant that they had been granted permanent residence status, were denied re-entry when returning to the United States after visiting family in their home countries
• Numerous refugees were denied entry after going through the 18-24 month vetting process
• Trump claims that President Obama had instituted a similar ban, which is not true, the Obama administration had tightened up vetting standards, which admittedly caused delays for some people
• There have been no terrorist attacks by immigrants from the countries on the ban list, but there has been from countries not on the list where Trump has business interests
• Once immigration was opened up again, precedence would be given to Christians

It is clear that President Trump's initial thinking was to ban Muslims, but realized that it would be illegal to do so based solely on religion, which is why former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates refused to execute the Executive Order. 

Everyone Should Be Concerned

I can live with policy disagreements, I can live with differences of opinion. In regard to the newly inaugurated President Trump, I don't think that it's his policies that are the root problem, it's his apparent lack of connection to reality and belief that the rules have never applied to him, less so now that he is the president. Now that's not to say that his policies aren't a problem, in my view they most definitely are. If you can even call them policies - more like reactions than actual thought-through positions. That's what really scares me, that he'll get us into a war because of something that he saw on 'Nick at Nite'.

His impulsive use of Twitter should concern everyone. His near constant lying should concern everyone. His attacks on private citizens should concern everyone. His ignorance of the Constitution, including the separation of powers should concern everyone. His attacks on judges should concern everyone. His relentless attempts to discredit the media in order and define what facts are should concern everyone. The way he and his spokespeople deny that he said things that he has said in writing and on national television should concern everyone. The recent threats that he made to Iran and especially Mexico should concern everyone.

But everyone isn't concerned. Trump supporters repeat his lies and defend his lack of understanding. They make excuses and rationalize his craziness. That should concern everyone.

The Wall

The only wall we should be in favor of is the wall of separation between church and state.

We are in a weird alternate universe where the most profane, the most irreligious, the most self-centered president in recent memory has become the champion of the Evangelical Christians.

Before we get to him, a few words about religion in politics.

Granted, there are some things wherein religious law makes sense for everybody. "Thou shalt not murder" makes perfect sense. Murder obviously infringes upon someone's, i.e. the murdered person's, right to continue living. "Thou shalt not steal" makes a lot of sense as a general rule as well. It can be argued that prohibiting and criminalizing murder and theft make sense without ever resorting to a "holy" book. It doesn't really matter what your religion is, no one thinks murder is a good idea, or advocates for the repeal of all laws against murder. But once you pass laws that explicitly appeal to what's written in someone's "holy" book, you're on shaky, even illegal, ground.

Despite the First Amendment, for most of our nation's history, Christianity, in particular, Protestant Christianity has held a privileged position in our society; it has only been the last 50 years or so that the de facto establishment of Christianity has been slowly undone. Predictably, many Christians look upon the dismantling of their privilege as persecution, and just as predictably, cheer on anyone who promises to restore their faith to a preeminent position in society and in law.

Which brings us to the current occupant of The White House and his religious supporters.

Donald Trump came along at a time when a significant segment of the electorate was looking for something new, someone outside the mainstream. In the Democratic Party, Senator Sanders energized large numbers of people who were tired of business as usual from the Democrats. In the Republican primaries, even candidates who got into office by way of their Tea Party bona fides such as Ted Cruz were seen as sellouts. Donald Trump benefited from the widespread dissatisfaction by saying the things that many people wanted to hear and by having no record to run away from. One of the things that he said that people wanted to hear was that he would favor Christianity, that he would "protect" Christians (from what, he didn't elaborate upon) and similarly non-specific pro-Christian slogans. One very specific thing that he promised to do was to appoint anti-abortion judges, including filling the vacant Supreme Court seat. Many people are one-issue candidates, if that one issue is abortion, then of course they'll vote for the candidate that talks about outlawing abortion. Others, just in general, think that "the liberals" are ruining the country and oppressing the Christians, so will vote in anyone who wants to take us back to the good ol' days, despite absence of any indication of actual Christian qualities in that candidate.

So what has happened is that many right-wing Christian voters have decided, whether consciously or unconsciously, that a politician who acts like a Christian is less important than a politician who gives conservative Christians what they want. Apparently moral purity is only important to them when judging liberal Democrats, but is not an issue for conservative Republicans.

But other than abortion, are there other issues where Trump is pandering to right-wing Christians? It looks like Trump will be supporting legislation that legalizes discrimination that is based upon religious beliefs and getting rid of a law that prohibits church leaders from talking politics from the pulpit if they are tax-exempt. At the inauguration the number of ministers praying in the name of Jesus and Trump's assertion that not only would the military protect America, but God would, was perhaps all show, but it pointed toward a more sectarian mode of governing.

Trump is definitely not a religious man, but he knows who got him elected and he's going to continue to throw them bones until he doesn't think he needs them any longer.

A "Disgrace to Women" - a Straw-Woman

I have seen the following posted multiple times on Facebook today:

I am not a "disgrace to women" because I don't support the women's march. I do not feel I am a "second class citizen" because I am a woman. I do not feel my voice is "not heard" because I am a woman. I do not feel I am not provided opportunities in this life or in America because I am a woman. I do not feel that I "don't have control of my body or choices" because I am a woman. I do not feel like I am " not respected or undermined" because I am a woman. 
I AM a woman. 
I can make my own choices. 
I can speak and be heard. 
I can VOTE. 
I can work if I want. 
I control my body. 
I can defend myself. 
I can defend my family. 
There is nothing stopping me to do anything in this world but MYSELF. 
I do not blame my circumstances or problems on anything other than my own choices or even that sometimes in life, we don't always get what we want. I take responsibility for myself. 
I am a mother, a daughter, a wife, a sister, a friend. I am not held back in life but only by the walls I choose to not go over which is a personal choice. 
Quit blaming. 
Take responsibility. 
If you want to speak, do so. But do not expect for me, a woman, to take you seriously wearing a pink va-jay-jay hat on your head and screaming profanities and bashing men. 
If you have beliefs, and speak to me in a kind matter, I will listen. But do not expect for me to change my beliefs to suit yours. Respect goes both ways. 
If you want to impress me, especially in regards to women, then speak on the real injustices and tragedies that affect women in foreign countries that do not that the opportunity or means to have their voices heard. 
Saudi Arabia, women can't drive, no rights and must always be covered. 
China and India, infantcide of baby girls. 
Afghanistan, unequal education rights. 
Democratic Republic of Congo, where rapes are brutal and women are left to die, or HIV infected and left to care for children alone. 
Mali, where women can not escape the torture of genital mutilation. 
Pakistan, in tribal areas where women are gang raped to pay for men's crime. 
Guatemala, the impoverished female underclass of Guatemala faces domestic violence, rape and the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa. An epidemic of gruesome unsolved murders has left hundreds of women dead, some of their bodies left with hate messages.
And that's just a few examples. 
So when women get together in AMERICA and whine they don't have equal rights and march in their clean clothes, after eating a hearty breakfast, and it's like a vacation away that they have paid for to get there...
This WOMAN does not support it.

The problem is, I haven't seen anyone anywhere  calling women who did not march or support the march "a disgrace to women", so unless someone points out who did the disgracing, this is a strawman argument. While I don't argue that a woman can deny that she is a second class citizen and takes responsibility for her life, I do quibble with the notion that horrible things happening in other countries obviates the ability or the right for women, or any other people, to protest problems or inequalities in our own country. I also take exception to the characterization that the marchers are whining. The original writer, who takes exception with being mischaracterized, even insulted, goes on to characterize and insult those she disagrees with. 

I call bullshit. 

Republicans

Once upon a time I looked at the candidate and voted according to how I thought that individual's priorities matched my own. I've voted for Republicans, Democrats & Libertarians. For many years I leaned Republican. I voted for Ford, Reagan, Bush 41 & Bob Dole. I voted for "W" twice, although I wasn't too firm on him for his second term. During this time I voted for both parties in state and local elections. I voted for Obama in 2008 & 2012. It was during this time that I began my trek away from the Republican Party. As Obama started his term I considered myself a moderate. During the Clinton years, Rush Limbaugh defined a moderate as someone who looked at the Liberal & Conservative positions and then deliberately took a position midway. I rejected this characterization. I viewed a moderate as someone who was the opposite of an extremist, someone who looked at the issues dispassionately, and took a position according to what they believed was the best alternative. Sometimes these positions would fall dead in the middle, sometimes they would be closer to what the conservatives believed, other times more aligned with liberal views. But things changed for me during the opening months of the Obama presidency. It became evident that the Republican Party was totally uninterested in working with Obama and the Democrats and made it their mission to oppose anything that he proposed, no matter how beneficial to the country, or even if it was totally innocuous. The rise of the Tea Party faction, and the party's embrace of their point of view only solidified the Republicans' intransigence. Even at the state level, governors who previously had been competent administrators, concerned mainly with property taxes, water rights, roads & other infrastructure, now became as partisan as the politicians in Washington. Republican office holders enabled the racism of many of the Tea Party followers, including the allegation that President Obama was not an American citizen.

And now that they have completed their takeover by retaining their majorities in Congress and with a nominal Republican as President, they can finally do what they have been talking about for eight years: repealing and supposedly replacing the ACA, aka Obamacare. The problem though, is that even though they've had almost eight years to come up with a replacement plan, they still have nothing. Millions of Americans are now in danger of losing their health insurance. They have been celebrating their victory, not as a victory for the country, but as retribution. Vengeance.

It will be a long time before I can ever hold my nose and vote for a Republican.

President Trump

Since November 8th I have thought on more than one occasion that the election of Donald Trump was just a bad dream and that we'd all soon wake up. But it's not a dream; we've elected for the first time a President who has no previous public service experience. Most previous Presidents have either served as a state governor, a member of Congress or were a high-ranking military officer. A small number served as cabinet secretaries, or ambassadors. As recently as eight years ago, lack of experience was viewed as a liability. Barack Obama was criticized for being a rookie, having been a US Senator for less than a full term with previous experience of only seven years in the Illinois legislature. This time around lack of experience was seen as an asset, rather than a liability. And lack of experience is what we got. We now have a President who says what his base wants to hear, but has no idea, no idea how his slogans would translate into actual policy. He talks tough about bringing back jobs, resuscitating moribund industries and "putting America first", but, aside from the question of whether it is truly desirable to do some of these things, there has not been a plan, or even the outline of a plan, of how these things will be achieved. This is something that has concerned me since it became apparent that he would be in the running for the Republican nomination, let alone elected as President.

One of the things that was put into motion when the Constitution was ratified was separation of powers. Not only does this doctrine spread out authority, making it difficult for one person or faction to fully control the government, but it also ensures that, usually, things will move slowly & deliberately. Even when one party controls both the Presidency & Congress, there are disagreements & factions within parties and among the country's different regions and constituencies. And add to that the size and complexity of the government and its many moving parts, the intricacies of international relations, the complexities of economics and order becomes chaos very quickly.

Of course I understand that a President cannot know, or even understand, everything. Even Presidents like Bill Clinton, who seemingly was deep into the details of every aspect of government didn't really understand it all. An effective President appoints people who understand and are effective in their areas of responsibility. This is management 101. With a few exceptions, notably in the Defense Department and the CIA, Trump has appointed people who seemingly have no expertise in the areas which they will be overseeing. At State, an oil executive whose experience mainly appears to be his ability to negotiate oil contracts; at Education, someone who appears to be against the very idea of public education; at HUD, Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who said that he lacked the experience to run a large government department (but apparently thought he could be President) and whose only qualification seems to be that he once lived in public housing and Trump needed a token black guy; a head of the EPA who has been suing the EPA continually for years; and most egregiously, former Governor Perry of Texas, who once suggested eliminating the department and recently admitted that he had no idea what the department even did. Does anybody know what they're doing?

The President, unlike a monarch, a dictator, or even the CEO of a privately held corporation, cannot get things done just by giving orders. The President cannot give orders to the Congress; in politics consensus and compromise must have a place, or nothing gets done. President Trump has criticized previous Presidents, not to mention all politicians for being "all talk and no action", as if nothing has been accomplished in generations. He is ignorant of how things work, that just because he won the election he is not guaranteed cooperation from Congress or the courts. He does not understand that there is a process to getting things done. And as a powerful CEO of a family-owned business, or more poetically, a family business empire, President Trump is used to getting his way, defining the rules and being the center of adulation. He is not used to people disagreeing with him; he is used to achieving his goals by any means necessary: ethics, morals, rules and even the law, are for other people. This, when you think about, explains a lot.

It explains the constant emphasis on crowd size, the volume and duration of applause and the personal attacks on people and organization that disagree with or criticize him. It explains his need to control the narrative, to spin things that make him and his "ideas" look good, by spouting "facts" that have no basis in reality. I haven't figured out yet whether his regurgitation of "fake news" is due to a cold calculation on his part to discredit his adversaries, or just a refection of his lack of discernment. Either way it appears, for a not insignificant portion of the electorate, to be working. He has convinced many people that the fly-by-night, axe-to-grind websites that churn out hard-to-believe conspiracy theories are what we should be paying attention to, and the established, mainstream news organizations with decades of experience, that actually research and fact-check, and provide evidence for their stories, are the "fake news". He can say something on camera one day and deny, with a straight face, that he said it the next day. He lies about things that can easily be checked, but still insists that what he said was true. He is well on his way to convincing people that no matter what the facts, what he says is true, that any source that contradicts his version of reality is by definition false.

Used to defining his own rules within his company, and using his wealth to bully others with less resources into submission, he is thumbing his nose at long-established rules and guidelines, interpreting ethics rules in novel ways, and seems to be acting as if the Presidency is a "side gig" to his business holdings.

It doesn't take too much imagination to see the beginnings of demagoguery.

And that brings us to the divisive, bigoted, misogynistic, hate-filled rhetoric paired with the calls for unity.

On the day after the election I asked if we were supposed to just forget all the divisive, bigoted, misogynistic, hate-filled rhetoric that had gotten Trump elected, just pretend it had never happened and join hands with the people who cheered the hate and, as Trump said, heal the wounds. Trump was elected, in part, by energizing a portion of the population that felt marginalized and left behind, and he did it by demonizing portions of the population that were other. Just like he demonized President Obama with his allegations that he was Muslim, that he was born in Kenya, that he was a Socialist bent on destroying America. Everything would be fine if we could just keep out the Mexicans, keep out the Muslims, put the Chinese in their place, vote out all the elitist liberals, and impose law & order. He spoke disrespectfully of the parents of a veteran who died in service, mocking their religion, he mocked John McCain for being a POW, he mocked the generals, claiming he knew more than they did, he mocked reporter Serge Koveleski's medical condition, he attacked a union leader who called him out for his falsehoods. The day after the election he adopted a conciliatory tone, thanking Secretary Clinton for her many years of service, speaking warmly of President Obama and announcing that he wanted to be "President of all the people, because that is very, very important to me". That didn't last long as a stream of attacks emanated from his Twitter account on an almost daily basis.

Then, as the transition ended, his inaugural address - a call-out to those whose vision of America resembled a Mad Max movie; a repudiation of all politicians, including the former Presidents, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who sat there a few feet away, and the Congressional leaders who sold their souls to endorse him during the campaign. While he didn't explicitly say it, as he did during the campaign, it was clear that he believed that he alone could solve the nation's problems - real and imagined.

In the past, we have elected Presidents who did not represent my views, but I still respected them and believed that they had the best interests of the United States at heart. But the current President has explicitly and vociferously attacked and degraded so many segments of the country, well beyond the norms of political battles, that I cannot take seriously his protestations that he wants to unify the country, heal the wounds and end divisiveness. His history is one of bending the law to take personal advantage, and screwing the little guy. It is clear that he ran, not to serve the country, but to elevate his own ego. I cannot support this man and will do all that I can, insignificant though it may be to oppose him. I will not "get over it".