15 March 2016

I think #Trump is GREAT, but great at what?

The man has no concrete plans for anything. It is the absolute MOST empty rhetoric that has ever existed (how's that for hyperbole?). Make America great. Knock out ISIS. We are gonna win. I can fix (insert every broken piece of government) here. Do you even SPECIFIC bro?

I suspect that my normal silence in the area of national politics may cause some of my friends some surprise at this rant. It was a comment to a discussion on FB and I started and couldn't stop myself. Sometimes things clear up and I've gotta get a few things written down. This was one of those times. All of the time periods listed are from memory, so please be gentle if I am off by a decade or three. 

I think Trump is great. Yep. He's great. Great at being vague and talking, while not really saying anything at all.

I will agree that change begins with Congress. I find that very few career politicians, who talk about a "restoration" of the (insert constitutional republic component here) is pretty much the opposite of what the slave-owning, bigoted, adulterer "Christians" aka the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the constitution and began what we they, and every generation since, have failed at creating - a constitutional republic. Rather, we have an oligarchy, run by the people with the most money. NOT the ones who can do the best job or even the once who say the can do the best job. Congress should be servant-leaders. They are not. Our system is broken and the only way to fix it is to do the one thing Oklahoma has done right: TERM LIMITS.

But back to the issue at hand: Trump is great at bringing a group of people together. He is full of a lot of language which makes people more afraid of the "others" whom they already think are "the problem". He's good at playing one side against another. Playing one class against another. Playing one viewpoint against another. Pandering to the extreme right who think he will Make America Great Again! The real question though is this: Just how far back does he want to take us in history? Pre-civil rights? Pre-civil war? Post-civil war aka anti-immigration? The 10s and 20s when we hated the Hun? The 40s when we hated the Japanese and the Germans? Any time in history when we hated the Jews? Between the World Wars when we hated Mexico? (Wait, isn't that now??)

I'm sensing a pattern here. A pattern of fear and hate. It's the same song every politician has been singing at one time or another post-9/11 (when we just hate anyone with brown-skin, no matter their religious views). There's a HUGE difference between Patriotism and Nationalism and I'm afraid too many in politics are pressing for the wrong one.

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