My
father and I had many political discussions. His views, at least
initially, had a profound impact on me. Although Republican he did not
hide his love for Franklin Roosevelt and his love of Roosevelt's
proclivity for verbal eloquence. When FDR spoke my father listened. I
was born well after Roosevelt's death but I felt like I knew him. I
visited his grave, Eleanor's grave and his dog Fala's grave at Hyde
Park, New York. I stood there and cried yearning for that moment in
time when he lived to be repeated in my era. I have never known what it
would be like to love a president like my father loved Roosevelt.
I
wonder, too, what he would think of our current classless and brash
1000 lies narcissistic president who loves himself more than anyone else
and because he does perpetrated the greatest con of the century upon an
electorate who believed the lies he told. He was going to give big tax
breaks to everyone but did so permanently only for the top 2%
wealthiest telling his friends at his Mar A Lago Estate that they were
going to love him come tax time. He told his supporters during the
campaign that he was going to repeal Obamacare but that he was going to
replace it with something better than before, moreover, he was not going
to let insurance companies get away with not paying for preexisting
conditions. He did neither. He told them he was going to solve illegal
immigration but said nothing about a Holocaustesque separation of
children from their parents made worse by failing to include a way to
reunite them with the parents who brought them into this world in the
first place leaving them alone and afraid stuck in cages or tents. How
did it come to this?
Trump
told his fans he was extraordinarily wealthy, a fabulous businessman
and smart. They did not care he refused to show his taxes even though
every other modern-day president has proclaiming ad infinitum
they were under audit. What was he hiding? They did not care that he
refused to show a copy of his grades and threatened a lawsuit if any of
the institutions he attended revealed them. When the Access Hollywood
tape came out as he proudly declared because he was rich women let him
do most anything to them. Even that did not bother his so called moral
Evangelical supporters. He is the first American president to fall in
love with authoritarian dictators and eschew the democracies of Europe
even threatening NATO, America's premier defense of Europe. I have read
and it has been alleged that he keeps on his night table a copy of Mein Kampf,
Hitler's autobiography written in Landsberg prison where he was held
for an attempted overthrow of the German Weimer state. Trump, by his
own admission, has fallen in love with Kim Jong Un, the brutal
executioner of the innocent of N. Korea. Then there is always Putin,
the man he loves the most; a man whom he believes did not subvert the
2016 election because Putin told him emphatically he did not and Trump
believes him over the truth tellers of his own national security
administration. How did it come to this?
By
far the most subversive element in which he is now engaged is
threatening our nation's greatest 1789 foundational legacy -- The
Constitutional separation of powers. Our Founders formed this
government so that each coequal branch of government would protect
against totalitarian usurpation of power the Founders knew human flesh
to be heir to. They wanted a Republic we could keep. Trump's hand has
been caught in the cookie jar stealing all the benefits democracy has to
offer, siding with dictators and denying all that our first branch of
government, the legislative branch, is requesting from its second
Executive branch. Sure, Trump thinks, let it play out in the courts.
By that time he would have won a second term. Donald J. Trump is a
liar, he is a con man, he is a racist, a self dealer, a criminal, a
lousy deal maker we now know lost 1 billion bucks from from 1985 to 1994
paying zero taxes. We now know he would be indicted, convicted and
sent to jail for his myriad of crimes too numerous to mention here if
only he were not president of a nation which does not indict a sitting
president. How has it come to this?
In
one of my many discussions with my father I asked him about the 1933
southern Populist Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long. My father said that
he was a bad man who wanted to be a king. Huey Long was ultimately
assassinated on the steps of the Louisiana state capitol. It reminds
me of the Lord Acton quotes:
“Power tends to corrupt and
absolute power corrupts absolutely."
“Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”
“Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.”
“Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.”
“Absolute power demoralizes.”
Will
our Republic stand against this would be dictator Trump or will it
succumb to an authoritarian corrupt executive who in his heart wants to
be a king? We must ask ourselves how it has come to this and, if we
survive it, how will we never let it happen again.
