We’ve all done it, and done it more than once. We’ve made a major mistake in choosing between some options we had. We chose the wrong school. We chose the wrong neighborhood. We chose the wrong job. We chose the wrong partner. In unfamiliar terrain, we chose the wrong route home, and are now irretrievably lost.
It’s a natural part of the life cycle through which we learn to make better choices if we can just survive the present one. Some call it maturity. We learn to do better-to make better choices-as we survive earlier ones, sometimes barely.
Well, America is in it now. After 46 prior choices for POTUS within the last 200 or so years, some markedly better than others, we’ve apparently not learned sufficiently enough how not to make the worst choice currently available. This time, we’ve chosen the Death Star (from Star Wars). We also need to re-look at the history of Julius Caesar’s take-over of the Roman state—a political story that much of the birth of the American Republic is based on (not the dictatorship but the Roman Republic itself).
Mr. Trump just said in a new interview with the Atlantic Journal, that he is not only the head of this country, he is in fact the head of the world. He expects everybody, essentially, to kiss his butt, since he thinks he is that important. He also said, among other things, that the most important thing-above all else- is to be in charge of the latest news cycle. What he has never said-and should have-is that when you are the CEO (POTUS) of the U.S., the most important thing is to try and make the best decisions that will help the majority of one’s constituents….that veterans, the young, the frail and the producers in the country must always be accommodated.
So his best decisions then are in search of a big news cycle day—the decision to try to take over Harvard University, to send American residents to prison in a foreign country without due process, to halt protections afforded by civil rights laws in the country (in a declared war against so-called D.E.I. activity), to summarily fire many thousands of federal workers who service millions of people in this country and abroad, to defy federal court decisions, etc. He apparently lied when he took the oath to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution. He was the biggest news cycle story that day, so why of course would he need to share top billing with the Bible?.
If he attempts to annex Greenland, whether he succeeds or fails, if he kills the value of the American dollar as the world’s sovereign currency, if he craters the U.S. stocks and bonds markets and the American economy—success in helping the American people does not matter as long as he commands the news cycle of the day.
We should not bother to fear the hell hound hiding outside in the shadows, we should now acknowledge that he lives among us, inside the walls without cherishing the space.
America, we are indeed in big, big trouble. The Midterm electtions cannot come fast enough, and we’d better be very ready when they do.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
