Perhaps I am being a tad optimistic, but it appears that some "sins" have come home to roost and perhaps, just perhaps, we have a larger positive sign that there will be some good changes in 2018.
Iowa people have begun to express dissatisfaction with their presumed leader. His nastiness, his darkness, his mannerisms and behavior all seem to be the driving force behind this change. That is great because this man appears to be impervious to the criticisms that rain down upon his head. He appears to be unable to change his behavior and so much the better for sane people and sanity in general.
There is still a long way to go. When Republican Congressional people criticize Trump they must follow thru with action. They must stop voting as a robot, with no thoughts of their own and certainly no care nor concern in both the long and short of it. So when they all voted for the tax welfare for the rich program, well, their brain power seemed to have had a short and their power of thinking, of independence from the lockstep of the party, from misplaced fear of Trump ruled the roost.
But what they have to deal with now is the disgust, the weariness of the people. It is the blackness that seems to be overtaking politics and political thought. It is the tribalism that is beginning to run rampant in a country which prided itself in its ability to meld, to mix, to come up with Americans and not members of singular and opposing tribes. When the people see what their votes have wrought, they begin to change their thinking and tired as they are of the nastiness, well, hopefully they will realize from whence the nastiness stems and who gave it a strong impetus to come out of the woodwork.
It is especially when this nastiness is reflected not only in domestic arenas but also in international ones as well. North Korea. Pakistan. Russia. Turkey, the EU - allies and foes alike and we treat them all the same now - with arrogance, with disdain, and we cede our power and influence, our goals of keeping us safe, the world safe and we all lose. People do learn lessons.
And while we gave some lovely presents to the uber wealthy and to business, we have laid down some nasty rules for regular people, for supposed tax cuts that will disappear over the next few years and meanwhile the business cuts stay there permanently. Wow!! Certainly a bit of screwing the people is it not!!!
And Trump, the only President who has taken on the job to enrich himself, his bottom line, with his businesses, his defiance of the custom of releasing his tax forms, a lack of transparency, has impoverished the country even more on his myriad and seemingly endless golf trips where his name is printed in the papers, he parades among the wealthy as was the sickening portraits coming out of the New Year's Eve shindig at Mar a Lago, and the taxpayers have spent at least $43 million dollars to indulge his overwhelming need to golf - more than any other president in our history. He who complained of Obama and golf now has almost doubled the expenses of the taxpayer in the same amount of time. And since it does get a bit embarrassing for him at times all he shouts about is the need to muzzle the press, to destroy the "fake news" media, just about the best weapon we have to tamp down on his excesses.
Even his own Senator Ben Sasse who voted with the rest of the sellouts has stated that it is not a good ides to threaten to muzzle the media, the press. The First Amendment is under attack, an American standard, a pillar of our society is under bombardment by the very man who should be defending it. The press , all media, is one way in which to disseminate information, true information, and to call truth a lie when it offends or opposes one's own plans, is not right nor moral.
But again, there are glimmers of light. California has become a sanctuary state meaning people do not have to fear the local police doing the duties imposed on it by the federal government and the police do not have to enforce and take part in horrific roundups, in rending families apart, in pulling parents from children - in short, from being accomplices in a morally repugnant act. Again, law and justice, legal and moral are not always the same.
So how do we change this? How do we insure that people do not turn away from politics in 2018, do not give up in weariness and think they can still live as a democracy even as that democracy undergoes drastic changes at the hand of its proposed demagogue. We need to print the truth. We need to report the truth. We need to take Trump to account. We need to hold our supposed representatives in state capitals and in the nation's capital to a strict standard, to morality, to care for the people of America. We need to insure that our judges remain neutral and do not perpetuate their personal feelings on the electorate .We need to insure the rights of women to their own bodies no matter the cause or reason. We need to tamp down, to uproot this growing surge of hatred, of prejudice, of bias against any and all who are other than you.
In short, we need to be Americans in the full sense of the word. We need to show the people of the world that we are here, we the people are still here and will remain here. And all those who have become Americans, be they from Russia or France or the Middle East, or South America or Eastern Europe or Canada - all will become Americans, have become Americans and we should welcome those who wish to be in and of society. Crooks - yes, they need to go, but that is for all 'bad guys', male white ones as well. No one is above the law - not even the President and we the people need to make sure that others realize this as well. The law can work for us if we work hard for it.
WE the people need to do that. We the people have that responsibility.
WE THE PEOPLE
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