President Trump has not yet made the transition from Real Estate mogul to a political world leader. And it’s not certain he will ever be able to do that. A man his age is usually settled into the person he is from here on out and it’s all but impossible to make drastic changes. And drastic changes are needed.
The world of high-end real estate, huge commercial building construction, casinos, hotels, and whatever other kinds of structures Mr. Trump can add his name to, is a far cry from the arena of world politics.
There are at odd times glimpses that president Trump might actually have serious thoughts about how people should be treated and helped. But those get lost in his notoriously checkered history and in his perplexing persona. In the cut-throat universe of gigantic real estate projects, Mr. Trump established himself as a player. The massive buildings with his name emblazoned on them have successfully hidden the many failed and, as many have suggested, corrupt business deals, he has walked away from or has pulled off.
But you can’t run a nation on shady tactics and underhanded practices. You can fill your business with unprincipled colleagues and shameless shysters and call yourself a huge success, but you can’t get away with that as president of the United States. Eventually, the sloppiness and the deception and the dirty-dealing rises to the top of the gruel you're boiling and spills out into the open.
People are not so blind or stupid as to not see the mess in front of them. And sooner or later someone must clean it up.
That will fall to the voters.
In the meantime, we Americans have to be honest about where we are in this country. Yes, the stock market has gone through the ceiling with a few recent hiccups here and there. And yes, big business is bringing in mountains of cash. And of course, the wealthiest among us are floating in a sea of endless shimmering capital.
And while that little parade is going on our infrastructure crumbles, the poor are mercilessly forgotten, the middle class has disappeared in a cloud of debt, hard-working immigrants are belittled and rounded up and hauled off, cruelly separating established families. Vital government positions are left vacant while others are filled with nefarious oddballs who have had to resign in disgrace.
While president Trump reportedly sleeps in, plays golf, and refuses to read important documents to keep him well informed, the country crawls along a dark tunnel trying to find its way to an opening and light and the promise of being free from this dread we’re in.
The Florida massacre of helpless students seemed to actually move the president. He has disagreed with some of his Republican cohorts over his openness to raising the age limit on gun purchases and even banning gun bump stocks. But, that momentary flicker of conscience may be all but extinguished after facing so much pushback from Congressional Republicans. He says he will use an executive order to get it done, but there are legal issues with that. We’ll see if he retreats back to his old skills of preserving what he sees as his popularity and his power, even at the cost of what may or may not be his conscience. When he lets leak out some glimmer of decency and doing what his heart may be telling him, it too often goes black and disappears in his fear of not being the most talked about man in the country. Which seems to be what matters most to our president.
Novelist Frank Herbert has written, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
That’s a profound exercise that, if ever taken on, might very well transform our perplexing president, and all of us.
© 2018 Timothy Moody
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