We have to look to the past to see how we wound up with this narcissistic sexual predator became president of the greatest country in the world. Why the world “pervert”? Well, by his own locker-room words he put himself in that category when jokingly bragging that he could grab women by their pussy if he pleased because of his fame and riches.
Women are not a joke. My mother was not a joke and no self-respecting Republican should accept this treatment of their women.
Well, look at Bill Clinton, some say. He certainly had his problems and his behavior with Monica Lewinsky was shameful, but at least it was consensual. He left us a surplus and a stable economy.
Then we elected a spoiled son. To prove he was a better man than his father, he became a war president, bringing on the present debacle in the Mideast which has cost us 6,000-plus of our young lives and untold damage to many other Americans’ physical and mental well-being – not to mention the havoc wreaked on hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi families.
During W’s presidency, we lost lives, the surplus and as far as I am concerned, stature. With his shrugging of shoulders and “heh-heh-heh” chuckle, he seemed to say we shouldn’t take anything too seriously. Well, war, life and death are not funny.
After two terms of his ineptitude we elected (gasp!) a black president and the ghosts of the KKK began creeping out again. Mitch McConnell declared that his primary job in Congress was to see that Obama was not re-elected. But McConnell failed and Obama stopped a recession and saved us from a depression, putting us on fairly stable footing. The banks recovered, unemployment came down and he left with high marks. All without the help of the GOP, whose politicians sat on their asses, stonewalling Obama whenever possible while criticizing him for not being able to get anything done.
Then came Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, and we thought we were reading the Sunday funnies when we looked at the news pages. But it isn’t very humorous, now that we have two kids playing with the combination on the red box – Kim Ill One and Kill Any One.
What is Trump’s claim to fame and status? He coasted through life on his father’s name and fortune. He’s gone bankrupt numerous times (how the hell does one go bankrupt while making the millions he claims to have made, and when all the odds are in your favor?), he’s settled lawsuits against him, he’s screwed over his workers and contractors alike.
He’s rich, or so he states. I took could make that statement – just don’t take too many of my checks. I’ll admit I’m not in his class, living in the Taj Mahal in Florida, but I’ve never been bankrupt, either. I’ll bring up that pervert thing again. Trump was the one making those statements to Bush’s nephew. The nephew was thrown out of NBC and the pervert got to be president.
Now he seems to be trying to roll the movie reel in the wrong direction to take us back in time to the days when many men labored in coal mines and got black lung disease, or uranium mines and got cancer. And women sat at home and worried about how to look pretty for their husbands. Trump and his cronies are doing their damnedest to stop progress.
But the days of coal and oil are ending and the era of clean energy is coming. The change is here, just like when we moved from the horse and buggy to the auto.
Here’s a little-known fact: Kingsford charcoal briquets were a new and lucrative product made from cast-off material. Who came up with the idea? None other than Henry “You can have any color you want as long as it’s black” Ford. He used the waste from the lumber used in the building of his autos to make the briquets. He was a thinker who knew how to be innovative. Too bad we don’t have a president in office who respects people like that, instead of trying to lead us backward into the olden days.
But I still believe the course will be changed, we just have to convince those in the horse-and-buggy mode and replace the polluting, planet-warming energy industry. A new dawn is coming and the sun will shine on the earth again. I don’t know the particulars and being on the “bon voyage” side of life do not expect to see them take place. But some day we will have leadership once more that recognizes the need to prepare for the future.
Galen Larson lives near Cortez, Colo.
