Response to To Fight or Flatter

(See: Just Above Sunset : To Fight or Flatter)

First, we need to remember this as how president Donald Trump brought the nation together during one of its darkest hours:

Trump said he had instructed Vice President Mike Pence not to call the governors of Washington or Michigan – two coronavirus hotspots – because of their public criticism. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump said.

Close your eyes and imagine Abraham Lincoln, about to comfort the mother of a union soldier who died at Gettysburg, but after being told that she didn’t vote for him in the last election, he cancels the meeting. “Hey, you know, if they don’t treat you right…"

I think history will remember Trump for stuff like this. What do you remember about James K. Polk? How about Martin Van Buren? Nothing? Exactly!

But Trump? There you go! I’m pretty sure he’ll be remembered as the W.C. Fields of presidents, a clueless and self-centered dork who stumbles around with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe, striking out resentfully at anyone who sees him for what he is.

I wonder if, during the 2016 elections, Trump had promised everyone that, should someday the country be hit by a huge pandemic, all the states will be on their own and shouldn’t count on the federal government for help or even coordination, I wonder, would that have hurt his chances, or would that have helped him?

After all, if he’s the president, what the hell is he even president “of”?

If national disasters are to be dealt with by all the individual states, then what’s the point of us being “one nation, indivisible”? He doesn’t even know what his job is!

Or am I just being a “liberal”, thinking everybody shares my own liberal assumptions of a nation that looks out for all of itself, not just the parts that voted for whatever bean-dip-for-brains president happens to be in power at the time?

I view Andrew Cuomo’s fireside chats as the liberal Democrats, demonstrating to the conservative Republicans — Donald Trump, in particular, of course — how it’s supposed to be done. But of course, what’s missing in all this is Cuomo spelling it out that way.

Apparently he doesn’t want to rudely blurt out, “Ya see, Donald? This is the way OUR side does this! Leaders are supposed to do the RIGHT THING, not act like some Banana-Republic dictator who won’t do anything for anybody unless they give him the proper respect!”

Trump's worst shortcoming is that he doesn’t seem to get the fact that he just doesn’t get it, much less does he get the degree to which he doesn’t get it. He’s the most destructive kind of weak leader in that he spends most every waking hour doing little but trying to prove on Twitter how much stronger he is than everyone else.

I keep thinking that, while I was growing up, watching all those Hollywood movies, always rooting for the good guy, Trump must have been rooting for the villain. Who does that?

It’s an updated version of that famous old “Problem of Evil” question from philosophy 101:

If God is all-benevolent and all-knowing and all-powerful, then how the hell did he ever let this Donald Trump goofball become president?

Rick