A counter-revolutionary president
The Revolution of 2016, like that of 1968, has produced a counter-revolutionary president likely to share if not surpass Richard Nixon’s ignominy.
President Trump’s Cabinet is as ill-qualified as he is, obviously his reason for selecting it. Republican contempt for the federal government will reach new heights with this administration, Congress, and a new Supreme Court justice.
It is fair to assume that the writer of a letter to the Observer-Reporter editor complaining about President Obama’s tenure voted for his predecessor, George W. Bush, by far the most disastrous president in U.S. history, until now. Aside from the tense footage of watching the hit on Osama bin Laden, calm, cool, collected Barak Obama’s administration achieved his goal of no drama, particularly in the White House.
President Trump’s barrage of executive orders and opinions is a page out of President Bush’s book on reversing the accomplishments of President Clinton. Trump’s admiration of the Bush administration’s ruthless, if not to say fascist, use of power under the Patriot Act, and Texas oil men in general, such as secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, pinpoints 2000 to 2008 as when America was great for Trump. His recapitulation will test Karl Marx’s observation that such efforts end in farce.
Ignorance and fear of socialism remains the fundamental problem in America, underlying everything from the last election to the heroin epidemic, mass extinctions to too much carbon in the atmosphere, poor schools to chronic illness, financial insecurity to abusive government. Abjuring science, history, and the public interest are part of the price to maintain a shibboleth, ignorance and fear of socialism.
Jim Greenwood
Washington