Why do I keep preaching to the choir here in the second-most-liberal county in a basically progressive state? It’s the age-old battle of good vs. evil—and Donald Trump is an insidious blob of evil whose power and influence is seeping into everyday life throughout the country. And there are Leader readers everywhere, not just in Jefferson County. Feel free, also, to link me via Facebook (where I’m not active).

Which of the two pictured above represents the true American spirit? The man on the left is one of my journalistic heroes; the other one’s a bumbling, petulant jackass. Leonard Pitts Jr., one of the country’s leading syndicated columnists, is with the Miami Herald and appears regularly in The Seattle Times. I read him religiously. The other guy, of course, is Donald Trump. Pitts has concern for the disenfranchised, those living in the pain of disdain, derision and poverty—minorities who are the targets of supremacist knuckle-dragging troglodytes. Trump would rule the world with a family dynasty in the manner of some brutal king resurrected from ancient history. 

Pitts will have your back to the best of his ability and I’m proud to stand with him. With Trump, it’s more like “watch your back!” Pitts is a man who writes from a soul heavily blessed with social conscience. Trump has no social conscience. Whatever soul he might have must be a tattered little thing cowering in a corner somewhere. `````

I was especially impressed by a recent Pitt column titled “What is wrong with Trump?” in which he observes that six months after Donald’s inauguration, Donald has us living in a state of perpetual chaos and continuous crisis, the White House commanding “the same horrified attention as a car wreck or a house fire.” Indeed.

“What is wrong with him?” Pitts queries; “I have come to believe that question misses the point.” Why, he pondered, did 63 million people vote this individual into office. It wasn’t economic anxiety, he said, as a reliable study subsequently showed that people who worried about their jobs voted for Hillary Clinton. 

“But people who dislike Mexicans and Muslims, who oppose same-sex marriage, people mortally offended at a White House occupied by a black guy with a funny name, they voted for Trump. That’s the reality, and it’s time we quit dancing around it . . . Donald Trump is a lying, narcissistic, manifestly incompetent child man who is as dumb as a sack of mackerel. But he is president of the United States because 63 million people preferred that to facing inevitable cultural change. So I am done asking, or caring, what’s wrong with him . . . a far more important question, what in the world is wrong with us?”

I must add that it’s long been obvious that blatantly petulant Donald is obsessed not only with his personal image but also in trashing every step forward as a society that was accomplished by an ethnic African-American—that “black guy with a funny name.” Donald is as obvious as a footprint in fresh cement. He is offended by the thought of having to operate under rules instituted by a black man. 

The mere mention of “Obamacare” drives him up the wall. But there never will be a “Trumpcare,” as “Trump” and “care” are incompatible in the same breath, diametric opposites. Any form of caring for others is foreign to Donald’s way of thinking. 

Adding to this is his self-anointed assumption of regal authority for no apparent reason other than his ability to acquire financial wealth. However, money does not automatically equate with intelligence—or virtue in any form. But it has bought Donald power—and the question before us now is whether his power is greater than the people’s.

We don’t like you, Donald. We are not with you. About 61% of us disapprove of you in the latest polls. And reality continues to laugh at your absurd claim that you somehow won the popular vote in 2016. Read our lips: WE DON’T ADMIRE YOU merely because you keep ranting that you’re somehow extra-special.

MEANWHILE, “Let it fail,” Donald said of Obamacare the other day, in one of his most peevish examples yet of childish petulance. He suggested that Democrats then would come crawling to his feet in the throne room to plead for whatever small bit of health protection he might be willing to grant to suffering commoners. How many innocent people might die in the interim obviously is insignificant to this mindless sociopathic popinjay. As Donald finds he cannot talk Obamacare to death, he will turn to trying to destroy it by other means. Keep an eye on the news over Trump’s ability to pull the plug on certain government subsidies to health-care insurers. They help especially low-income people afford the co-pays, deductibles and other costs associated with their health insurance policies. If I were a bookie, I’d give you 10-to-1 he goes that route.

Aren’t many of you sick and tired of having mealy-mouthed politicians praising Christian principles but obviously not the least concerned with Christ’s admonition that: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”? Where has our culture gone astray?

Plan now, people, to get out and rebel during the mid-term election of 2018—when we can stay the slide to oblivion by humanizing the U. S. Senate, maybe even the House of Representatives. We need to tailor our government at that level back to serving the public rather than kow-towing to a Trump plutocracy. Keep in mind also the trickle-down Republicanism at the state level—which in Olympia is keeping ours one of the most regressive taxing entities in the country . . . as we struggle to instill critical thinking into the next generation by adequately funding education. 

I’m heading toward 89 now but I’m determined to still be around for the November 2018 election. If our society continues to show social rot at that point, I’ll push on to the 2020 presidential election—and wing it from there.

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