A journalist is butchered and dismembered by a royal despot. Our own intelligence services swear the royal prince of Saudi Arabia gave the order, but our president brushes it aside, acting as if it doesn't mater. (Sure, why not? It's just a journalist.) And, the accused represents a royal family that has helped Trump make scads of money. He can make more by selling them guns so they can kill more innocent people. Priorities. Money over morality. Our leader. Our role model for our youth.
The world's leading scientists (including Trump's own science team) unanimously confirm that pollution-induced climate change is destroying our way of life and that it may already be too late to change course. Trump's response? He puts Andrew Wheeler, a lobbyist for the coal industry in charge of the EPA. (Par for the course, after Scott Pruitt.) Trump seems determined to destroy this planet one way or another. Why? His pals in the fossil fuel industry want to make scads of money. So what if their grand kids inherit a dying planet? Priorities. Money over morality. Our leader. Our role model for our youth.
The innocent are slaughtered in Syria. By ISIS. By Assad. By Turkey. By Russia. Our president's response? Pack up and go home. Not our problem. America first. Last, and always. But, not America the protector of freedom. That America is dead, apparently. Trump's America is the America of amoral self interest. The America that withdraws from the world and hunkers down behind a wall and an arsenal, denying food and water to the poor at our gates. (Isn't God supposed to have destroyed Sodom and Gomorah for that kind of selfishness?) Money over morality. Our leader. Our role model for our youth.
Refugees flee war and crime and poverty, making a long and sometimes fatal trek towards America. America; that shining beacon of light that beckons the tired and the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Their welcome? Barbed wire. Not enough? Hell no! We need a wall, our President says. Can't have one? Shut down the government. Keep it shut down until the opposing party coughs up five billion dollars for a border wall. (Wait, wasn't Mexico supposed to pick up the check on that one?) Five billion dollars couldn't be better spent trying to solve the problems that caused the exodus in the first place? Or, to somehow pave a path to eventual citizenship for some of those refugees? Nah. Our president appeals only to fear and hate. He claims to feel compassion for the American victims of crimes committed by the army of criminal evil-doers supposedly streaming across our border. But, no compassion does he feel for children ripped from their parents and put in cages. Or, buried in American soil. Such blessed ground. Money over morality. Our leader. Our role model for our youth.
Mass shootings continue. No end in sight. Children are slaughtered, and Trump and his NRA buddies say their thoughts and prayers go out to the victims. Then, the victims speak out and demand gun control, and they're accused of being "soulless" or "mush-brained." He does nothing. We need more armed guards, he tells us. In the schools. In the temples of worship. More armed guards. The NRA is too powerful. Too much money to be made from gun sales. Money over morality. Our leader. Our role model for our youth.
Resignations. Terminations. A revolving door on the White House. Trump wants only fawning supplicants, apparently. (Caligula's palace offered more stability.) He chastises an Attorney General for not protecting him from prosecutors. He accuses judges of being political agents and the law enforcement agencies of being out to get him. He considers justice his enemy. He believes the law should be his personal weapon. That's how he sees the world and his place in it. Money over morality. Our leader. Our role model for our youth.
Yet, our God-fearing heartland still loves him. Why, only they know. He makes them feel strong, perhaps. He shows them the easy path, the self-serving one, and tells them it's okay to be selfish. It's okay to do what comes easiest for human beings: fear and hate each other. Kill each other. It's fine. God loves us anyway, because we're Christian.
Happy Holidays, America.
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