Saturday, November 28, 2020

EDUCATION IS THE KEY TO OUR SURVIVAL

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree 

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY 


EDUCATION IS THE KEY TO OUR SURVIVAL

 


Mindless, self-serving politicians like Donald Trump, and groups like QAnnon, are a direct result of America’s growing love affair with ignorance. The primary reason that a large segment of Trump’s base can’t see through his relentless lies, deception, and idiocy is due to a lack of education and their inability to think.
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During the Reagan administration conservatives embarked upon a concerted effort all across the country to dumb-down America.
 It started with a brutal assault on our educational system. Conservatives decided during the 70s that they never wanted to contend with another generation like they had to deal with during the 60's ever again. They were enraged by the fact that it was filled with arrogant elitists who placed humanism above "our great American traditions". They considered the educated progressives who came out of the 60s an un-American bunch of wild-eyed elitists radicals who embraced the ridiculous concept that all men, and women, were equal.
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And they were right. During the 60s the pursuit of knowledge came into vogue, and many young people began to think independently, and unshackled themselves from the traditions and attitudes of the past. They began to recognize that life in America wasn't just another episode of Ozzie and Harriet, and that the human rights of a large segment of our population was being completely ignored.
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The 60s was a generation when Black people became more educated, and a functional educational system informed many poor and middle-class Whites that they too were victims of the rich and powerful. As a result, they became part of a mass movement for justice and equality in America. But in response to this "horrific" change in thinking, many conservatives – who are dedicated to “conserving” past traditions - decided that the mass education of the public had to come to an end, because it was impossible for their agenda to thrive in an enlightened environment. So, they mounted an assault on our primary educational system, withholding funds from our K-12 schools, and made it much more difficult for the average American to obtain a college degree. 

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That should have been a clear indication to their conservative base that their support of the conservative agenda was also undermining their own lives, and the lives of their children, but their blind allegiance to conservative leaders made them oblivious to that fact. They lacked the insight to recognize that contributing to the least among us was an investment in the nation as a whole. Instead, they allowed themselves to be convinced by conservative demagogues that attending to the concerns of the least among us (which included poor Whites) constituted "socialism", while allowing the rich to rob us blind was the great American way. 

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Due to their lack of education the conservative base failed to recognize that their way of thinking wasn't thinking at all. Instead of thinking, they were allowing themselves to be led by self-serving opportunists who had absolutely no concern for their well being. With all of Donald Trump's endless spewing of how he was being cheated out of the election, when was the last time he said one word about all of the Americans dying of the pandemic? And American citizens are dying at a rate of one a minute. That's not a leader, that's a self-absorbed opportunist. He would have golfed through WWII, just as he did when the Russians placed a bounty on the lives of American troops.
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In spite of the conservative contention that they're defending America from socialism, America has always been a socialist nation. The only distinction between capitalism and socialism is how the fruits of our social resources are distributed - and in this case, instead of the fruits of socialism going to society as the term suggests (giving priority to society), it's providing welfare to the rich.
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Why shouldn't we have "Medicare-for-all", for example? We all pay for Police-for-all, which protects the assets of the rich; we pay for Fire-protection-for-all, which protects the property of the rich, and we pay through the nose for a Military-for-all, which further enriches and advances the interests of the rich. Yet, they tell us that having Medicare-for-all to protect the lives of the poor and middle-class is a socialist concept. That's a ridiculous contention that can't stand up to either rational or objective examination. To protect the welfare of one group - the rich in this case - is no different than protecting the welfare of another, the people as a whole. So, people who have allowed themselves to embrace such nonsense are obviously giving emotion priority over objective thought. 
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Such people have been taught to have a knee-jerk revulsion to even the word "socialism", because it smacks of Communism, but they lack the education to recognize that social equality and Communism don't equate. So demagogues use just the illusion of one word to convince their followers to fight against their own interests. Thus, many of the conservative base have been brainwashed into believing that any policy that benefits the people as a whole, instead of the rich, is un-American, and that was an easy thing to do, because due to this country's racist traditions, "poor people" is interpreted by many to mean Blacks. So the conservative base has been trained to cut their own throats in an attempt to undermine Black people. 
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These people fail to realize that it's actually people like Donald Trump and the Republican Party that's un-American. Microsoft News reported, "Representative Denver Riggleman, a Virginia Republican, said that people close to him have called him a 'traitor' because he recognizes the reality that President-elect Joe Biden won the election against President Donald Trump. 

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"In an interview with Forbes published on Saturday, Riggleman described Trump and his loyalist supporters as ‘anti-American’ for pushing unfounded conspiracy theories that the election was rigged. ‘[It] really speaks to where your intelligence level is...to believe in that type of operation,’ the Republican lawmaker said." 

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So many conservatives take the despotic position that what's American is what they say is American, and since they support Donald Trump's attempt to subvert the will of the people, even though it's against the Constitution and anti-democratic, anyone who stands up against them is a traitor. That's the attitude of a dictator's base. 
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Republican administrations have specialized in exploiting this mindset to get the American people to buy into Ponzi schemes for years. Trump gave the rich a huge windfall of $3 trillion, and then they used the money to buy politicians to convince the American public that the economy was thriving. Thereafter, even though the people at the bottom were suffering, they told us, "Just wait. The benefits are coming". But we've been told that before by another Republican, and we've been waiting for Ronald Reagan's "Trickle-down" scam to bear fruit for 40 years now. But all we got in return was a huge national debt that the poor and middle-class ended up having to pay for.
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That's been a recurring cycle every since the Great Depression - Republicans come into office and rob us blind, and then Democrats are returned to office to cleanup the mess they've left behind. One of Bill Clinton's major accomplishments was cleaning up the national debt left behind by Ronald Reagan, and one of Barack Obama's major accomplishments was saving the world from a second Great Depression left behind by George W. Bush. Now, Donald Trump has left the nation deeply in debt again, in an attempt to maintain the illusion of a thriving economy. Yes, due to their windfall, they did put a few people to work, but now the nation is left with having to pay back the $3 trillion debt that Trump's left behind. So, essentially, under Republicans, we live on a credit card, where the rich live in luxury, while the poor and middle-class are left with the bill.   

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But the average person in the Republican base doesn't recognize that fact, because they've been robbed of an education, and therefore, the ability to think. When I was in college it was virtually free. I took getting a free education so much for granted that I thought even having to pay for my books was a rip-off – why couldn’t they just provide the books like in high school? But now young people - the children of both Democrats, and Republicans - have to mortgage their futures just to get a bachelor’s degree. As a result, a generation later, we're left with even politicians who are woefully undereducated and completely devoid of the ability to think - Matt Gaetz and Sarah Palin immediately comes to mind - so they too propagate the exploitation of the American people.   
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It takes an idiot to follow an idiot, and Donald Trump’s huge following in this country is a glaring indication that idiocy has now reached crisis proportions in this country.
The number of people who are so profoundly incompetent that they continue to fight passionate battles against their own interests is frightening.
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The battle over wearing masks to mitigate the spread of a deadly disease is a perfect example of that idiocy at work. Many in Trump's base are willing to place their families and the entire country in jeopardy just to make a political statement - a political statement that they've been brainwashed into believing by Donald Trump. Trump was desperate to make America believe that it was safe to reopen the country because his personal businesses were hemorrhaging millions of dollars due to the shutdown. In order to do that, he had to convince America that they had nothing to fear from the Coronavirus, and the deadly disease was nothing more than a bad case of the flu. But as a result of that deception we now have one American dying a minute, and the hospitals are running out of space due to the number of people coming down with Covid-19, and all of that is due to ignorance.
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Trump was only thinking of his own interests, and he didn't give a damn about either the lives of his base, or the lives of their families, but their profound ignorance prevented them from seeing that. Donald Trump was their hero and  they loved him. They love him for two reasons - because they don't have sense enough not to, and because he hates the same people that they do. So, once again, these people are acting on emotions rather than intellect.
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Just a casual observation of Trump's antics since he loss the election makes it abundantly clear that the man is profoundly unstable. So, due to the ignorance of his base, we just barely dodged a bullet that could have destroyed this nation. That's a clear indication that education is the key to maintaining a healthy democracy, and it behooves all of us to recognize that fact before it’s too late. 
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I’m proud to say that Black women are ahead of the curve in recognizing that fact – but, of course, Black women have always had to be a step ahead just to survive, both society, and many of their men. They are currently the most educated group in America – even ahead of Asians. So, I encourage Black men to catch up and see the light. While I’m sure it must be nice to gain wealth and fame by bouncing a ball for a living, the entire Black community won’t fit onto a basketball court, so we can't have an entire generation of Black minds focused on hitting the lottery. The point of moving forward is to prosper as a group. So, as long as we allow the powers that be to distract us with individual wealth and fame, the Black community will never be able to rise as a whole. It's through class that they've managed to keep White folks divided. So, there should only be one class – a class of enlightened human beings. 
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I continually tell anyone who will listen that God (or, nature if you prefer) made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. God made man's ability to think our primary means of survival, and it's essential that we adhere to our nature. When man was first placed here on Earth, he wasn't as strong as the elephant, as ferocious as the lion, and he couldn't fly above danger like the eagle, so the other animals had a word for him - food. But through the development of our intellect, we can now build machines that can crush any elephant, slaughter any lion, and fly far beyond the eagle's domain. Thus, man was created to be an intellectual creature, but just like the birds, fish, and other animals, we must adhere to our nature to survive.  
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So, if we want to maintain our way of life, and protect what's left of our democracy, it's essential that we focus on rebuilding our educational system and make it relatively free for anyone with the desire to get an education, and we must reward that desire like we reward sports stars and entertainers to encourage it. We must bring the pursuit of knowledge back into vogue, because ensuring an educated citizenry is the most important investment that we can make in America, and to humanity as a whole. And we must always remember, everything we do that's destructive to man, and everything that we call evil, is actually a form of ignorance. Thus, all dysfunction is a result of ignorance, so education is the key to our survival. 

Eric L. Wattree 

Ewattree@Gmail.com 
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS 
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.  

Thursday, November 12, 2020

DUBIOUS DONNIE'S JUST REWARD

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree 

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY 


DUBIOUS DONNIE'S JUST REWARD

 



I hate to celebrate another person’s misfortune. That kind of pettiness is totally classless. But watching Donald Trump having to agonize through his current loss to Joe Biden is making me want to dance in the street.
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Donald Trump is currently showing the world just how petty and vindictive he is. He's purposely doing everything in his waning power to make America suffer for voting him out of office. Due to his petty and vindictive nature, he's trying to punish America by refusing to concede and failing to cooperate with a smooth transition of power. His intent - other than his desperation over having to face the possible legal consequences of his past behavior - is to make it much harder for President-Elect Joe Biden to pick up the pieces after he's gone, and he doesn't care how many Americans he's responsible for killing in the process.
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And the Republican Party clearly recognizes that fact, but they're much too weak-kneed and self-serving to defend the American people from this atrocity. But America will recover, so all Trump's 
actually doing is making a fool of himself, ensuring his place in the garbage heap of history, and clearly demonstrating just how rudderless this nation has been for the past four years. 
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Trump insists that the election was rigged, while not only the facts, but simple logic suggests that's not the case. The fact that Donald Trump lost, while the Republican Party fared much better than expected indicates that the American people didn't reject conservatism, but Donald Trump.
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But in spite of that, Trump has still persisted, in spite of the fact that he's had 30 cases thrown out of court. After the vote was certified in Wayne County, Michigan, Trump called two Republican canvassers - telling one, Monica Palmer, 
"He was checking to make sure I was safe", which sounds very much like a veiled threat. The next day, both canvassers, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, signed affidavits requesting to rescind their votes to certify the election, but fortunately, they weren't allowed to do so. 
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Thereafter, Trump invited Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield to the White House and wined and dined then on 
Dom Perignon in an attempt to get them to ignore the vote of the people, which constituted an arrogant, middle-finger in the face of Michigan voters, and a blatant assault on American democracy. "So what if the American voters voted for Joe Biden, we can send in Republican Electors to subvert their will." 
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Thus, Trump has a corrupt, self-serving, and untrustworthy nature that's being reflected as the new image of America all over the world. He's causing world leaders to view the United States as the Donald Trump of the world. Prior to Trump entering office, the United States was looked up to and respected by the people of the world based on it's philosophy of "Humanity First", not Donald Trump's selfish philosophy of  "America First".  Why world leaders want to follow the lead of any nation that places itself first? The United States has promoted a philosophy of, let us all prosper and thrive. 

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The philosophy of "America first" is a perfect reflection of Trump's selfish nature, and in domestic terms, exactly why Trump is secretly hated by even many Republicans. Trump's support is not fueled by admiration and respect, it's the result of politician's being afraid of the people who support him based on the fact that he hates the same people that they do. That's the kind of power wield by dictators - not based on love and respect, but fear - and that's what makes Trump so dangerous, and why we can hear a huge sigh of relief all over the world at his defeat. America is much too powerful a nation to have a narcissistic maniac at it's helm. 
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Trump's brazen attempt to undermine the vote is clear evidence that he couldn't care less about either American democracy, God, or the will of the American people - "To hell with the will of the people; this is my office, so I'll change the vote to my liking". Thus, all Trump cares about is Donald Trump. That's the act of a dictator. That's why Trump routinely fires anyone in his administration who is more loyal to the United States Constitution than they are to Donald Trump. Those people took an oath, under God, to be loyal to the Constitution, yet, Donald Trump is punishing them for honoring that oath, so why are right-wing Christians supporting such a man? As Richard Wolffe pointed out in The Guardian, "It may not be a coup, but it is an attempt to destroy American democracy forever." And it's also a gross violation of this nation's founding oath to be "One nation, under God", not Donald Trump.

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IN TRUMP WE TRUST
So, anyone who can support such a person is, by definition, un-American, and if they claim to be a Christian, a hypocrite. Thus, the new Republican Party's blind support of Donald Trump and his gross disregard of the American people shows that the party is becoming far less conservative, less Christian, hostile to democracy, and blatantly self-serving.
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They're willing to follow anyone who can help them get elected. That clearly demonstrates that they're nothing close to the selfless Christian patriots that they claim to be. They're the mirror image of Donald Trump - relentless predators with an insatiable lust for power. They have absolutely no remorse. They're totally self-absorbed, and they're perfectly willing to undermine American democracy, and their Christian faith, to satisfy their selfish lust for power. In short, they're the ultimate hypocrites.
 
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That's a major problem in America today - we're much too willing to elect politicians who are more concerned with their own interests than they are either democracy, the rule of law, or the interests of the American people. They feel that they are entitled to power. That's Trumpism, and it's also autocratic, thus, un-American. That's why so few Republicans are willing to speak out against him, in spite of the fact that he's more than willing to ignite an American insurrection and destroy America's reputation all over the world to promote his own selfish interest. 

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TRUMP REVEALS THE TRUE FACE
OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
A democracy can't survive under the leadership of self-serving demagogues, and Donald Trump and his Republican cohorts have made it abundantly clear that they're only interest is in power and self-interest. The love of democracy is only a meaningless sales gimmick to them. They have absolutely no concern for the nation, or the American people, and their boisterous claims of selfless patriotism is a complete sham. They're only interest is in promoting the interests of a cowardly draft dodger, and thereby, their own. We should never forget that, because once Trump is gone many of them will remain lurking in the shadows, awaiting another opportunity to drag America back into chaos, because hatred and chaos is the environment in which they thrive. 

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So, the American people should use this despicable episode in our history as a teaching moment and closely observe the players involved, because the Republican Party is clearly demonstrating that they're grossly lacking in anything even approaching empathy for the American people, and they lack the simple maturity and ethical conduct expected of world leaders. They're showing the entire world the true meaning of gross irresponsibility, and the fact that they have much more in common with kids playing in a sandbox than anything even close to responsible statesmen. 

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How is the United States suppose to convince other nations of the world of the value of democracy after this ridiculous episode? And this utter destruction of America's illustrious and hard-earned reputation around the world has been brought about by the ignorance, pettiness, and self-absorption of one man - Donald Trump. We should never forget that when we consider the importance of our vote.

 

Donald Trump, the Republican guru, has surely got to be one of the most flawed, incompetent, and selfishly disgusting people in America, and I’m not just saying that due to my personal antipathy toward him – which, admittedly, I’m literally drenched in. But if we go back over his behavior for the past four years - and his current behavior since he lost the election - and take into account the many comments made about his character by a multitude of behavioral scientists, people who worked closely with him in his administration, and even members of his own family, the fact that he’s a seriously flawed individual can be fully documented. Thus, even his becoming president in the first place was less an accomplishment on his part than it was a form of punishment by God to ensure his complete humiliation.

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The fact is, Donald Trump didn’t actually win the presidency in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton lost it, Trump just happened to be standing in the wings at the time. He could have just as easily been Mr. Magoo, and if the American people could have seen a mere 30 days into the future, Mr. Magoo would have won.  
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Trump is the very worst example of a leader that any responsible American could have ever conjured up. He’s the very antithesis of everything that represents leadership. He’s ignorant, immature, incompetent, and one of the most self-serving and petty individuals in America. He fully encompasses all of the flaws that any effective leader should be completely devoid of.  
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Most people would be hard-pressed to come up with anyone else they can think of who is as completely flawed as Donald Trump. He’s one of those few people in the world without any redeeming value – but don't just take my word for it, try to think of anything good you can say about Trump, other than he’s been unceremoniously thrown out of office. I don’t think his wife even likes him, and there’s a perfectly understandable reason for that.  
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Donald Trump has never had to truly earn anything in his life. His father, Fred Trump, started him off in life by giving him $400 million. As a result, Donald never had to develop the character and intellect that most of us are required to develop to simply survive in the world. Whenever he needed anything – a friend, an ally, a diploma, or anything else he’s required in life – he simply bought it. A perfect example of that was attested to by his older sister, former federal judge, Maryanne Trump Barry. She pointed out that when Donald decided to enroll into the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, he simply paid someone to take the SAT exam for him. She also said, she did much of his homework. And in spite of his claim that he graduated at the top of his class, his former professor, William T. Kelley, is quoted as saying, "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had." And later - in spite of the fact that he demanded to see Barack Obama's student transcripts from Harvard - he had his lawyer contact and threaten to sue any school that revealed his own.  

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So, again, Donald has never had to develop any of the character or intellect necessary for the average person to survive in the world, and as a result, what we’re left with today is a geriatric individual with the intellectual maturity of an underdeveloped eight-year-old. Thus, he's particularly unqualified to preside over the leading nation of the free world, that is, unless we're content to drive all of humanity into a ditch - and I’m not being the least bit facetious in that assessment, since his reckless policies of the past four years have placed him well on the road to doing just that. 
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Donald Trump is a huckster, a complete fraud, and the ultimate loser, and he's sold his image, reputation, and everything about himself to the American people like a used car salesman sells a lemon. Think about it – what level of incompetence does it take to go bankrupt running a casino, where people just walk through the door and literally give their money away?
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With the exception of selling his father’s name, everything Trump's ever touched has been a complete disaster. After he went into bankruptcy, if the Russians hadn’t stepped in to bail him out when no American bank would touch him, he would be homeless today. That's why Trump never has one disrespectful word to say about Vladimir Putin, and that makes him particularly dangerous to the American people. That could also explain why he's so desperate to keep his finances hidden.
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It's very possible that Donald Trump's entire empire is being propped up by the Russians. That may be the actual reason why he assigned Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate what was found in the Russian investigation. It may also be what led to the firings in the FBI and the heads of the various other National Security agencies. That would also explain why Trump is so determined to get the case dropped against Michael Flynn, in spite of the fact that Flynn himself has admitted that he's guilty of lying to the FBI during the Russian investigation. If everyone is so guilt-free, why did he have to lie? 
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Trump claims that the investigation was an illegal plot against him, and even sought to have national security officials prosecuted for carrying out the investigation. But the various national security agencies would have been remiss not to investigate the possible collusion of a man seeking the highest office in the land with a foreign adversary. But once Trump's out of office all of that will come out. He knows it,  and that would perfectly explain his current desperation. 
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While Trump never has a harsh word to say about Vladimir Putin, he thrives on his childish propensity for calling others out of their names. Instead of carrying himself like a serious adult and addressing people by their names or titles, he refers to people like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Nervous Nancy”, and President-Elect Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe”, while again, he only refers to Vladimir Putin with the utmost respect.
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His obvious fear of a foreign American adversary, yet, thoughtless disrespect for officials voted into office by the American people is not only un-American, but the kind of silly and cowardice behavior that one expects from a child, not the President of the United States, yet, Trump sees it as perfectly acceptable, and even witty.
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And now that he’s lost the election, instead of accepting his loss and conceding with a little class and dignity, he’s stomping his feet, throwing a tantrum, accusing the Democrats of fraud, and trying to drag down American democracy, even though he doesn’t have one shred of evidence to back up his claim, and that's in spite of the fact that his own Department of Homeland Security says the 2020 election was one of the smoothest and most legitimate elections in this nation's history, and he fired the unit's head for attesting to that fact. So, Donald Trump's clearly allergic to truth, and his behavior is far from the behavior of a responsible head of state, it's the behavior of a petulant, self-serving child . . . a petulant child with something he's desperate to hide.

 

That brings us to another one of his many flaws. Donald Trump is completely delusional. In spite of the fact that he's easily been the most grossly incompetent president to ever step foot in the White House, he was going around talking about not only reigning for a second term, but remaining in office for a third! The reason for his delusions are simple. All through life Trump's had to convince himself that people hated him because he was so brilliantly special that the average person was incapable of understanding him. He had to indulge in that kind of delusion just to maintain his self-esteem. That’s why he’s always bragging and indulging in self-promotion ("I'm really rich", or "I'm the chosen one."), because for Donald, the only thing important in life is trying to get the world to embrace his delusional vision of himself, or at least, who he'd like to be – and due to his gross insecurity, he's prepared to fiercely protect that delusion, even if he has to bring down America (and the entire world) to do it. 

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Trump’s fully aware of the negative impact that the retarded development of his youth has had on his intellectual acuity, so he’s had to manufacture his own reality. He’s been forced to create a world in which selfishness, corruption, and ignorance is a simple way of life. He’s had to create such a world for himself just to maintain his sense of self-esteem. So, he's completely revised his personal reality to create a world where being tough, macho, and “a winner”, takes precedence over knowledge, character, and intelligence - while, he's actually devoid of all of those qualities.
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Donald Trump is such a flawed individual that he's completely reliant on a world of delusion just to accept himself. That's why he can look directly into a camera and say he won the election without having any recognition of the fact that he's making a fool of himself before the world. That's how we can be certain that he's unstable, because just like people in mental institutions, he's convinced himself that the world he's created in his mind, is the real world.
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And many of his conservative supporters share some of Trump's same characteristics, even if not to his pronounced degree. That’s why they’re so loyal to him. The very word “conservative” means to be dedicated to “conserving” past traditions, and since many conservatives are the most undereducated White folks in America, they’re determined to maintain a national tradition that gives them a privileged place in society based on the color of their skin rather than their intellect. Thus, people like these share a passionate desperation with Trump to see themselves as superior that can never be abridged by any other issue. So, like Trump, they share  a passionate delusion. Educated Black people have to deal with people like these routinely on a daily basis. That’s why the Republican Party’s attempt to reach out to the Black community is nothing more than a pipe dream. They don't want allies in the pursuit of democracy, they want subservient pets, and that's exactly what Black conservatives are - bigot-huggin' Lassies with a passionate yearning to be pat on the head by White society.
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This conservative insecurity also serves to explain why Donald hates Barack Obama so intensely. Obama’s excellence is a direct threat to Trump's delusion of grandeur – and as an innate bigot, the fact that Barack is a Black man makes the assault on his self-esteem even more intense. Barack Obama represents everything Donald Trump has ever aspired to be. Barack is how Trump sees himself in his fantasies, but he lacks the knowledge, character, and intellect to ever live up to that fantasy, and it's killing him. Trump would do anything to command the love and respect that Barack Obama enjoys throughout the world, but since he lacks Obama's excellence, he's replaced that deficit with hatred, lies, and delusion.
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That makes this latest slap in the face unbearable. He's not only loss the election, but he's lost to Barack Obama's former second in command. That's another reason why he can't bring himself to concede. Failing to be able to compete with Obama is bad enough, but failing to be able to compete with one of Barack Obama's former subordinates is more than his fragile ego can bear. 
 
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Thus, due to Trump’s petulance, gross insecurity, and his pathological fixation on his own self-interest, his one and only interest in being President of the United States is the power and prestige of the office. He has absolutely no interest in either governing (even if he was capable), or what’s in the best interest of the American people. Clear evidence of that is how completely fixated he is on his claim that he’s being cheated out of the presidency.
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While he's found the time to stay on the phone with Republican governors all over the country ranting over the issue, and 
has found time to file numerous court cases in multiple states to reverse the results of the election - in spite of the fact that the nation is in the midst of the most deadly pandemic of this century (over 145,000 cases of Covid-19 have been newly diagnosed, and 1,500 Americans died just today) - he hasn’t held, or even attended, one meeting on the pandemic in over five months. And while the G20 world leaders have met to discuss possible solutions to the pandemic, Trump chose to go play golf.
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But that’s understandable. After all, Trump has to sustain his businesses during the pandemic shutdown, and according to the Washington Post, “In Bedminster this spring, the records show, Trump’s club charged the Secret Service more than $21,800 to rent a cottage and other rooms while the club was closed and otherwise off-limits to guests” - and that doesn’t include food and golf cart rentals for the agents – for a total of $1.1 million in taxpayer funds since he took office. 
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Thus, Donald Trump is completely consumed by his own self-interests - after all, what's the death of a few thousand Americans compared to his public humiliation and loss of stature?
 That's why he's so peeved over the unmitigated gall of our voting him out of office that he's refused to speak to us for over a week - the longest he's maintained public silence in the past four years, and once again, demonstrating the petulance of an eight-year-old child. 
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Donald Trump is a curious sort in that respect. He hasn't been this silent since Vladimir Putin placed a bounty on the lives of American troops, yet, he was up-in-arms and deployed troops to the Mexican border to defend America against what he alleged was an assault on the nation by harmless Mexican immigrants. If he's really so concerned about defending America's borders, why isn't he also raving about building a wall between the United States and Canada?
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So, you see, for Donnie, life is about Donald Trump. He's what's important, and everything else in life (including the lives of our children) is unimportant. In his self-serving world the American people constitute less than an afterthought, and he views his supporters as just a bunch of motley "means to an end". If he didn't need their support, he wouldn't even bother to speak to them. Yet, as I write, he's stirring them up in the Washington Plaza to attack American democracy on his selfish behalf.  


MARY L. TRUMP

So, as I sit here watching the news and listening to Donald Stomp his feet, refuse to concede, and insist that he’s being cheated out of the presidency, I’m reveling in every second of it. I know it’s not a classy thing to do, but what the hell? I’d be the ultimate hypocrite to try to pretend that watching an asshole like Donald go down in the flames of public humiliation is anything short of orgasmic, because he cares absolutely nothing about the welfare of the nation, and he's a petty, self-serving, and miserable human being - and he's also a coward, a bully, and a fraud.

HAIL TO THE CREEP 

 

Eric L. Wattree 

Ewattree@Gmail.com 
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS 
. 

Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.