My Hope For America

When America elected Barack Obama, I thought, now they are moving in the right direction. Now they have a leader who is smart, knows how to play the game and is not afraid to work with his opposition.

Yeah, he did a lot of things wrong. But it’s a complex job and he was taking over from someone who did a lot of things wrong too. And of course he was black. And of course he had a massive financial crisis to deal with.

But through all that, and through two scandal-free terms, he led the country the best he could.

The Hopeless Part

And then along came Donald Trump, with a huge sledgehammer in his hand and started whacking at all the bricks that Obama had put in place.

Other than childish spite I never could figure out why he saw the need to undo all of these good things. But he did and he keeps on doing it.

Trump is probably the least qualified person ever to run for high office in the United States. He sold himself to a segment of the population by simply making them believe (mostly through lies) that Obama had turned America to shit. That carrying on with the same program will Hillary at the helm would just mean more shit. That the world has been taking advantage of America for decades and that he was going to fix this serious problem that the vast majority of Americans never even knew they had.

He yelled and screamed and threatened and cursed and lied, and arguably, cheated his way into the oval office. And then when he got

there he basically started turning everything to shit, like he did when he was in the private sector and was one of the most hated business people in the country.

But there are people in America, like there are in any country, who will get an email from some scammer in Nigeria and honestly believe they won the lottery. This is what Trump was to them.Their ticket to cheaper health care. Their ticket to a better job. Their ticket to more wealth. Their ticket to making their country great again, even though, by any objective standard, the country was already well on its way to restoring its former greatness, whatever that means.

And now, here they are 18 months later and the reality that Trump, who is now an alleged felon, was complicit in engineering his presidential victory.

Yes, the market is booming and the overall economy has improved. But many businesses and farmers and growers are hurting due to the insane tariffs he has imposed.

But…the national debt is about $4 trillion larger…the country’s infrastructure continues to crumble…there are well in excess of 100 cities that have no clean water….here is a major opioid crisis that the government refuses to fix…there is a revolving door in key positions in the White House…here is a series of foreign affairs failures from North Korea to Iran…there is an entire congress that is terrified of standing up and voting their conscience…there is a mile wide chasm between those who support and those who oppose Trump…there is complete deregulation in industry which is destroying the ecology of the country. And there are fires and floods engulfing the country and hurricane season is just getting under way.

And where is Trump in all this? He’s tweeting...No Collusion. He’s crying foul about all people who are investigating his involvement in any number of areas of political bias, even though they are Republicans. He’s letting everybody know that all the key people he hired who have since quit or been fired, are all losers. He just goes on and on and on ad infinitum.

And now, with all the rats turning state’s evidence on him, the shit is about to his the fan and the end is actually in sight.

Bob Dylan wisely said….”To live outside the law, you must be honest.” And Trump is nothing if not an exquisite tapestry of illegality. But honesty. Not so much. And its his dishonesty that will be his undoing.

The Hopeful Part

So over possibly the next year, America will have a chance to reboot. To undo a lot of the damage that has been done. To take its incredible imagination and knack for innovation and turn it to pumping out ideas that will not just benefit their economy, but also the world.

Because they will be able to join the world again. And the world will be happy to have them back minus the huge albatross that Trump has come to represent.

This won’t be easy. The country will have to claw and scratch its way back. It will have to be diplomatic and a lot more humble than it’s used to being.

But it can happen. And those who oppose that kind of progress, and they are, I know, in the minority, will really just have to get out of the way or get with the program.

My hope is that once people really start to understand what has happened here, they will be eager to make things better. Eager to live in a country that thrives on cooperation and respect for differences of opinion. Eager to embrace the positive influences that the world will offer them.

This is what greatness is really all about. The willingness to be part of the larger world, and to help make that world a better place for everyone.

Now a lot of you are rolling your eyes and thinking ‘dream on, dude’. And that’s OK. I never expect everybody to agree with me…that would be, you know, very Trump-like.

But last week, things in America changed. I believe that a lot of people feel that way too. My hope is that it’s ultimately a change for the better. And that America can really find its way out of the woods.

Because the alternative is really unthinkable, and will not end well for that great country.

Jim lives in St Catharines Ontario (AKA The Quiet Side Of The Lake) and is still working with companies in Toronto whence he came.

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