My Well Of Empathy Is Running Dry

I realize that most of this activity is right up there with the proverbial ‘tilting at windmills’, and that the bulk of gratification that comes from it has more to do with gestalt of getting stuff off my chest than it does with actually moving any opinion needles one way or another.

And Then Along Came The Abomination Called Trump

Up until Donald Trump was, however this came about, elected president of the United States, a lot of my angst was directed at societies with archaic structures. Places where women were treated like chattel and young girls were sold off into arranged marriages at the age of 13. Where human rights were basically non-existent. And where countries were thrown into chaos by other nations who merely wanted their oil or mineral wealth or whatever.

But Trump’s election brought everything closer to home. In point of fact, I would argue it brought everything right to our front door, since 70% of Canada’s exports go to America.

I had been following the 2016 election very closely. For me, at least, it was an indicator of just how much Americans appreciated the previous 8 years with the Obama administration, and the slow and steady progress he had made, despite incredible race-based opposition in both houses of government, to bring the country back after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the early 1930s.

I felt certain that these people would surely want to ‘stay the course’, to quote George W. Bush, and continue the slow but steady improvement that had Obama had worked so hard to achieve.

The First Brain Fart

Most of us who observed this election campaign from without, did not evidently have the benefit of truly understanding all the forces that were at play here.

Most of what we saw, with a crude, loud-mouthed, critically uninformed pig of a man bellowing louder than any politician had ever felt the need to bellow. Demeaning his competitors for the nomination and later bellowing out false (because they are, to this day unproven), accusations against his main opponent. Repositioning her as the status quo and basically turning people against what had been a very successful economic recovery philosophy.

The Lies….All The Lies

This individual, who evidently believed that the truth was whatever you said that made your competitors look wrong, was relentless in his attempts to re-define reality for a lot of people. And, as every day it becomes closer to being proven, he was also helped by the Russian government, with whom he colluded, to spread this same disinformation and influence all over social media.

This campaign was one of the most crippling exhibitions of fascism that the United States had ever seen. Millions of Americans were convinced and effectively so, that this entitled rich guy, whose list of failed businesses was as long as your arm, and who had a reputation for cheating his suppliers out of millions that they deserved, was actually reflecting what they really felt but had never actually vocalized.

And what did this make them? Well it made them sexists, racists, Islamaphobes, misogynists and worse. But what it made virtually all of them were victims of a very successful campaign to alter behavior and turn them, not just into supporters, but disciples.

This Is Not The Fault Of The American People

Everybody has a certain amount of resentment for many things roiling around inside their brains.

But this was an attack that came from many directions at the same time, and it’s not at all surprising that many people became overwhelmed by it, did not know how to resist and simply fell in line, believing, truly believing, that they were supporting a change for the better, when, as the last two years have unfolded, it has become obvious that just the opposite was true.

The Shit Show

Almost immediately after Trump as sworn into office, the mainstream media, who had done a hell of a job enabling him, started to realize the monstrosity they had helped create and put into power, having given Trump millions of dollars of free airtime, mainly to attract the huge audiences they needed themselves to make lots of money.

And so they turned on him. And many, CNN foremost among them, started to point out all the lies and deception that was patently obvious to more than half the US population and pretty much all of the rest of the world.

And the rest, as they say, is a sad chapter in history.

Today we find a world completely out of sync with itself. A world that had always looked to the US for leadership now finds nothing but lies and confusion as Trump attempts to isolate it from the rest of the world at a time when cooperation is critically needed.

Last night, we saw the pure essence of what is wrong in America as Trump addressed the nation over the southern border crisis.

Spewing a series of lies about terrorists invading America via this border. We saw the extortion of the federal government that he is responsible for, creating undue hardship for hundreds of thousands of government workers to force Congress to submit to his demands for a border wall that will be almost completely useless and end up costing close to 100 billion dollars before it’s done.

It really does give new meaning to the concept of boondoggle.

This is absolutely, positively insane behavior. To put so many lives at risk for a solution that almost everyone in America agrees is the wrong approach to the issue. Certainly every country needs to have a secure border, but the congress and senate of the US had already approved funds to make improvements, based in great part, on the advice of the people who are actually dealing with it every day.

This is a microcosm of the vanity insanity that now infects the United States. How one man’s ego can bring an entire powerful nation to its knees though lies and deception is so far out there, that I can no longer even see it.

And so as much as I have amazing empathy for that country, and as much as I hope for the best for all Americans, I leave this area of concern with a very wise quote from my friend Roderick Mackin:  “Not my clown…not my circus.”

Hopefully I will be able to walk that talk and move on to other things.

jim over and out