It is beyond distressing that the President, the elected leader of our country, continues to provide more examples from his own words and actions of his amorality.
In his rants against NFL players who bend the knee when the national anthem is played, he showed absolutely no understanding of the plight of most black Americans in this country: the ongoing experience of discrimination, the ongoing examples of prejudice that show many of their white fellow citizens consider them to be lesser beings, the poor schooling their children receive, the wretched conditions in which they live. As a result many have a lack of hope for any meaningful improvement in their or their children’s lives.
First black Americans had their hopes dashed after emancipation proved meaningless. Then reconstruction failed. Then the effort to be industrious workers and submit to their right-less status, following the lead of Booker T. Washington, failed. Then the effort to gain respect through education failed. Most recently, the effort to gain freedom through civil rights failed.
Every effort that has been put to black Americans to gain equality they have embraced with the hope of experiencing what Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed in his “I have a dream” speech: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” Yet those efforts have left them with little. Certainly black Americans are materially better off than ever before. But regarding the elusive goal of equality in the eyes of their fellow citizens, after 150 years that day is still a long way off.
W. E. Du Bois put it this way, “Emancipation was the key to a promised land.” But it proved to be but a “tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp.” “He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the door of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
For some, the door may not be closed as roughly as it once was, but it is still closed. Even the most liberal of Americans have some racism under their skin, if they are truthful. This country has never had the frank and brutal discussion of race relations that is needed to purge us all of any remnant of racism.
On another matter, the President has again had the opportunity in recent days to take the high road, this time regarding gun control. But even in the face of the carnage in Las Vegas, he does not see the plight of his fellow Americans. He mouths the words of commiseration, but he does not really feel what they, and so many before them, feel. Because the man has no empathy. If he did, he would pivot 180 degrees and lead the fight for reasonable, meaningful, gun control.
There is no question in my mind that Donald Trump suffered greatly as a child. As a result he is a seriously insecure man and continues to suffer as an adult. His over-the-top egotism, his paper-thin skin, his need for absolute loyalty, all are proof positive of the depths of his insecurity and suffering.
But as tortured as he may be, that does not absolve him of responsibility for what he doing to this country. The only way to save our country is to remove him from office as quickly as possible by the legal means provided in the Constitution.
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