Repugnant

I began writing blogs on WordPress several months prior to November 2016. Initially my focus was film criticism, an anti-establishment view on popular films and directors. However, after the November 2016 election, I felt the urgent need to turn my interest to the changing landscape of American politics. Donald Trump had brought a new dimension to campaigning that amplified the behind-the-scenes “dirty tricks,” fostered by Republicans, so accepted as a viable political tool, by elevating lying and verbal abuse to an exalted stature, simply because it was out in the open. It exhaled from his own bloated anatomy. He unabashedly owned it. The republic, tired of stalemates and mealy-mouthed politicians dancing the spin to satisfy all sides, responded by awarding the Presidency to the Donald for his breakthrough performance and the rest of us had to be satisfied with four years of SNL and Alec Baldwin.

In short order, Trump decimated literally every significant political leader in his own party while trashing the most venerated personalities and institutions, of not only our nation, but our allies and partners as well, whether it was the entire GOP slate, the Pope, John McCain, Gold Star families, POW’s, fallen veterans, NATO, Angela Merkel, Mexican-Americans, Hispanic immigrants, former Presidents, political pundits, the news media, ESPN, immigration reform advocates, NASCAR, Macy’s, Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, Martha Stewart, Tommy Hilfiger, Al Sharpton, Univision, Brian Williams, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Megan Kelly, Bernie Sanders, Wall Street Traders, Caroline Kennedy, Rosie O’Donnell, John Kerry, Justin Trudeau, Muslims in general, Michelle Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Jim Acosta, and relentless trash talk on the frequent departing of Cabinet Appointees, Generals and Aides. This is but an incomplete list, but it serves the point. The electorate soon tires of it’s leaders and enjoys bashing them, seeing them taken down as “faces” in a WWF style match, with all its faked violence and staged confrontation, especially by an underdog “heel” telling it like it is. With Donald Trump, the Presidency had become just another reality show.

In the first 100 days of his presidency I wrote approximately 78 anti-Trump blogs. After he left office, I was told I had written over 300. What began on WordPress was soon echoed on Facebook and eventually through WordPress posted to Twitter and LinkedIn. In all those years of open exposure, I have had only one consistent complainant. He began his objections on Facebook many years ago and then resumed on LinkedIn once my postings began appearing there as well. Total objections to my posts involved only two people in all that time. (Incidentally, my writing also appears on http://www.mobilized.com as an editorial column titled “Uncapped.”)

After five years or more of Trump’s trash talk, actions like separating immigrant children from their mothers and caging and deporting them without accountability or recovery tracing possible, and his continued lying to the American people in the face of overwhelming video evidence to the contrary, propagating the “Big Lie” and fostering January 6th, praising anti-Semetic and white nationalist groups, well…

One of my readers, actually a former student of mine, called me repugnant online. I had always found him to be quite affable and friendly, consequently I was blindsided by his relentless opposition to my writing. It highlights the significant political divide in our country, especially since in all that time and opportunity, he has never seen fit to call Trump’s trash talk, or reprehensible policies, or his attacks on our traditions and institutions, “repugnant.” I alone bear that distinction.

Idjitz, Stoopidshitz and Dumfux!

That’s how the growing resentment against the unvaccinated is best expressed.   Somehow these people regard their decision to flirt with imminent risk as an act of patriotism, the pure expression of American individualism boldly spitting in the wind of governmental control and the face of death itself. 

On the eve of the 20^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we might do well to remember the heroic efforts of the true patriots among us, first responders and committed civil servants, and not the swollen pride of the few who carried the banners of plastic flagstaffs, boldly flapping stars and stripes, on the roll-up windows of their Cadillac Escalades to tailgate parties on the weekends that followed.  Some people can sure talk the talk, and the rest, Hillary’s deplorables, show up at events like that of January 6^th.

But to be certain, those patriots on September 11^th who went into those collapsing towers were heroes not solely because they put their lives in danger, took a risk to save others, selfless acts in defiance of the most certain of consequences, but because they truly cared about you and me.  All of America was in those towers.

Looking back on the death toll that day, as staggering as it was, it was even more shocking that the event occurred in our sacred homeland, a place of safety where we Americans enjoy our freedoms unhindered by fear.   To secure that same future, we accepted a massive loss of freedoms to embrace the Patriot Act and we shipped thousands of young Americans to distant lands, many to fall at the hands of unseen terrorists’ I E D’s while on patrol.

So why is it that with the overwhelming statistics on Covid deaths, rising infections, the many at-capacity hospitals and the lack of safety for our unprotected children, do these anti-vaxers maintain that their so-called freedoms take precedent over the safety of the community at large?  These people are not patriots.  They are the worst kind of self-serving cowards!