By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
People can be quick to quote that aphorism, “elections have consequences!”
No doubt about it. Based upon the recent presidential election, a micro-slim majority of voters chose the chaos president for another four years.
The “why’s” of this head scratcher will be fodder for books and doctoral theses for many years to come.
However, in the meantime, the American political ship is taking on water at an alarming rate with real concerns that Trump and his clown car of sycophants are steering the ship of state into an iceberg that could cause irreparable harm to the civics of government, civility in the workplace and peaceful co-existence with the so-called RED STATES v. BLUE STATES citizens.
For millions of Americans, Trump, who embodies their heartfelt aspirations and fears of being “replaced” by those others, is waging a death march campaign to subtly, and not so subtly, reduce, rid or besmirch people of color and their histories. Especially at museums by which he can cancel federal grant funds for their programming.
Unless you view current history through the prism that Trump and Steven Miller and Elon Musk have total disdain and disrespect for Black Americans, Native Americans and people from so-called third world countries, you will never understand that America never intended to accord such people permanent fairness and equality.
Like a good Mafia chief, Trump sends his lackeys signals that they rely upon to do his nefarious bidding so he can at least claim an aura of plausibility that he is above the fray.
Trump, akin to a second grader and with an attention span of the same, is easily influenced by the negative voices around him when it comes to egregious treatment against Black Americans.
Now, he is on a tear about pulling funds from institutions that have collected information and historical records about Black Americans that Trump, if he had his way, would be forever placed out of sight of the viewing public.
His disdain for people of color is both heartless and cruel and only serves one purpose and that is to exalt white nationalism as the be all and end all in these United States.
Trump has no working knowledge of Black Hhstory even though true American history encompasses Black history as a key and integral part of its legacy… the good, bad and the ugly.
Trump’s MAGA base seemingly has no problems with their avatar playing the role of the village idiot when it comes to smart foreign policy decisions or bullying American institutions to do his bidding.
He revels in the power and dares anyone to back him down. Trump rules by intimidation and threats of financial ruin if he is crossed; the congressional GOP, lapdogs reduced to grinning and smiling in his face, have no stomach to take on Dear Leader lest he threaten them with being primaried or blasting them on his social media outlets.
Recently, he laid a snare for the visiting president of South Africa, who, while at the White House was accosted by Trump with unfounded allegations of government sanctioned white genocide.
Such charges have been refuted by both whites and Blacks in South Africa, but for Trump, once his feeble mind is made up, changing it would be akin to water rolling uphill!
At that farcical White House meeting, at which Elon Musk, a former citizen of that country was present, Trump laid into the president as if he was a school kid caught stealing cookies from the cafeteria.
You will notice at such White House meetings, Trump surrounds himself with a bevy of cabinet officers so as to give him comfort with his fawning members being present.
No one would deny that South Africa has problems with the “races” as does this country; it would have been poetic justice for the South African president to remind Trump of slavery in America, the rule and ruin of Jim Crow and present days laws that perpetuate a system of racial division and unequal access.
Of course, Trump not even being an amateur historian of American history, would have agreed to such a possible retort from the African ruler and would have characterized it as “fake news!”
Such is the myopic vision of Trump and his cabinet members who are obsessed on eradicating “woke” policies (they could not define what woke even is!) and eliminating anything that remotely acknowledges the principles of D.E.I.
What is a glaring omission in all of these discussions about the GOP budget kicking poor people and reducing their access to health care and the abrupt withholding of food and medicines to third world countries, are the churches in America.
In my humble opinion, too many churches seemingly have closed their eyes and ears to the cry of the hungry and poor (both here and abroad) and have given full permission for the rich and powerful to dictate whether people will live or die who are dependent on some form of US aid.
Those churches who have knowingly or unknowingly sworn an allegiance to all things Trump have become enemies of the gospels because they have forsaken their first love and have gone,” ‘a whoring” after the gods of mammon and access to power from Caesar (n.k.a. Trump).
Those churches cover up their nakedness with trite sayings that Trump is God’s man and other blather and gibberish and which only highlights the fact that such church leaders are devoid of understanding the scriptures.
What could such apostate churches preach in their Sunday homilies that would cause their pew sitters to renounce the ungodly acts of Trump and attempt to live out the famed Sermon on the Mount?
They preach a gospel that is not the gospel and they would have it so! It appears that many believe in a non gospel Manifest Destiny that exalts human behavior above all else and thus justifies their harsh treatment of anyone in their way is an enemy to their Dear Leader.
The “best” is yet to come when the budget bill is operational and the effects apply to the MAGA members who may only then find out that their Dear Leader has never been one of them.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com