In The Age of Trump Live for Today, Who Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring

Welcome on this Presidents’ Day, on this the end of the first month of a new presidency, to the Age of Trump where The Donald rules, where we live for today because who knows about tomorrow.

Don’t bother drinking the water. The Donald thinks it is okay to permit coal companies to flush their mining waste into our rivers. He doesn’t worry about pipeline leaks so he is okay with placing an oil line under the Missouri, longest river in our country.

Have you bought any TrumpAir bottles yet? You soon may have to as The Donald doesn’t believe in the Clean Air Act or the Paris climate change accords for environmental protection.

Those safeguards are based on science but Trump World doesn’t believe in science.

It also doesn’t believe in education. No reason clouding people’s minds with data that might conflict with the alternate realities Trump World is creating.

Speaking of creating, creationism is the preferred theory of Trump World. God must have ordained Trump World’s existence—those godless Russians couldn’t have had anything to do with The Donald’s election victory.

In the Age of Trump every black-skinned, brown-skinned, yellow-skinned person is a terrorist. They must be contained, kept out of America. Those who have managed to get here prior to The Donald’s ascension to leader must be watched, registered and, if possible, sent back to their country of origin.

Don’t bother looking to the media for information. Alternative facts form the foundation blocks of Trump World. All the media print or air are lies and fake news. Even media Trump believes support him, like Fox News, spread falsities, like reports of terrorist attacks in Sweden. You just can’t trust the media in the Age of Trump.

Most presidents and world leaders think of the future. In the Age of The Donald think only of the present. Don’t worry about retirement savings. Your investment counselor has been freed up to do as he pleases. He is under no obligation to invest in your best interest, so there’s no recourse if you question his judgment. 

Don’t worry about getting seriously ill and having enough money to pay medical bills. In the Age of Trump there is no affordable care while Medicaid and Medicare will be revised so only the rich may benefit, the better to limit our entitlement expenditures so we can spend more on the military and homeland security to keep all those terrorists on the other side of the wall that surrounds our 49 states.

Oh, did I forget to mention that rising ocean levels will swamp all but the highest points of Hawaii, so it no longer will be a state. And that we no longer will have to deal with that pesky issue of what to do with Puerto Rico—make it a state, keep it as a territory, or let it become an independent country. Well, it will join Atlantis under the waters of the Atlantic.

After the Eastern Seaboard, including sad to say Mar-a-Lago, flood from rising sea levels, Trump World will build a 30 -foot high sea wall along our eastern and western coasts and along the Gulf of Mexico. The sea walls will link up with the beautiful wall Mexico will pay for along our land border. Soon, the last section of our walled state will be completed across the 49th parallel as those refugee-loving Canadians cannot be trusted to keep terrorists from filtering down from their utopian land.

Don’t think this will all change with the next election or two. Trump World is cleansing voter rolls of his so-called three to five million illegals who voted in the 2016 election. He and his Republican-controlled state governments are also making it harder for any person of color to register to vote.

No matter. The Donald has set up presidential succession for the next three administrations, culminating with the first woman, first Jewish, president. Ladies and gentlemen, hail to the chief—Ivanka Trump Kushner.

Can Evil Be Contained?

Can you stop a lone gunman? Can you stop a sole terrorist? After evil has been released, can you put it back into Pandora’s box?

Some people ask, how could anyone kill innocent children? The truth is, such depraved behavior should not surprise us. Brutality, senseless and premeditated, is universal. It’s been with us since Biblical times (read the story of Dinah and the slaughter her brothers wrought on the helpless, infirm males of Sechem—Genesis 34). Or Pharaoh’s dictate to slay the first born of the Hebrews. Think we’re more humane in our “enlightened” age? Not if you’re familiar with our treatment of Native Americans. Or Africans brought here into slavery. Or if you’ve followed the individual and collective torments afflicted by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and their legions, by Lon Pol, Slobodan Milošević, Yasser Arafat, by drug cartels, Muslim extremists, African warlords who, terrifyingly, arm children only slightly older than those killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School, to kill others. 

It’s not an exhaustive list, just an exhausting one as we contemplate how in the name of religion or nationalism or some –ism that is meaningless to most everyone else, carnage is condoned and, given technological advances, made more efficient with weaponry available to almost anyone, a “modern convenience” unimaginable just decades ago. 

Adam Lanza, by increasing accounts, was a troubled young man who should not have had access to guns, let alone the firepower his mother stored in their home. Adam was not able to conquer our most basic instinct to harm, to inflict superiority over another. Restrictive gun laws won’t prevent another tragedy, though the frequency of incidents might be diminished. They will happen. Too many guns already are out there. Too many unstable males (have you noticed these shootings are never perpetrated by females?) are not supervised and can easily get their hands on guns. It’s ironic that 17 years ago the State of Connecticut shut down a mental health facility, Fairfield Hills State Hospital, that might have housed Adam Lanza in the very community he has shaken to its core, Newtown. 

Israel has shown that while all terrorist action cannot be eradicated a pro-active approach to security can shield citizens from most danger in public places. Perhaps an answer for our school systems, at least for grades K-12, is to have single-entry facilities monitored by an armed guard. Yes, it would be costly (my guess is $50,000 per school building). But would it be more onerous than having to live through another massacre? Are we saying we are prepared to live by an actuary’s calculations that it’s more cost efficient to endure another mass murder than staff a security guard who most likely will never have to engage his protective skills?

The solution is not foolproof. Several times a week I walk into our local high school on my way to instruct students in the English as Second Language study hall. There’s a security desk outside the administrative offices. Once, maybe twice, I have been stopped by the guards. We’re just too trusting a society; 99.99% of the time, it makes no difference. But all it takes for disaster to strike is for the .01% to sneak through carrying a semi-automatic gun stocked with an oversized ammunition clip. 

The gun lobby believes armed deterrence is an answer. It believes all adults should carry weapons, even concealed guns, even on school grounds. I prefer letting trained professionals handle security. It should be a service we are all prepared to fund. 

Too Many Questions

Would releasing “the photo” incite more violence? Should we have buried Osama bin Laden at sea after according his body proper Muslim treatment, rather than taking proof of his death back to U.S. controlled territory? Are enhanced interrogation techniques justified by the end of Osama, or would we have achieved this ultimate goal through the normal course of intelligence gathering? Have we been able to compute how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

As the last question connotes, there are questions to which there are no certain answers. During the days of the Talmudic sages some 2,000 years ago, they suspended debate on questions with no definitive resolution by calling them a “Taiku,” a Hebrew acronym that generally meant, when Tishbi (Elijah) returns (before the messiah comes), he will unravel all the mysteries, all the hard unresolved questions.

But that doesn’t stop the debate in the 21st century, so herewith some opinions:

If extreme interrogation, a euphemism for torture, were truly effective, we would have found bin Laden years ago.

Whether we release a photo of a dead bin Laden, his head partially blown away by a bullet just above his left eye, his chest pierced by a bullet, or ask the public to trust the government that he is indeed a resident of the netherworld, Osama’s acolytes would be gearing up for revenge of unspeakable measure. The battle against evil goes on.

Yes, we killed Osama, but that does not mean we treat his body as carrion or a trophy. Other cultures and peoples might violate ethical norms and disrespect the dead; we should not.

As to the question of proof of the kill, we live in an age of skepticism, here and abroad. Regrettably, even the straight-forward narrative of the mission has been changed several times since the first accounting. Thus it behooves the administration to release photos that clearly and unequivocally show a dead Osama bin Laden. This afternoon, however, CBS News reported President Obama decided not to release any photos.

Let’s also own up, as CIA director Leon Panetta did to Katie Couric yesterday, that first and foremost the Navy Seals’ objective was to kill bin Laden. Any movement on Osama’s part when cornered would be considered hostile, prompting a strike. He moved. We shot him.

What’s puzzling to me in the narrative is the sense the firefight was ongoing as the Seals made their way up the stairs to Osama’s room. He was unarmed, as was his wife. The others in his entourage were killed on lower floors. Who was still shooting, and why? I’m not challenging the actions of the Seals in killing the world’s #1 terrorist. But let’s not sugarcoat this execution by suggesting he was a threat to the Seals.

I also wonder why the U.S. has acknowledged the Seals rounded up a treasure trove of intelligence data from bin Laden’s compound. Wouldn’t it have provided us at least a few days' advantage if we rushed the material back for review without Al Qaeda knowing immediately their secrets had been compromised? In the euphoria of the kill, perhaps we have let other terrorists escape into the shadows.

As I wrote to a friend yesterday who asked what’s next, I expect “we will see more clothing bombers, hopefully discovered before they set their pants or whatever on fire, more crazed individuals, in our military or civilians, who will harm if not kill handful or scores of unsuspecting Americans. (They’ll do no more damage and will be) no different than crazies like the kid on the University of Virginia campus or the one who shot Gabby Giffords. There will be lots of hand wringing, but just like the NRA doesn't believe guns kill, liberals won’t let conservatives (bigots) turn this country into a police state. Perhaps, perhaps we'll accelerate evacuation from Afghanistan, with the understanding that any major military campaign by the Taliban will be met by drone attacks. My crystal ball is getting hazy now, but that's a starter.”


(Editor’s note: From time to time—which means when I remember—I will include the following disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my dear wife, Gilda.)