Thursday, May 18, 2017

Assessing the First 100 Days of the Orange Cheeto

Well, we’re not dead yet.
Image result for orange cheeto trump
Other than not being imprisoned for being an educated black male in Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ America, life with 45 has been the bumpy ride I expected all along.

Obviously, there are a lot of things I disagree with in the Trump Administration (nepotism, finding the worst-qualified billionaires and millionaires setting policies in his Cabinet since Andrew Jackson let his buddies have a run of the place following his 1836 election, how Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorusch was vetted, the chumminess between 45 and Vladimir Putin, and pretty much anything that comes from the House – the Senate is by no means exempt) and while I am nothing that resembles a Democrat (in truth, I am a registered independent. I just wish the Saline County and state Republicans would stop sending mail to my house), the United States of America has taken literal value of party over person. In a fit of naiveté, I simply assumed that we all (well, most of us, anyway) were under the same general premise that we all want to leave this world a better place than we found it without plundering all of its resources and intellectual capital in the name of rosy balance sheets, profits, and promoting propaganda to fit one extreme or the other.

Maybe that America never existed.

I know for black America, the idea of truly being whole has only existed benevolently for perhaps forty-nine years tops and whomever occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is likely to screw us over, so why not forge an independent path toward freedom? This Administration is the last group of people anyone would expect to play by the rules – and our parents lived through the Nixon and Reagan years without returning to Jim Crow!

We are told to vote yet gerrymandering minimizes our potential contributions to society.

We haven’t been exactly disciplined enough to stave off participation in a capitalistic economy that doesn’t want us – notice how some of us still run to certain institutions to apply for loans where they are likely to be denied, and instead are handed credit like raindrops in anticipation of a default or two.
In some cities and towns, police officers see black males and assume the worst by pulling guns on us without any valid reason. A career change should be in order if that is the case.



The American Dream is becoming a nightmare for many of us.

Someone should tell 45 that being POTUS is a 24/7/365 job and not the Monday through Friday morning gig he’s trying to make it out to be. His practices of hitting a golf course or rally every weekend shows that 1)the silence from so many conservatives in comparison to the occasional round 44 played is yet another example of racial hypocrisy; and 2)he is the ultimate snowflake. If criticism warrants investigation and legislators of his own party are demanding jail time for using their voices to disagree, then what have we become? I understand fully that there will always be a safe spot for everyone, but to actively seek it instead of crossing the tracks to hear from those less fortunate or simply of a different persuasion or lifestyle is antithetical to true leadership. But of course, conservatives do not want to hear that; they are too comfortable living in their lily-white bubbles and unappreciative of their privileged lots.


Just as a reminder:  Don’t let your President get your asses whooped. I am not my ancestors, and I’m sure my great-grandfather the late Rev. Fowler would approve of what I just said.

If I had to grade 45 so far, he gets a big fat F. You’re not changing my mind.
"F" grade written in red pen on wrinkled notebook paper.
Let’s talk about the appointees for a second.

Aside from the two I obviously detest (Sessions and idiot Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos), I am still nonplussed by the millionaires, billionaires, and military men of questionable ethics (Michael Flynn) with such important roles. The two that look more like stereotypes fulfilled are the eternally clueless Ben Carson in Housing and Urban Development and Elaine Chao heading Transportation. With the former stuck in the sunken place for the past decade or so and the latter merely the wife of the Senate Majority Leader, vetting out properly qualified men and women has gone out the window in favor of those who donated tons of cash to the campaign or endorsed his candidacy early, as both Rick Perry (Energy) and Scott Pruitt (EPA) did. What was made worse – by welcoming the alt-right and its extreme white supremacy into the mainstream with open arms – was the appointment of Stephen Bannon from Breitbart. Before I put out an APB, has anyone seen Secretary of State Rex Tillerson lately?

What I don’t understand is why he keeps an audience with some of the world’s worst tyrants instead of protecting our nation’s interests. Of course, I’d like to see the connection with Russia openly investigated as congressional watchdogs such as Jason Chaffertz (R-UT) and Trey Gowdy (R-SC) are running away from the glue they helped pour all over the floor starting with Benghazi. Apparently what they know is enough to keep Chaffertz from running for re-election next year although the Utah governorship could potentially be in play as a consolation prize for the morally corrupt clown in exchange of departing Chocolate City.

I bet there are a lot of people who want a do-over of Election Day and would vote differently than along with their skin folk or the spiritually bankrupt leaders who occupy seats in state Legislatures, Congress, and the White House who sparked white fears of a changing nation. Well, we’re all lying in their bed of nails without any protection from the pricks – 2020 cannot come soon enough assuming we make it to that year without the risk of World War III destroying all of us.



I have to say with the ascension of one Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States, cognitive dissonance is now on life support in no small part thanks to the xenophobes in our communities becoming more prominent, and Sadducees and Pharisees alike for making a mockery of their loudly proclaimed religious beliefs by leading lives that run contrary to what lies within the Bible, Torah, Quran, or text of choice. As far as pushing an agenda that works for more than just the one-percenters, he has been nothing but an abject failure with no understanding of how Congress works in relation to how laws are passed yet he is the catalyst for a new generation of activists of all stripes to stand up and take the place of retiring veterans and/or soldiers who are moving up in leadership roles to resist this brand of plutocracy.


For now, we’re still alive. What the remaining 1,361 days in this term leave us with will very well leave us in a permanent sunken place and decades (if ever) of restoration unless someone unleashes a nuclear weapon ending all life on Earth as we know it.




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