A morally blind President

It took two days, after a measly waffle statement referencing the multiple sides of view on white supremacy, racism and the death of a thirty two year old woman whose message to her fellow Americans was that hatred, bigotry, and racism are not what makes America great,  before the President of the United States deigned to allow as how perhaps  the instigators of violence and proponents of hatred gathered at the University of  Virginia might not be the best people around.  It took two days of unrelenting public pressure, statements of disagreement from members of his Cabinet, his wife, and perhaps his children, before Donald Trump would attempt to roll back his personal, visceral response of mealy mouthed disapproval of what happened in Virginia. It took two days for Mr. Trump to acknowledge that just perhaps the Neo-Nazis, skinheads, and white supremacists gathered at the University of  Virginia, allegedly to protest the removal of a statute of Robert E. Lee from the University campus, are the white scum of our American culture.

On the third day Mr. Trump decided that his condemnation of Neo-Nazis, skinheads, white supremacists and sundry other racists had been too strong. According to Mr.Trump there were some good people there mixed in with and by their presence supporting the rag tag of scum.  The President of the United States has taken the position that it is possible to be or support Neo-Nazis and be a good person. Hitler, Goring, Goebbels and other members of the Nazi leadership assembled in Hell along with the members of the SS concentration camp guards must be pleased by their American Presidential rehabilitation.

This is getting out of hand.  Within the space of less than a month Donald Trump has failed to condemn the bombing of a Islamic Mosque, the desecration of a Holocaust  Memorial  and  after riot and murder has made it clear that he really has no particular problem with the most likely perpetrators of such actions.  At best we have enshrined a moral eunuch in the office of President of the United States.

Moral blindness is, unfortunately, normally not considered to fall under the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors established in the Constitution for Presidential Impeachment.  Mores the pity. I think it is fair to assume that the drafters of the Constitution in setting the standards for removing a President from office never really considered the idea that an elected President would be someone so lacking in moral comprehension that he would not recognize evil even when it came up and bit him in the butt.

This lack of a moral compass in Mr. Trump does lead one to wonder how it is that he manages to get such unswerving support for the fundamentalist Christian community.  It must as well give some pause to the members of Congress who now have to weigh whatever political advantage they see in supporting the President through an understanding that the man has no moral base on which he bases his choices and actions. Moreover, he continues to demonstrate an unlimited ability to throw even his most consistently voting supports under the bus out of pique or to score a new  tweet headline.  In politics, as in most human activities, loyalty is a two way street and members of Congress in his own party are rapidly learning that this President has no loyalty to anyone but himself and no honor.

There is no “answer” to the existence of Donald Trump.  There is no set of of simple or even convoluted steps that can make him go away.  There is only unremitting action to limit, contain, and then vote him out of office unless the Mueller investigation identifies some clearly impeachable actions on the President’s part.

This President of the United States has our country in peril of the loss of its soul. While our images of ourselves are often simplistic and historically less than completely accurate, those images are important to maintain as goals for our country and ourselves.  Perhaps we will never completely create the City on the Hill as beacon of liberty but in halts and starts we must continue to try to do so.  In pain and sorrow, we continue to try and unravel the stain of racism that taints our stated belief that all of us are created equal. Donald Trump as President challenges these goals and sullies the memory of those millions of Americans who  for over three hundred years have striven to achieve them.  He apparently is willing to hand the American Dream over to people who have no belief in nor understanding of the American democracy.  We are in yet in another battle for the soul of our Country.

 

Robert Lenna

About Robert Lenna

My professional career has been involved in bringing to Maine the financial capital to build our infrastructure of housing, schools, roads, hospitals, colleges, water and sewer districts. As Executive Director of four independent state authorities charged with putting together public financing for hundreds of infrastructure projects I was responsible for bringing billions of dollar into the Maine economy.