Ok now I’m worried.  The day after Donald Trump was elected president I thought I could give him a chance.  I even said that in a blog at that time.  One day later Mr. Trump did something that made me regret going out on a limb with that public statement.  He appointed alt-right provocateur Stephen Bannon as a presidential advisor.  It then became obvious to me that all of the soothing rhetoric of Mr. Trump’s acceptance speech about uniting the country was nothing more than another of his manipulative lies.  And by now it is obvious he is not about to release his tax returns.  For me those two things alone indicate what we observed during the campaign is pretty much what we are going to get from him as president.  That in itself is worrisome. Having Stephen Bannon as a PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR is a blatant proclamation by the president that he is a narrow-minded bigot himself.  And by concealing his tax returns he is shamelessly announcing he is a shifty, swindling  SOB and doesn’t care who knows it.  On top of that, the man has the audacity to suggest that because he was elected president it must mean he has the right to do anything he wants.

And the thing is in a way he’s right.  He is right because we tend to forget these and his other discretions and missteps for the simple reason there are so many of them.  Over time we have learned about his business misconduct, bankruptcies, despicable personal conduct, exaggerations and flat out lies, one after another, each episode glossed over by and because of the next.  It’s a shell game President Trump has played his entire adult life.  But he and his surrogates have transformed the game into a political weapon I think best described as GASLIGHTING, a state of mind that is achieved by deliberately creating  confusion so often that a person becomes vulnerable to believing an alternate reality.  It’s a common tactic of dictators.

Stopping Gaslighting in its Tracks

Up till now I have resigned myself to the fact that we are stuck with Trump’s mind games and fast talking and will probably live though it all. Yes, we will have to choose our battles, like issues involving civil rights and the environment.  As we have found out during the first days of this administration, public pressure works.  But many of the outlandish statements he makes are nothing more than pathetic displays of self aggrandizement, obsessions over matters that are ridiculously petty, and boasts about things that will never get accomplished. His flurry of executive orders contain many that are all show just to make it look like he is fulfilling campaign promises.  His “wall” is a perfect example.  Mexico is never, in any way, going to pay for the stupid wall.  If it does get built, you and I will be paying for it one way or another.  Also if it is built, we can kiss any of Trumps grandiose plans for infrastructure improvement goodby.  Geezuz didn’t daddy Fred ever have that discussion with Donald about money not growing on trees?

However, something he said during the campaign, and astonishingly repeated since he assumed the presidency really bothers me.  He insists during our invasion of Iraq that we should have “Kept the oil.”  It’s one thing to say that during a blustery campaign speech, but this man is now the president of our county.  That kind of remark is an alarming indication of how ill prepared he is for the job, and should not be buried in all the gaslighting minutiae, which sadly, it is.  I know the president is a foreign policy neophyte, but I cannot believe someone in advisory capacity did not inform him of how dangerous it is to say something that volatile.  This is something that should not be treated as one of the president’s petulant, fly-off-the-handle statements. If there is no one among the president’s advisory staff that has the courage to correct him, surely Paul Ryan or any member of congress with common sense should show some gumption and do it.  Whoever it is might also suggest he actually read something that is not about himself for a change, like a high school text about modern world history for instance.

Trump’s “keep the oil” statement is not just a contradiction of international law, the sovereignty of which Mr. Trump stunningly ridiculed during his first presidential interview (#5 at very bottom of this article). I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that someone who supports torture (#4 in same above article)  would in his mind consider pillage and rape to be normal extensions of war.  Critically important, this comment is also counterproductive to any kind of plan to destroy ISIS, one of Mr. Trump’s primary promises to us during his election campaign.  This is bulletin board material for ISIS.  There can be nothing more threatening and imperialistic sounding to the entire muslim world than saying we should keep the oil of any county in the Middle East that we imperiously invade.  The president seems totally unaware of the resentment in the region toward Western hegemony that has transpired since World War One.  It’s a remarkable lack of knowledge for someone so adamantly insistent he’s just the guy who knows how to deal with ISIS.  There is a strong argument that the catalytic spark for ISIS and the reason we invaded Iraq was Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s unrestrained avidity for Iraqi oil.  Not that he ever would of course, but his incendiary statement can not be retracted.  Those words are forever locked in the twitter domain for ISIS to use at its discretion.  They will headline every ISIS recruiting website these terrorists utilize.

Then there is the matter of the safety of our military.   In the muslim world an ignorant statement like this certainly resurrects unpleasant memories of an empire carved up by Western outsiders, and could easily excite feelings that imperil our troops currently serving in Iraq.  Who in this administration has the president’s ear?  Is it Steve Bannon, the anarchist who says the “media should keep its mouth shut.”  Though the gag orders and intimidation of this administration make it burdensomely difficult to continue reporting one ridiculous comment after another, it is more important than ever that the media keep up that work.  Hopefully then someone in authority will finally have the balls to say enough is enough.  Politically President Trump is in way over his head, but I am not sure if all the gaslighting isn’t working if you listen to his defenders.  Every time the president makes one of his absurd comments, a spokesperson rationalizes it by saying its just the way the man is and it is a ‘new order’ we had better get used to.  That convoluted logic seems to be working for some people.  I know President Trump wants to drive us into isolation, but he has got to realize his words do matter to other nations and can incite hostility toward vulnerable and innocent people.  Our country might be stuck in Trumpworld,  but there are other parts of the globe not as willing to dwell there.   Someone with a spine has got to force this president to take a serious look at reality- actual reality, not his.

NOTE:  Well we are into the second day of the president’s immigration shit storm now. Geezuz I just can’t keep up with this guy.   I am not so sure my computer won’t run out of ink.  If you agree with this blog, please share.  If you don’t you can bite my shorts.