Trump and the big picture
Even though our country is deeply divided politically, the real issues go much deeper and need to be addressed publicly to move all of us forward.
The letter to the editor by Tom Beach from Dec. 29 (Tribune-Herald, Your Views) says it all regarding the president, but we must analyze the larger picture more in detail, because it is not simply Trump who troubles many of us, but some voters who continue to support him at all costs.
The Republican senators stand behind him as a solid block, and they have sworn to sail with his ship, whether it is the Titanic or not. At this point, the rats have not yet jumped off board because they all appear to profit personally from this development of transforming our republic into a dictatorship.
First, huge tax cuts for the super rich, and the stock market has rewarded them nicely. Granted, unemployment is down, at an astounding level, so many voters are happy with our government, but at what costs? Look at the actual salaries, and count the jobs each individual worker holds in order to maintain his/her family.
Then there are the religious fanatics, and since Trump strongly pushes to get Roe vs. Wade overturned and to ban all (!) forms of abortion, those voters are happy, brutally and inhumanely ignoring countless painful and problematic conditions for pregnant women.
Abortion is never a good thing, so we should provide education, protection, medication and treatment for women to avoid pregnancy in the first place. That, however, would require extensive expansion of the education system for the majority of our population, which the Republicans do not want. They prefer a completely elitist school system with private schools and vouchers so that only white rich kids get a thorough education. The rest can work at McDonald’s or at an assembly line; the new enslaved population of tomorrow.
Then there is the myth of the illegal immigrants at the southern border. The president has already spent billions on the wall that he has illegally siphoned off the military budget, and yet he cannot present any real progress (meaning?) down there. All construction is along the border, where there has been a fence or a wall for a long time.
And while the smugglers have already found easy methods to cut through the wall with special tools, avoiding a disruption of their profitable drug trafficking, the border police have apprehended thousands of families, separated the children and keep them in internment camps. Most of them will never see their parents again. That’s a crime against humanity perpetrated by our own government.
But why are all those people trying to enter the United States? They are fleeing gang violence, war and hunger, all the product of weapons sales from the U.S. How do those gangsters pay for the weapons? By selling drugs to the U.S. — a perfect cycle promoted by the U.S. industry.
And who owns much of that industry? Republicans! No wonder that the Republican senators stand firmly behind Trump because he is the long-desired leader of a new mafia. They pretend to be good Christians but ignore all the fundamental teachings — the sinister recipe for hypocrisy!
How do I know all that? I critically study the issues, read newspapers (American and foreign), online media, and inform myself. But that’s exactly what the Republicans try to prevent, at least for the majority of people (see Fox News, American Thinker, etc.). And if they could, they would love to block this letter from being published, but they have failed.
I work, after all, in the field of higher education and do my job thoroughly and ethically, and this in contrast to some politicians.
Albrecht Classen
Hilo