On January 17, 2018, I got my first “Grandpa Howard” call. The kind AARP warns you about. A kid calls, says he is in trouble, and asks the grandparent for money. I was immediately tipped off because it came from a phone interchange (474) in Santa Fe , New Mexico with the 0000 number behind it, but the notation below was “Kentucky.” Plus the time of the call. Anyway, I played along, and got in one parting shot: “So you need money?” “Yes.” “Grandson, do you know what this is doing to your soul?” Hangup. I wanted to do something more than: “so I know this is a fraud“—I wanted him to think about what he was doing, so I awkwardly and quickly chose those words. Maybe later at night this would rest heavy on his soul and he would stop. But why stop when the society of the United States has become so corrupted and Nigerian Scam like?
Later all I could do is think about what would make it right in someone’s mind to think this is an acceptable way to make a living. Then I thought about Kentucky and its opioid crisis and how it voted for Trump. How a Resident of the White House could lead a national movement of bad behavior and unbridled Republican entitlement. Beyond White Supremacists but actually where a red state member feels it is okay to bilk a blue state member. Where our elected officials feel it is all right not to act in the national interest but in their own interest.
So our entire culture is following Trump’s Art of the Deal where it is perfectly all right to swindle people you don’t even know. Or to be tough negotiators who bully business associates and sexually harass women. To push the ceiling in ordinary society to allow for fraud against family members and strangers. The new financial world. This kid if successful could sell stock in himself. Makes sense because Wall Street does this every damn day. Creating a bubble on the Stock Market based not on GNP, economic growth like jobs or any other economic numbers—but on how much they think a Presidential Administration and Congress can swindle the American People for their own benefit (Trump Tax Bill, et. al.).
By accepting the day-in and day-out Tweets of a lying dishonest braggart we have created a new normal (Trump passed the 2,000 mark more than 10 days ago). Our non-action is complicity to the selling out to Putin. Good effective leadership must have more to it than this? “Dump Trump”; how much more obvious can it be?
We recognized when “too much was too much” in Nixon’s Watergate, why don’t we recognize it now in RussiaGate; especially given our long national nightmare (President Ford’s words) back then. We as a country should be acting with the remedies to this sickness that our Fore Fathers gave us: Impeachment; we did it in 1973-74.
williamhenrymee 