Hypocrisy in the highest offices

Hypocrisy in the highest offices

by Tom H. Hastings

591 words

Trump to Iran’s leaders who are cracking down on protesters: “You better not start shooting, because we’ll start shooting, too.” Iran’s leaders say the protests are the result of foreign meddling.

On the other hand, when Trump was asked about the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, he said he’d always protect ICE agents and that protesters there were paid.

Apparently, the theocratic dictators in Iran and the white Christian nationalists in the White House are using similar narrative playbooks.

Trump routinely accuses Democrats of improper funding of their campaigns, and congressional member Gerald E. Connolly, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, finally issued a blunt call-out of that hypocrisy:

“If Donald Trump was at all serious about cracking down on foreign corruption of U.S. elections, he would start by taking the For Sale sign off his own back.  Selling access and influence is the defining feature of the Trump White House.  Trump has accepted millions in foreign payments while a sitting President and as a candidate. ¼Donald Trump has turned the White House into an auction house and he’s both the auctioneer and the largest benefactor.”

When the war raged in Vietnam in the 1960s Donald Trump evaded the draft by getting a doctor to claim Trump had “bone spurs.” Trump has called US military members killed in battle “losers” and “suckers.” Trump has ordered the US military to undertake actions that are demonstrably in violation of treaties that the US Senate ratified and the president signed. And yet when Senator Mark Kelly joined other retired military in reminding servicepeople that it was their very hard but very necessary duty to refuse illegal orders, Trump called for Kelly to be convicted of treason and hanged.

Do MAGA voters care if their man claims that he is commander-in-chief bombing another sovereign nation to stop drugs from coming in our country even as he pardons a former leader of another country convicted of overseeing literally tons of illegal drugs smuggled into the US?

Some hypocrisy is found in virtually every human, usually in small doses. No one adheres perfectly in practice to every ideal they hold. But when the pattern is constant, ranging across many different aspects of a life, a person can become known as a hypocrite. Donald J. Trump is the epitome of hypocrisy, proven on an ongoing basis by the gulf between what he says one day and does the next. The examples are so numerous they will fill entire books.

This is not leadership; this is a man who conned his way into controlling the most powerful military in world history, and who bullies friend and foe until they vote how he demands they vote. His ego is so fragile and yet so easily inflamed that even a Nobel Peace Award recipient frames her award and presents it to him in an obvious obsequious and ingratiating gesture, which he comes to expect.

I’m a grandpa to a few little ones, the youngest 16 months old, and she already shows infinitely more compassion, care, shared humor, and eagerness to be a good human than our disgraceful Dear Leader ever had or has. I want her to grow up in a country that isn’t becoming more like North Korea every day, a country that nurtures her and her entire generation.

Donald Trump is not an appropriate role model nor leader. His vision is nothing but greed and domination over others, exactly the opposite of what we need now. Impeach, convict, remove.

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Dr. Tom H. Hastings is Coördinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs at Portland State University. His views, however, are not those of any institution.

Published: Black Star News