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Trump press is dumbing us all down. Trump has been in the limelight for over a year now. You cannot escape hearing about him. But the truth be known he is not the most enlightened man. He is not religious or spiritual. He is not one of our leading minds (This is not to say he is dumb). His personal life is not one to hold up (three marriages, groping women, sexist language, believes revenge is important and should be delivered tenfold, bilked workers, etc.). He is not the most centered of people (as evidenced by his tweets). I say none of this to necessary disparage the man. But this is the man that is taking so much of our time in thought. I am convinced this cannot be good.
There is a biblical verse which has caught me up and delivered me from smallness on many occasions. I share it here: Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things. Philippians 4:8. Trump press does not offer any of this. We are thinking and being exposed to those things that do not lift us up but denigrate us. Furthermore, we are not reading things that enlighten us because we are so inundated with Trump press. We are not listening to those spiritual voices that provoke and inspire us. This cannot be good long term. We have been overwhelmed with Trump press for over a year now and this my friend is getting to be long term. So what to do? Read about someone who inspires us to good and noble actions. Jane Goodall, Dalai Lama, Jimmy Carter, Mohammad Yunnus, Mala Yousafzai, Wendell Berry, Bill Mckibben and the list could go on. Write about something that inspires you. Do something that improves the world we live in. Finally, do not participate in Trump Press anymore than is necessary to know if there are things you should do. If Trump is a narcissus having your mind constantly on him and his actions is the last thing we need to do for him and for ourselves.
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Money and fame in our current society appear to be the most important things. We make a pretense that other things matter but in the end they seem not to. Take the media with the dumbing down of America with many of the reality shows it creates. Why would they promote brainless and useless shows with Honey Boo Boo, Duck Dynasty, Housewives of somewhere, Big Brother, and the list goes on. This is what the public wants and it costs less to produce or it may be morally questionable but it will make us money and give me notoriety. It also shows a lack of creativity. The belief that you cannot make educational material interesting flies in the face of Neil De Grasse Tyson, Bill Nye, or any other scientist who reaches millions by making the ‘complex’ accessible.
What is humorous is that the makers of these programs are some of the same people who decry the dumbing down and crassness found in society. In other words they want to make their money and achieve their fame through producing their junk realities and yet have a society that thinks more deeply. The same can be said of the news media. They are decrying Trump’s rise while they are in part the creators of him. They gave him inordinate amount of time on their shows because he improved ratings. He was making them richer and more famous. Why are lobbyists so powerful in our country because they fete the Congressmen like Kings and Queens and provide them with money on their jobs and jobs with money after their jobs. It is the way of Washington they say. Yes, it is the way of Hollywood they say. It is the way of New York they say. They complain how we suffer with more money and fame because we create an American culture that is not nice to live in. Of course we are above all this but we are not. We watch their products we allow ourselves to be caught in the culture they create. And we will sacrifice our values to keep a job or keep the peace. We value conflict free lives. Because it keeps our pockets full and allows us to continue our efforts to socially climb. Because in the end our role models have the most money and belong to all the right boards. Ethics and right living are not held in respect but are deemed as the province of the wannabes, never will bes, and the has beens. I do not fully understand how we got here. So I am going to be a contrarian to the money and fame liberal or conservative crowd. I am going to do something different I will value only the honest, kind, people who live lives to add to the world and not to take all they can from the world. Will anybody join me? They will call it the great whitelash of 2016. When a white electorate challenged by the first black president and the changing ethnicity of America stood against the first potential woman as president. This will not pass they exclaim as Gandolf in the Lord of the Rings.
When I first came to Savannah as the new resource coordinator for Phoenix Project a non-profit organization offering services housing, counseling, advocacy, and sundry other social services to those impacted by HIV everyone assumed I was gay. They assumed this although I was married and had one child (which I know does not necessarily exclude me from being gay). Even when asked on several different occasions and I replied ‘though there would be nothing wrong with being gay I am straight’ many still did not believe me. It was impossible in their world view to believe a heterosexual man would work so intimately with persons impacted with HIV. This thought still can bring sadness to my heart for all my fellow heterosexuals that it was impossible for people to believe that a straight man could care enough for those impacted with HIV to actually serve them. It was also unfair to me that this assumption was made. If anyone had cared to research they would have found I lived intimately with the homeless, mentally challenged, persons living with poverty for four years communally. I also had hired openly gay folk, marched in Gay Rights marches (while working for Southern Baptists who could have fired me for either one of these actions), and gave one of the first donations to the local housing for HIV\AIDs housing in Louisville. But they did not and it was up to me to show them that yes at least this one straight man could care. Hopefully, I did through my actions. Now we have a new president elect who was endorsed by the KKK, expressed racist and misogynist views. No one can believe that this president- elect cannot be racist and misogynist after all he is wealthy, white, and male and his followers are predominately white. So it may seem harsh to imply they are racist or misogynist but as unfair as that may or may not be it is on them to prove otherwise through their policies and actions. A simple truth found in the Bible says ‘You shall know them by their fruits.’ Or ‘I was stranger and you took me in.’ If Trumpites do not want us to assume them to be racist then they need to demonstrate differently. It has amazed me how in four years’ time a rich man can suddenly be prime choice for so many. After all Mitt Romney could not hold a candle to Donald Trump in greed and exploitation of workers. Yet Trump is the man and Romney is not. [Trump has also made on various occasions made racist, misogynist, and made fun of a handicapped man.] But none of this has changed many of his supporters’ minds. Why is this? The American public is angry they tell me. At who: the first black president who led us out of a Great Recession? No Hilary Clinton and her corrupt ways. But why not Trump and his ties to Russia, Trump University, rape and sexual abuse charges, not paying his contractors, having his Make America Great Again hats made in China, non-payment of taxes, bankruptcy, deferment from military services, and on the list goes. The man who talks crass and smack and personifies greed is their man.
So what the hell is going on with the American public? The truth can be found in the fact that the only category of people Trump leads with in the polls are white men. And apparently they are not pleased with the tenure of the first black president and his potential replacement by the first woman president. ‘What the hell is wrong with America,’ they ask, ‘we need to make our country great again.’ Now they will argue that we want the economy that is making the rich richer and everyone else poorer to be fixed. So they would give this job to a man who stiffs contractors and poops on gold-plated toilets. That makes sense. Especially when he says tax the rich less and they will create jobs and donate to the cause of society. Of course Donald himself promises the moon in charitable donations but his rocket of charity resembles the North Korean missile falling far short of its target. He will build a wall and protect us from the onslaught of immigrants. Maybe but less and less people are crossing the border of Mexico into the United States. Apparently when Mexico’s economy is doing okay they are more than happy to stay there. He will protect us from ISIS because he says Radical Islamic Terrorist and we all know if you repeat that term three times over a smoldering cauldron ISIS disappears. And on we could go for hours. I cannot help but to return to white men disturbed in an age of change hemming and hawing their way forward and trying to buck the system that may allow women and people of color to have comparable power to them. To explain these various contortions of the American public thinking has to go through to support Trump. Clinton’s chief antagonists are men (although there are a few women) Julian Assange, James Comey and the FBI (eighty percent men), Rudy Guiliani, Newt Gingrich, and the KKK. All of these men or groups have had streaks of misogyny in their lives except the FBI but they are a testosterone driven agency. So they break rules and decorum to take down the great white woman hope. Of course they do; she is evil despite the fact that millions of hours to convict her of various crimes and misdemeanors have failed. Yea but there is her husband and although we admire and want women who stand by their men we criticize her for it. The good news in all of this? Whenever Hillary has actually been doing her job her approval ratings are off the charts. So vote for Hilary because if she wins and is allowed to do her job history says you are going to like it. |
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