Tag Archives: despot

The year of the big lie

A two-faced Chief Executive?

A two-faced Chief Executive?

A two-faced person is one who is deceitful, insincere, double-dealing, Janus-faced, hypocritical, backstabbing, false, fickle, untrustworthy, duplicitous, deceiving, dissembling, dishonest and a liar.  This unflattering portrait fits our Chief Executive, Donald Trump, like a glove.

Our first President, George Washington, was thought so truthful, honest and upright that it was believed that from the time he was 6 years old that he couldn’t tell a lie.

No such truth-telling myth will ever apply to Mr. Trump; almost every day, he tells a whopper.

President Washington composed a code of civility not to reproach another for “infirmities of nature,” not to show “yourself glad at the misfortune of another,” not to “let your conversation be of malice or envy,” and not to utter “base and frivolous things” including “things hard to be believed.”  Mr. Trump fails this measure of civility in every respect. Continue reading

A patriot in our midst

o-PAUL-REVEREWe survived the American Revolution, the war with Britain afterwards, our slave war among the states, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, the exclusion of blacks and women from the voting rolls, the Spanish American war, Pearl Harbor, World wars, the McCarthy era, the Cuban Missile Crisis, ‘Nam, Nixon, Billygate, the Iran Contra scandal (“Contra-Fawn-and-Ollie (North)), and 9-11.

But, at long last, will we survive the despot in the West Wing, Mr. Donald Trump, a failed casino operator, intolerant of one and all but especially women and persons of color?

Mr. Trump is best imagined as a relentless undignified thug, engaged in a never-ending assault, elbows akimbo, pushing dignitaries out of the way, hurling insults and trash talk, worst of all, attacking this nation’s first principle, as expressed by Thomas Jefferson, namely, that we are all equal, worthy of respect, amazingly diverse, and all in this together.

Mr. Trump runs down our government, the Courts, Congress, Mr. Trump’s own cabinet, as well as his Republican Party.

Mr. Trump sees himself as the one and only authority that matters.  But what else may one expect of a despot? Continue reading