Divided We Stand Saturday, Feb 13 2016 

History and Politics , , , victorgold 11:50 am

Of all the charges leveled at Barack Obama by his Republican critics – that he was born in Kenya, that he foisted an unconstitutional health care program on an unsuspecting Congress – one stands up: He promised to unite the country and failed to do so.

It was a foolish promise, but Obama wasn’t the first presidential candidate to make it. That would be Richard Nixon, who in the tumultuous election year of 1968, promised – in addition to having a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War – that he would “bring us together.”

Needless to say, that didn’t happen. As a presidential pledge it was BS then, it’s BS now, and as long as this country remains a working democracy, it will always be BS. We have never, not even in the founding days of the republic, been a “united” country in the sense that political factionalism and societal disharmony didn’t exist.

George Washington was accused of having kingly ambitions, and though I wasn’t around at that time, I was when, during the heaviest fighting of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt’s Republican opponents denounced him as an incompetent commander-in-chief. (The slogan for the Republican ticket of Thomas Dewey and John Bricker in 1944 was WIN THE WAR QUICKER WITH DEWEY AND BRICKER.)

I also remember being at Vice President Agnew’s side during the presidential campaign of 1972 when a reporter asked him to respond to the charge that his speeches were “divisive.” Agnew’s answer: “Divisive means ‘to divide.’ I thought that’s what elections were all about.”

Unity? It’s a rhetorical fancy advanced by those who really mean, “Why don’t we settle our differences by your agreeing with my position?”

Which is to say I hope I don’t live to see the day when we have a “unified” country; the sort, that is, that Donald Trump and his cerebrally challenged followers would bring about.

 

Sound bite to remember

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

–Martin Luther King Jr.

 

 

Trump on Pennsylvania Avenue, 2016? Friday, Dec 4 2015 

Ethics and Politics and Uncategorized victorgold 12:33 pm

The Washington Post, in a lead editorial on Donald Trump’s “politics of denigration” (11/29/15), deplores the fact that Republican leaders have not spoken out on Trump’s “despicable” campaign falsehoods and “mocking of others.” In previous editorials, the Post has condemned Trump for calling Mexicans “rapists,” favoring mass registry of Muslims and the closing of mosques, and for his vile comments about women and the disabled.

Oddly missing from the Post’s list of “despicable” falsehoods was his racist charge that blacks are the primary source of murders in this country – not only murders of other blacks but of whites and policemen. Not only did Trump make that charge but he posted a graphic fabricated by a neo-Nazi to support it.

Question 1: Why is it that the Post and other editorial voices outraged by Donald Trump’s vile campaign rhetoric have yet to address the issue of how such a racist xenophobe was allowed to acquire a historic landmark in the heart of Washington’s Federal Triangle – a 60-year lease on the Old Post Office building, halfway between the White House and Capitol?

The right to renovate the Old Post Office building into a modern hotel was handed to Trump, mind you, after a fierce bidding war with established and fiscally sound hotel developers. His typically grandiose, hyperbolic promise to “produce one of the great hotels anywhere in the world” persuaded Washington’s local officials – then-Mayor Vincent Gray, current Mayor Muriel Bowser, and congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton – that despite his record of hotel bankruptcies, Trump’s offer would prove a boon to the Washington economy. (Not to discount the possibility of other behind-the-scenes promises given Washington’s local officials.)

The artful deal was sealed in 2013, under pressure from Congressman Jeff Denham (R.-Cal.), subcommittee chairman for public buildings. Groundbreaking for the $200 million project came July 2014, a gala event centered around obsequious praise of Trump by Gray, Bowser, and Norton, who went so far as to say Washington would, thanks to him, finally have a first-class luxury hotel (ignoring the existence of the Four Seasons, two Ritz-Carltons, and the venerable 5-star Willard a block away).

Predictably, given Trump’s history of shameless self-promotion, problems weren’t long in coming. Once his campaign for the presidency got underway, he ordered a gigantic, block-long banner stretched across the reconstruction site, proclaiming COMING IN 2016 … TRUMP – offensive not only to the eye but the historic aesthetics of the Federal Triangle.

Protests followed, but – again predictably – local officials said there was nothing they could do about it. Then, after candidate Trump described Mexican immigrants as “rapists and criminals,” active street protests took place, leading Delegate Norton to ask that Trump apologize.

Not that he would but Norton, whose dealings with Trump deserve more attention than the Post has given them, didn’t pursue the matter. Nor has she or Mayor Bowser been heard to speak out on Trump’s racist use of neo-Nazi fabricated statistics regarding black crime.

Why not? Well after all, as Norton, Bowser and other local officials trumpeted at the groundbreaking a year ago, their friend Donald was bringing to the nation’s capital “a destination for power brokers, international visitors and luxury travelers.”

Oh, about the descriptive “international” – that’s actually the name the destination, when completed, will be known by: TRUMP’S INTERNATIONAL HOTEL; though judging by the owner’s campaign rhetoric, no Muslim, Mexican, Chinese or African American travelers need apply for reservations.

Question 2: How much “despicable” hate-filled rhetoric will it take for local authorities to speak out and take action to review and revoke the leasing of an historic Pennsylvania Avenue landmark to a revealed and unapologetic racist?

Sound bite to remember

“There but for the grace of God goes God.”

–Winston Churchill on Sir Stafford Cripps (1945) and what Winnie, if alive, would say of Donald Trump (2015)

 

 

Sound Bite of the Week Tuesday, Apr 19 2011 

Politics victorgold 6:09 pm

About the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency: If the country’s really headed for bankruptcy, there’s something to be said for having a man-in-charge who’s had experience at it.

 

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