Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Peace on Earth and Mercy Mild

i'm writing this post on christmas eve, though i won't post it until christmas day.  as i write, i'm thinking of the cruelty of the current administration that contradicts what i believe are the best reasons for celebrating christmas.  there can be no peace on earth or good will towards others when the watchwords of the president are pettiness and retaliation.  as he espouses policies that create mayhem in the economy, he looks for a culprit to blame his failures on and finds one in the head of the federal reserve.  in order to divert attention from his own shortcomings, he attacks our closest allies, like canada, asserting that imports from those countries are the reasons for the decline of american industry.  blaming someone else is the hallmark of donald trump, and critical self-examination is a skill unknown to him.

"illegals," other governments that are taking unfair advantage of us, and prior u.s. administrations (particularly that of barack obama), are the causes of any problems that confront mr. trump, he tells us.  those who disagree with him are belittled as corrupt and inept.  lies roll from his tongue and appear on his twitter feed so easily and frequently that is difficult to keep track of them.  suggestions that he, his presidential campaign, and his administration have engaged in illegal activity are part of a witch hunt.  "no collusion" (with trump's peculiar pronunciation of the "u" vowel) is heard and seen so often that one feels certain that there must be "collusion," else why would he need to remind us so frequently of its purported non-existence.

one wonders how much longer the country can survive with trump at the helm.  he says we need to spend five billion dollars immediately on a barrier at the border to keep out all the criminals who are trying to get into the country, but we don't have billions to spend on health care for our own citizens.  those who can't afford to pay for their own health insurance refuse to work and earn the necessary income so we must impose work requirements on the poor before we spend government funds to help them, we are told.  we can afford an unneeded "space force" but we can't afford housing for those who are homeless.  as we see the consequences of climate change all around us, we are assured that this climate change is natural, rather than caused by human actions, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, and government must encourage the increasing use of fossil fuels in order to bolster and economy.

many of us in the country want to cry out to the rest of the world that trump and his supporters are not the face of the u.s.a., but the unfortunate truth is that there is a face, one among many, that is as ugly as the one that the trump fans present.  the twin scourges of racism and isolationism are part and parcel of the american identity, just as love for freedom of expression and the ideal of all people being created equal are.  it is the conflict between the ideals of the enlightenment that fostered the birth of the nation and the fear of the "other" whose skin and language are different from that of the majority that continues to haunt us.  right now, the disfigured visage of all that is bad about the country is ascendant.  there is some evidence that the tide is turning back to more noble traits, and one can only hope that this tide continues and becomes the dominant one again.

may we think of the good that christmas engenders--love for one another, peace and good will, reverence and compassion for the "have-nots" of society--as we celebrate this special day.  may we see the star over the manger as a symbol of the light of our best ideals in the darkness of this winter of ugliness in the american psyche.  shalom.

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