Images on the screen

I remember the images that filled our television screens in the 1960’s and the 1970’s, images of children in Northern Ireland and the West Bank of Palestine. Images of walls, barbwire, and automobiles smoldering in the streets as kids did what kids do, playing amidst the rubble, destruction and chaos. Adults caused these scenes and children paid the price for it.

This morning on television I watched the Israel military police push a young Palestinian teen up against a wall. I imagined that was one of my kids simply headed to Starbucks to meet their friends for a Latte. I saw the fear in this kids face as grown men in full riot gear pushed his head up against a stone wall. Maybe he was a protester but maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, another kid paying for the poor decisions of adults.

Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital proves to me just how detached he and his Kool-Aid drinking followers are from reality. At this point I am convinced Trump realizes his days in office are numbered and his intent is to slash, burn and destroy everything in his wake. For me it was bad enough that he wants to destroy our environment and turn the clock back on social and racial advances but now he wants to put his fat thumb print on other society’s like Israel and North Korea in the name of fulfilling “campaign promises”. Trump reminded us this morning in a tweet;“I fulfilled my campaign promise – others didn’t!” Don’t tell us dumb ass, tell that kid with his face pressed up against the wall, tell the kids in North Korea who fear your “fire and fury”. You can’t and you won’t because your small mind can’t comprehend that your words create actions, actions that produce violence in the lives of the innocent.

Trump’s latest Pew Research Center approval rating has hit a new low. The poll finds that just 32 percent of Americans polled approve of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 63 percent say they disapprove and like clock work he has scheduled an ego rally in Florida. “Big crowd expected today in Pensacola, Florida” he tweeted this morning, “for a Make America Great Again speech. We have done so much in so short a period of time…and yet are planning to do so much more! See you there!”

32% of Americans are still buying his bullshit but guess what 63% aren’t and 6% don’t know what to believe. These 32% wear their designation like a badge of honor but the last time I checked 32% is less than 63%. When your Senator or Congressperson says they are working to advance the President’s agenda because that is what the “majority” of Americans want ask them which “majority” they are talking about, better yet, ask them which “majority” they are representing.

Will there be a “Big crowd” in Pensacola, Florida tonight, a city just 20 miles away from the contentious Roy Moore senate race in state of Alabama? Probably, Florida is filled to the brim with old white deplorables. But what these ego rally’s afford the rest of us, the 63%, is the opportunity to hear Trump off script at his unhinged best. He will do his best convince his base of white faces that he has accomplished more in eleven months than any other President. He will call Hillary crooked and Obama weak. He will deride the Russia investigation as a witch hunt, sour grapes for the Democrats losing and remind us that he won by the widest margin “EVER” once again, but watch his energy, watch the energy of the crowd and see if they can muster the same enthusiasm they had a year ago. I am betting it has waned a bit, even in Florida.

“LAST thing the Make America Great Again Agenda needs is a Liberal Democrat in Senate where we have so little margin for victory already. The Pelosi/Schumer Puppet Jones would vote against us 100% of the time. He’s bad on Crime, Life, Border, Vets, Guns & Military. VOTE ROY MOORE!” – Trump tweet 12-8-17