I Have a Dream
Next week I am traveling to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia: Foreign nations with cultures and dialects I do not know. Today I awoke in my own bed, and I do not know where I am. What country is this? What language do we speak? What are our beliefs and principles?
I don’t have words. What does truth mean. Fact? When the media is attacked, when our intelligence agencies are attacked, where do we turn for information? If the White House excludes news outlets from daily briefings, am I to assume the favored reporters let in are unbiased? What in today’s upside-down “deconstruction of the Administrative State” does bias even mean?
I was taught in college that a free press is the 4th estate. It puts a check on the working of our government; then informs readers of its findings. Not today. Both the media, with its fake stories and corporatist influence, and the state itself, over-regulated and adversarial in nature to our president, are now hostile. So hostile that the media is now branded the enemy of the people. Enemy as on a par with ISIS? North Korea?
Who are the people endangered by the news media that the president said intentionally deleted “fake” from the “fake news” he specifically called the enemy? I always relied on my own brain to decipher news stories. Surely the New York Times and CNN are not my enemy!
If your head is spinning, so is mine. This charged rhetoric is the level of communication we are now hearing from the most powerful leader on our planet. These vendettas are his major concerns as he addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. This is the tone, the articulation and the hostility of an electoral-college elected president I question is competent for this office.
As in England when Brexit was voted in and many voters were later stunned to realize that their pro vote meant exiting the European Union, I wonder if an anti-Hillary, pro-Trump vote was meant to endorse the expansion of nuclear weapons and the takedown of independent media and intelligence agencies. This is not the voice of my people or my America.
The presidential vocabulary will echo from his microphone to my family table and yours. His meanness will reflect in every act he passes, telling us anti-immigration and throwing the bad dudes the hell out is the American way. He will role model bullying and vindictiveness as pride in democracy and respect for diversity fade from our national life.
What happens on the political stage broadly affects our civil and social mores. Life here took a significant turn downward after this election. Mr Trump isn’t putting America first. He is making us worst. A whole world-and our malleable children- are watching and absorbing the venom of a superpower once known for the highest of ideals and restraint of unjust actions.
I have a dream. I dream that this is just a nightmare, and sound reason and sane judgment will once again prevail. Anyone can dream, can’t we?
