Today our president is having his yearly physical exam. I could care less about his physical condition. I care about the physical health of our country. And the state of our health in this world. And I am afraid our country is quickly weakening. Is terminal. Is dying. Because we have as a leader, a man who is vile and ugly. Who condemns, in the oval office, before members of congress, certain immigrants as unworthy of living in America, of coming from “shithole countries.”
I work with elementary students who have come from these countries. Who are bright and eager and spirited. Who are so aware that many have spoken to me about their fear of our president, about how terrible he is. These children know by now exactly how he feels about them. They know by now, a day later, what he has said about them. They know. They listen. Their parents keep little from them. And they shouldn’t. These children deserve to know how our leader sees them. Because it makes them fight. Makes them work harder. Makes them stronger. Makes them need to prove him wrong. Truth so sad it drops me to my knees.
Donald Trump is not a good person. He lacks social norms. He doesn’t feel compassion and/or empathy. He lacks a moral compass. He is a bully. He has no sense of reality. He lies every time he speaks. We all know this. Most of us have known this this about him for years. His behavior is atrocious. Aggressive. Outlandish. Undignified. Abhorrent. Racist. If you still don’t believe this – just look. The evidence is solidified in his own words. All over the internet.
The words he said yesterday, the sentiment he stated are no longer shocking. But they are wrong. They are not presidential. They should never be felt or said by the leader of our nation. Of the United States of America, built on the backs of slaves and immigrants. We collectively wonder if he is unstable. If his mental health is failing because of his continuous inability to “get it.” Yet, the fact is this is him. He has never hidden it. Most of us saw it. Many are beginning to.
Donald Trump’s personality traits are not just “who he is”. Instead, they reflect both psychopathic and sociopathic disorders. Something a leader of anything should not have, let alone the president of the United States of America. The problem is we can resist and persist all the way to Utopia, but we are not going to get anywhere but backwards because we are dealing with a “mad” man.
Like the rest of our world, I don’t understand how this man came to be our president, or how he continues to be. Our republican leaders enable Trump. I suppose we all enable him. We cling to his tweets to prove we are right, that he is unfit. We watch as we lose more of our humanity daily, healthcare, taking from the poor, blocking mental health data bases, drilling off shore anywhere – it goes on. Regulations that were put in place to protect our health and livelihood are being erased and deleted at alarming, nearly daily, rates.
We don’t hit the streets in mass, except once a year now in January. We do hit town halls, we write our little Blogs, we sit stunned before Rachel Maddow nightly. We wait patiently for Mueller to save us. But we are doing nothing to protect our children, our lands, our lives from this man. And, I believe, compared to anything he has said, anything Trump has done, this is the most appalling to me. Like I said, I really don’t care about the physical condition of our president. But I do wonder how much longer we can suffer under a man with severe and damaging personality disorders.
This all weighs heavy on me. I no longer stand tall and confident as an American. I write these words just to make sure I am seeing and marking the truth. I donate, I write my congressional leaders, I hit the protests at the Capitol and still nothing. One day soon, I keep thinking. One day very soon those around him will have had enough and take, finally, a stand.
In a Word 