It Makes No Difference Who Is President? Are You Serious?

 

The following is a Facebook post I posted on February 28th:

Shortly after Trump was announced the winner of the 24 election, someone told me not to worry. It really didn't matter who the President was. After one year of this madman, and especially this morning when the "Peace Presdient" has taken us to an unecessary war that will very likely result in the loss of lives of ourr sons and daughters (and the slauglter of countless Iranian citizens), I have to ask him, "Do you still think it makes no difference who is President of the United States?" But I can't. It might cause a rift in the organization we both attend.

He thinks himself neutral. He is not. He is very conservative, but with so much extremism around here, relative silence stands out as middle of the road.

For the last ten years, I have felt pent up and angry. It has been everything I can do to hold my temper in check.

I had an opportunity to ask him this about a week ago. I passed. Call me a coward if you want. But I have to constantly measure the collateral damage a remark can cause. And I decided it wasn't worth it.

But the question remains. Do you still think it doesn't matter who the President is?

Would we be currently engulfing the world in flames due to a war of choice? Would a school filled with young girls still be with us? Would any other President be stupid enough to be sucked in by Netanyahu's idea of obliterating Iran? The answer is no. No other president would have done this, especially without explanation or preparation. Bush and Cheney propagandized for a year or more before invading Iraq.

Would any other President been stupid enough to think that blanket-level tariffs were good economic policy? All that it has done has raised prices for average Americans and turned many of our allies against us. The big lesson for other countries is to build up their markets by excluding the United States. And hey, let's give 40 billion dollars to newly fascist Argentina, and prop up their beeef market over the Uniyted States! And hey, American farmers, don't worry! We'll bail you out with billionsmore of US taxpayer money!

Would Renee Good and Alex Pretti still be alive if we had a different President? Of course they would! And countless others who have been killed and/or dragged away by ICE. They're not going after the worst of the worst. They're dragging off and kidnapping US citizens, and that's bad. But they're not targeting the worst of the worst - those undocumented who have committed violent felonies. No, they're persecuting even those playing by the rules, people showing up for immigration hearings, trying to follow procedure. They're arresting people at workplaces - going after individuals - not the businesses that hire and exploit them. People are going to detention centers and then disappearing - no one knows where they've gone -deported, moved to another camp, murdered? We just don't know.* There is no exemption in Christianity where you get to treat people like they're less than human.

Would we have a President who, along with his cronies, is making billions off of corruption? No, there has never been anything like it. This is at a level we have never seen before and would never see with any other President.

Would the lgbtq+ community be made to feel less safe with any other President? I don't think so. The trans community, less than 1% of us, is being scapegoated and villainized. This is a trend in Republican politics, to attack and persecute minority communities, but the focus on trans people has been vicious and dangerous. Of course, hatred is not just reserved for them; they are just the most vulnerable. Somalis, Mexicans, Muslims - anything to make the blood boil in reich-wing America.

We elected someone who WEKNEW was a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, the most notorious pedophile of modern times, who appears in the Epstein files more often than God and Jesus do in the bible. We have those in this country who close their eyes and pretend Trump wasn't involved. Trump wasn't a client. Trump was IN on it, part of the small inner circle planning and perpetuating this monstrosity. He owned teen beauty pageants and "modeling" agencies. He bragged about how his celebrity allowed him to get away with sexually assaulting women. They have tried to censor his name from what is released, but enough has slipped through that you have to know in your heart that he is every bit the monster that Epstein was.

I could go on and on. There are some things that are only happening, or happening at such an intense level, because we have a narcissistic, adjudicated sexual assaulter, adjudicated fraudster, convicted felon, racist, dementia-riddled, body-disintegrating, mad conman as President of the United States.

Of course, it matters who is President of the United States. Sometimes the differences are subtle. And sometimes they are apocalyptically crushing.

Guess which one Trump is?