Just after having read the Mary Trump book TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH, I put down the book feeling frightened and sad about our future as a country. Then I turned on MSNBC and heard President Barack Obama deliver his eulogy for the enormously effective and courageous activist John Lewis. President Obama renewed my faith that someone we can pull ourselves out of the quick sand that is this period of Trump and the Pandemic and the looming economic collapse.
The struggle has gone on and must continue to go on in order to ensure that all American citizens can access our legal rights and participate in our Democracy.
What a stark contrast between President Obama's diligent preparation for his job leading our country, his measured and intelligent leadership as well as his inspirational honor and goodness.
A merciless pirate has captured our ship of state and done everything in his power to divide us, crush African American citizens, women, the rich immigration flow that has kept our farms thriving. He has used the office of president to enrich himself personally and to crush everyone else. Mary Trump did a plain spoken but informed portrayal of the pathology in the father and son relationship between Fred Trump and Donald that created the monster who roams the halls of the White House today. Fred Trump made his fortune off taxpayer money through FHA funded housing developments and made sure he didn't pay a penny in taxes off his profits.
When his eldest son couldn't follow in his footsteps and didn't want to, Fred Trump destroyed his son with constant humiliation and shame and made of him a depressed alcoholic who died at 42. The younger son saw all this and protected himself from his father's fury with defensive lying, disembling, casting blame on others, and hiding his failures under bluster. Fred Trump put all his hopes on his second son teaching him that empathy was weakness and that the only thing that could be considered success was amassing wealth.
When his second son failed by buying an setting up three casinos which then competed with one another and drove each other out of business, Fred bailed him out, over and over again. Donald began funded by his father and his father kept him afloat through all his failures. His father used Donald's penchant for self promotion to achieve his own ambition of fame. Their name became label, a brand.
Having made many loans to Trump to keep their own investments from being lost when he went under, the banks and investors continued to prop up Donald through four bankruptcies. Donald never learns from his mistakes because his insecurity cannot allow him to accept that he has made mistakes. He just lies, casts blame, and then fortifies the delusion that what he did was actually a success, even a great success, and then, the greatest success.
We need the example of truly good, brave altruistic men like John Lewis and Barack Obama to remind us that they exist and are not simply hero myths.
Thank you President Obama for renewing my faltering faith in my fellow man!
Happy Trails, John Lewis, after a life well lived.
May we all find the courage inside ourselves to do the right thing, which might be to look at our own attitudes and behaviors and change them to make us better people so we can make the world a better place.
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
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