The Child in the White House
I was born on October 21, 1929.
Eight days later, on October 29, this country experienced the greatest Wall Street stock market crash in history, Black Friday. So I have lived through:
the Great Depression,
World War II,
the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
the Korean War,
the Cuban missile crisis of 1962,
the Cold War (when we were digging blast shelters in our back yards!),
the Berlin crisis,
the Gulf War,
the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal building,
the Iraq war,
the 9/11 Twin Towers attack,
the Watts riots,
the O J Simpson trial,
the crash and panic of 2008,
and the Afghanistan war.
But I have never been so worried about the future of my country as I am today.
Why? Because in every one of those dangerous and threatening times, I knew that we had serious, stable, and experienced people in the government who could thoughtfully address the imminent problems and make intelligent and rational decisions on how to address them. During every one of those times we had a man in the White House, whom I may or not have voted for, but who was mature and intelligent enough to gather informed advisors around himself.
And more importantly — to listen to them.
Today we have in the White House a 6-year-old who obviously listens to no one. He is boorish, belligerent, bombastic, antagonistic, pugilistic, narcissistic, demagogic, and misogynistic. (I hope I haven’t left anything out.) He obviously has little knowledge about history and world affairs, and he clearly has no inclination to learn about them. He lies without compunction, makes promises that we (and he) know he can’t keep, compares himself superior to such U.S. presidents as Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Truman, demands loyalty from all his underlings but refuses to return it, and has the unmitigated gall to be considering the possibility of pardoning himself — when certain inconvenient truths about his personal and business machinations are eventually uncovered.
And here is a 6-year-old in North Korea whose finger rests on a nuclear button facing another 6-year-old who has his finger on a nuclear button (that is much bigger). Will we one day watch the world disappear in a nuclear holocaust and those few of us who are still around hear our 6-year-old say, “Well he started it.”?
I am desperately waiting for just a few of our senators — on both sides — to become as worried as I am and for them to have the courage and patriotism to decide that enough is enough and that it’s time to think American instead of party or re-election.
In the meantime, I’m worried as hell.
