Kiss

It has been 2 years since the Presidential election. Let’s together examine how “great” our country has since become.

As the “greatest” country in the world, we now fear a caravan of largely women and children seeking refuge from Central American poverty and crime. We now need two armed soldiers at our borders for each unarmed refugee (including each child), to protect us from this “existential threat.”

The threat apparently arises because the refugees come from (Trump’s words) “s***hole countries” (aka brown or black people) instead of “great countries like Norway” (aka white people).

And our soldiers have been told to consider shooting anyone who throws a rock. Even a child. That would be an internationally-recognized War Crime. How great is that?

Wonder why we are hearing about Middle Eastern terrorists and Central American gangsters in this caravan, when even a Fox News has confirmed that there is zero evidence of either.

Hermann Goehring explained it: “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacificists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

(Goehring founded the Gestapo and headed the Luftwaffe during the Nazi reign in Germany.)

So now you know why this administration tells us about a supposed caravan of terrorists and gangs and how the caravan is a Democratic Party plot to endanger our country.

Our economy, we’re told, is booming –– but less than under our prior president. In the last 20 months of that earlier administration, more jobs were added than in the first 21 months of this administration.

And while the economy has benefited the rich, it has done little to help the poor and the struggling.

Our Congressional district had about half its people living at or near the poverty level just before the 2016 election. It still has about half its people living at or near the poverty level.

But don’t worry; this administration has plans to change that by making that situation worse. It wants to rob our Social Security accounts to pay for the huge tax breaks it gave to the corporations and super-rich.

And Greg Walden has written a bill to allow those with pre-existing conditions to have their premiums increased prohibitively, thereby making 20 percent more of his constituents lose their health insurance. Because that’s what a Congressional majority and an administration do when they care more about the corporations and super rich that fund their campaigns than about real people like us.

How could all this happen to the greatest country in the world in just two years? Well, when the world leaders our leader most admires are tyrants who freely imprison and execute the citizens who oppose them, as is commonplace in Russia, North Korea and the Philippines, anything is possible.

(Note how some of this administration’s supporters already feel justified in executing the minorities targeted by, and the political enemies of, this administration. And please, don’t claim surprise and shock that presidential hate speech leads to violence.)

When many of those who admire this administration refuse to even speak out against it when it separates immigrant families and imprisons children and infants, we may have a long way to go.

When will this all end? When the master manipulator, our Betrayer-in-Chief, can no longer manipulate enough of us to believe and fear whatever lies he utters (and stop being the gullible sheep we sometimes are).

As Jesus would tell you, “Time to wake up, folks. Manipulated fear and hate are never answers.”

Carl Kiss is a semi-retired attorney who lives in Enterprise.