Opinion: Other voices: Carl Kiss
Published 4:30 pm Monday, December 30, 2019
With every New Year come resolutions. Because we can always do better. Consider Maya Angelou’s observation on how we should not allow our all-too-human nature to fail us: “When someone shows who they are, believe them the first time.” So, after almost 3 years in office, who do we now know our President to be?
World’s greatest negotiator? The new NAFTA favors unions and other Democratic priorities so much that Democrats celebrate its content, while Republicans promise changes. The total dollars paid by Mexico to build his still-unbuilt wall? Zero.
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Brilliant mind? His resigned Cabinet members label him as dangerously impulsive and ill-informed. A recent Federal Reserve study concludes his tariffs increased our prices and cost US jobs; Forbes just noted they’ve driven up farm bankruptcies and farmer suicides. His phone call with Turkey’s leader immediately led to our announced withdrawal from Syria, allowing Turkish soldiers to start killing Kurds in Syria 3 days later. Even his staunchest Senatorial allies declared this withdrawal, and our abandonment of our most important allies against ISIS, disastrously bad.
Staying true to American ideals? The emails of his Czar on immigration policy, Andrew Miller, prove Miller is a White Supremacist. His response? Refuses to fire him. (Guess we now understand how some of those Nazis marching in Charlottesville were “very fine people”.)
Meeting his obligations? His campaign refuses to pay bills for his protection by state and local police at campaign rallies (even though every other campaign pays for it). And his claimed fundraiser to benefit veterans actually benefited his campaign, stiffing veterans.
His moral leadership? Well, according to Christianity Today, he has “abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath.” How? By trying “to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents.” Christianity Today has therefore called for the President’s removal from office, calling it “not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”
It also noted this President’s ‘dumbing down” of moral standards since his election. By hiring people to his administration who are now convicted criminals. By his ‘habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies and slanders”. As it observed, “[N]one of the President’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.”
To those Christians who continue to support the President, it pled: “Remember who you are and whom you serve.” (It might also have reminded them of an old saying: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”)
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The Mormon Women for Ethical Government have echoed this wisdom. They declare that the Senate “must resist all impulse to reduce this process to gamesmanship and theater, and instead must pursue truth by compelling testimony from the actors at the heart of this inquiry.” After all, an innocent President need not order his Cabinet to not testify under oath.
As these women correctly observed, “Effective leadership does not sacrifice truth and principle on the altar of consensus.” Nor do True Christians. Please remember who you are and whom you serve.
To our preachers: Do you preach what your audience morally needs to hear, regardless of their political beliefs and party loyalty? Please remember who you are and whom you serve.