{"id":6904,"date":"2017-07-29T12:15:22","date_gmt":"2017-07-29T16:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/?p=6904"},"modified":"2017-07-29T12:20:24","modified_gmt":"2017-07-29T16:20:24","slug":"this-is-not-us-not-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/2017\/07\/this-is-not-us-not-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"This is NOT us. NOT the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"President<\/a>(screenshot<\/a> from video of speech)<\/p>\n

This is not us.\u00a0 This is not the U.S.<\/p>\n

In a speech to a group of police officers on Long Island on Friday (photo above), the president of the United States said it was ok for police to rough-up<\/a> suspects.\u00a0 “Please don’t be too nice,” he said as he urged police to throw suspects roughly into the back of the paddy wagon and to stop protecting the heads of suspects getting into police cars.\u00a0 Police<\/a> departments from Suffolk County to those across the nation and even around the world have responded<\/a> quickly and firmly:\u00a0 police do NOT rough-up suspects; police receive training in handling suspects and treating the accused with respect and care is a fundamental expectation of civil and human rights.<\/p>\n

This is not us.\u00a0 This is not the U.S.<\/em><\/p>\n

In that same Long Island speech, the president of the United States repeated an ugly, vicious trope he used earlier in the week in a campaign-style speech in Youngstown, Ohio, in which he ranted that undocumented immigrants are “animals.”\u00a0 <\/a>The president’s unhinged rhetoric would be shocking but for the fact that we seem to be growing numb to the utterly inhumane, degrading, truly appalling words that come out of the White House with increasing frequency.\u00a0 And these statements did not even make headlines because of so many other chaotic distractions emanating from the most powerful man in the free world.<\/p>\n

This is not us.\u00a0 This is not the U.S.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Boy<\/a>(Boy Scout Jamboree photo credit<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The night before the Youngstown speech, the president of the United States gave a speech<\/a> to the annual Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia.\u00a0 Before tens of thousands of boys and troop leaders, the president gave a stunningly inappropriate performance, telling a crude story about a rich guy and a yacht, trashing his predecessor, using language that had no place in that setting.\u00a0 The speech was so bad that the CEO of the Boy Scouts had to apologize<\/a> for what the president said.<\/p>\n

This is not us.\u00a0 This is not the U.S.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometime during the week, early on a morning — it’s hard to remember which day, there’s so much utter dreck — the president of the United States once again took to Twitter to make a shockingly inappropriate statement, this time proclaiming that transgender individuals <\/a>may no longer serve our country.\u00a0 Whatever political or moral views a person may have of the very complex issues surrounding sexual identity, the president’s tweets violated some very fundamental rules.\u00a0 First, the Commander in Chief cannot give orders by tweet, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff <\/a>made clear.\u00a0 Second, persons who have devoted their lives in service to our country deserve respect and honor, not trashing and dismissal.\u00a0 Third, the president’s motivation was a “snap decision”<\/a> rooted in political desire to secure funding for the border wall — he was trying to win conservative votes for the military budget bill that includes the wall.\u00a0 But his intemperate early morning tweet took the Pentagon and his party by complete surprise, touched off a firestorm and generated remarkable pushback.<\/p>\n

This is not us.\u00a0 This is not the U.S.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Even as the president of the United States was ranting about animals and the sex lives of moguls and trashing his attorney general, among many other distractions last week, his brand new chief of White House communications aka “the Mooch” gave a completely unprintable interview to the New Yorker<\/a> in which, among many mind-bendingly awful things, he threatened to fire and even kill every single person reporting to him.\u00a0 Profanity aside, every employer and labor advocate in the country had to find the statements appalling — the simple words “hostile work environment” came to mind immediately.<\/p>\n

This is not us.\u00a0 This is not the U.S.<\/em><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the Affordable Care Act that provides health insurance for millions of Americans survived one of the most bizarre, unconscionable and utterly corrupt displays of manipulation of legislative processes anyone has ever seen.\u00a0 Ultimately, the Senate Majority Leader’s cynical and debased methodology for trying to repeal the ACA failed thanks to two very brave women — Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — and the final act of a true American heron Senator John McCain.\u00a0 But none of that drama should have happened.\u00a0 The utter disrespect for the rule of law perpetrated by the very people responsible to uphold the law revealed a level of political treachery and corruption that threatens to wreck not only our government but our way of life as a free people.<\/p>\n

This is not us.\u00a0 This is NOT THE U.S.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I could go on.\u00a0 The current situation is unsustainable.\u00a0 Regardless of political party or voting preference, every single American has to be alarmed and preparing to take whatever action is necessary to restore a sense of balance, common sense, fairness and fundamental respect for humanity and respectful processes to our national political leadership and system of federal governance.\u00a0 We must demand an end to the racism, attacks on immigrants, homophobia, wanton rejection of concern for the poor and displaced, self-dealing and corrupt abuses of power.<\/p>\n

The list above is just skimming events of the last week.\u00a0 The actual list of abuses of power and attacks on human beings is much, much longer.\u00a0 Every day, it seems, the president and his staff find a new way to insult and attack another whole group of people.\u00a0 It’s a weird way of governing, to attack the very people whose interests your oath of office says you must protect.\u00a0 Their language is crude, demeaning, threatening, an affront to human dignity.\u00a0 A president and administration that pretends to embrace conservative religious values reveals a profound amorality on the most fundamental moral values of respect for human life across the lifespan.<\/p>\n

This IS us:<\/p>\n

\"Placard<\/a>(Women’s March January 2017)<\/p>\n

Americans cannot continue to remain silent for much longer.\u00a0 What’s at stake is not just the still-vague threat of some Russian takeover, alarming though that seems.\u00a0 What’s at stake is not just the way our country will respond to the real threat that North Korea is posing.\u00a0 What’s at stake is not just the way we address the ongoing and likely chronic presence of terrorism and crime in human society, it’s a problem we must deal with all the time, and we must deal with it firmly, sanely and without sacrificing all of our other values.<\/p>\n

But what’s really at stake is who we are as a people — what’s a stake right now our OUR values, OUR sense of morality and humane treatment of others.\u00a0 What’s at stake is not a threat from without but a rot from within, the creeping concession to the corrupt rhetoric and scare tactics of an amoral regime that seems to have no grounding whatsoever in any fundamental principles of governance in a free society.<\/p>\n

What’s at stake is the entire premise of “We, the People” coming together to “form a more perfect union.”\u00a0 What’s at stake is justice for all, the blessings of liberty, and the life our children and their children will enjoy in the future.<\/p>\n

We, the People — we must take up our inherent power and confront the sickness that is making all of us exhausted.<\/p>\n

This IS us.\u00a0 This IS the U.S.\u00a0 We must reclaim our national soul.<\/p>\n

\"Placard<\/a>(poster from Women’s March January 2017)<\/p>\n

Let Freedom Ring!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enough is enough. The last week should be a call to action for all Americans regardless of political party. We are in trouble as a nation and We, the People need to step up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[787,20,23,24],"tags":[1754,1282,1840,1681,1284,1763,1842,1734,1843,1841,1844],"class_list":["post-6904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-issues","category-politics","category-social-issues","category-social-justice-issues","tag-aca","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-boy-scouts","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-healthcare-reform","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-mooch","tag-president-trump","tag-scaramucci","tag-suffolk-police","tag-the-new-yorker"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}