To the Editor:
Lately, you increasingly resort to your “Truth,” a particularly narrow spiritual sensibility, as a bastion against challenges to your political views. If it is meaningful to you and helps you to be the best human you can be, who am I to dispute it? But your “Truth” is rooted in a reverence for coercive authority and obedience to your personally refined religious beliefs, and your editorials seem to have become emotional bulwarks until your guardian angel comes to retrieve you. I must decline your invitation to respond to your “Truth,” as I have no interest in disturbing your eternity strategy. I will just have to stumble along as best I can. Anyway, I signed on to talk politics.
Parenthetically, I am at a loss about some of your military references. I know of no facts to support Generals Patton or Grant as having “failed in similar ways” to Donald Trump. Faults, yes, but neither is known for using his position for personal aggrandizement, pedophile protection, or attacks on our Constitution.
Last Tuesday from the podium of the UN General Assembly, Trump mused whether to, “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly…Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” thereby killing 92 million men, women, and children in Iran. The only possible way to accomplish that criminal threat of a “quickly” effected genocide would be a nuclear weapon. The Assembly sat in stunned silence, aware that this threat has had multiple predecessors.
A day later, Trump rejected Iran’s proposed peace settlement based on July’s Islamabad MOU that he signed in Versailles. In a jaw-dropping defense of his decision, he said, “They want to make a deal where they open the Strait immediately…We have total control of the Hormuz Strait.” Commentators of all stripes ridiculed the statement. “Trump demands sole credit for opening the Strait!” “Since Trump has total control, why is he letting so little oil through the Strait?” and, “Dr. Seuss diplomacy.”
It is clear by now that Trump finds the idea that he has power over life and death exhilarating. Far from giving him trepidations, the thought appears to invigorate him. The material losses he would personally suffer in a cataclysm are likely to keep his euphoria in check, until he gets a sufficiently large audience for his Jabroni act and can’t resist exposing himself. He only shows deference to people who are wealthier, have more gold accoutrements, or those of whom he is afraid. To wit,
Trump welcomed China’s President Xi, with a pageant of spectacular flourish, similar to his treatment of other despots: Putin (in AK), MBS (“the Saudi Butcher” with whom Trump Org. has made recent financial deals), and even Kim Jong Un of NKorea (for whose concerns he reduced joint military exercises with our ally SKorea). All of whom represent unrestrained government power. “He [Xi] looks strong, vibrant, and fit – Better than ever!” Trump reported. “A “truly great friend.” The compliments went unreturned.
Throughout, Xi looked generally indifferent until the glittering WH dinner, awash in billionaire MAGA entrepreneurs, (who ultimately don’t care which country is dominant) when Xi again warned Trump against, “The Thucydides trap”, referring to the idea that unchecked tensions between a rising power (China) and an established one (USA) can spiral into war. It was an insult, warning America to not challenge the inevitable succession, and Trump moved on without comment.
Trump then giddily showed Xi the “Fuhrerbunker” being built beneath the future gold-leafed monument to monarchy in The People’s House. But the night’s greatest embarrassment was the sight of our president gaudily appeasing a despotic leader he previously accused of “ripping us off” in trade, killing religious dissidents, and blamed for helping steal the 2020 election from him. Even Trump whisperer Laura Loomer was horrified. No resolutions emerged from the visit.
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca