BETRAYED

Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan running for President promised to cut federal spending and reduce federal interference in society. I personally heard Reagan at the South Carolina capitol promise to send people to scrutinise and eliminate federal waste and to appoint conservatives to office.


Nixon and Reagan lied. All they did was to pretend to support the issues that George Wallace had brought to national attention.

Understanding the short-sighted nature of the Republican party in Congress and the Supreme Court, I never expected anything else and suffered little disappointment.

With Trump it was different. Here was a man not a politician who seemed to speak out to the forgotten and powerless people. He was not afraid to stand on matters that the Democrats were too fanatical and the Republicans too cowardly to even mention. His character issues seemed unimportant given his eloquent courage.

His first term was underwhelming but we knew that confronting the federal beast and the Republican leadership was a hard battle.

He apparently did something on the immigration issue, but not nearly enough, and he seems to have backed away from that. Cut spending? Remember the “Big Beautiful Bill”? Reduce federal interference? Prosecuting “antisemitic” freedom of speech at universities?

What we all most hoped for was relief from a series of illegal, counterproductive, damaging wars.

Then we had the silliness about Greenland. We already had Greenland in our defense establishment. Why antagonise a peaceful and friendly European country? And then sheer colonialist force being applied to Venezuela. Was there not some quieter way to handle that?

The unprovoked and criminal attack on Iran destroyed Trump for good. It was not only bad it was stupid---a total miscalculation of the defense capacity of the large and historic Persian Empire, based on the false claims made by another government. He has deceitfully announced negotiations when he had nothing to discuss except complete surrender. He has contradicted himself continuously in his statements. He has very possibly left an unsolvable situation in which Israel will resort to nuclear war we have not seen since 1945. Will he be willing and able to prevent that?

The attack has damaged the world economy with possibly catastrophic results. Trump has so damaged American prestige that new power alignments are likely to emerge. He has guaranteed that he will go down in history as an awful President furthering the decline of his country.

Worst of all, he may have guaranteed that the increasingly authoritarian Democratic party will resume control. Without Trump the Republican leaders will run for cover and spout pablum as they always do.


No, I was wrong.  Even worse, Trump has  discarded  giving any help to the  chance for a real America to come home and work for spiritual renewal.