Mr. Nathanson’s Letter to the Editor deserves a thoughtful response regarding his praise for our current president’s achievements and more.
While we are all pleased with a successful outcome in various endeavors, I’d urge him to present the whole story.
First, an expanding economy has been in place for at least the past four or more years, starting under Obama, who gets the credit in the history books for taking us out of the Great Recession he inherited from the Bush Administration and saving the auto industry as well.
Second, keeping the recovery going with fairly comparable figures overall and pleasing Wall Street with deregulation is a fine but fairly predictable result.
However, the recent tax break for corporations at a time of near full employment has already been acknowledged by most as primarily a device to buy back stock and raise dividends with only crumbs going to the average taxpayer (and slated to expire shortly).
Third, the process of destroying ISIS was also begun under Obama and accelerated under Trump.
However, I would caution anyone to expect to see more terrorist networks replacing ISIS now that we have a president more interested in the ‘art of the deal’ than leading a coalition of advanced nations to deal with the root causes of poverty and hopeless that feed into this narrative.
Fourth, regarding our moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Mr. Trump’s blatant pandering to the right here and in Israel puts that remarkable country even more squarely on the path to a one-state solution that will inevitably require a form of apartheid (or let’s say ‘two-tiered citizenship’, to put it more delicately) in order to suppress the inevitable non-Jewish voting majority.
Fifth, as for the Korean peninsula, let’s all hope that a solution can be found to tamp down the constant threat of nuclear blackmail. It may well be that two unpredictable and erratic leaders have finally scared each other into at least meeting, but let’s not uncork the champagne quite yet.
However, I don’t think the Joint Chiefs of Staff are anxious to have a repeat performance of such casual brinksmanship.
Frankly, only a draft dodger who knows nothing about the human costs of war would indulge in this and certainly not the men and women who serve, including war heroes who were captured!
But these are minor points compared with the core issues that have already caused scholars left, right and center to place Mr. Trump dead last at No. 44 in the rankings as to Presidential Greatness.
A great president doesn’t lead by race-baiting and impugning the integrity of every individual and institution of government that differs with him or dares to question his fleeting relationship with the facts.
Great presidents don’t deliver a hugely depressing inaugural address about ‘this American carnage,’ another figment of an alt-right imagination.
In the depths of the Great Depression, a real, not invented time of great anxiety, FDR lifted up a nation by telling us we could get through this together and had ‘nothing to fear but fear itself!’.
Unfortunately, fear mongering and dividing is what Donald Trump is all about as were prior demagogues like Joseph McCarthy who also feasted on American anxiety over 60 years ago in an era of great change. (Interestingly, McCarthy and Trump shared the same mentor in attorney Roy Cohn, another expert on taking ‘the low road’.)
Nor is Mr. Trump interested in the slightest in addressing our problems, other than promising to bring back coal…or build that wall to keep our all those rapists …or bring back jobs that aren’t returning anytime soon in a global economy that’s here to stay.
Attacking established norms and institutions and trashing the fundamentals of the Constitution that is the underpinning for our system of government is for Donald Trump simply a game to stroke his damaged ego, which can never be satiated.
However, the consequences here at home and abroad are already significant, as we are increasingly marginalized on the world stage by his erratic behavior.
Since the dawn of the 20th Century and more specifically, since World War ll, we have led the world with our moral authority and robust democracy that guarantees the fundamentals of human dignity to all citizens.
No amount of arms or bluster can ever replace the use of ‘soft power’, afforded by those assets.
Let’s not forget that we have also been a beacon of hope to those living without these blessings.. under the types of authoritarian regimes that Trump seems to worship in his alternative universe.
Finally, Trump’s transactional approach in bludgeoning friend and foe alike simply to win (whatever that means to this damaged soul) is a prescription for losing our leadership role in a world that requires multilateral solutions to thorny problems, including climate change, China’s growing dominance in the Pacific Rim and maintaining a non-nuclear Iran – all issues handled quite adeptly by Obama, according to most experts on the various subjects. (And if a broken Congress cares to make improvements to these agreements, or for that matter, to the Affordable Care Act so much the better!)
In short, Donald Trump is not making America great again.
He is more interested in dumbing down America and shredding our vaunted institutions that are the envy of the world so that, amidst this carnage, he can again tell us that he alone can fix our problems.
I would suggest that anyone praising Mr. Trump and his many accomplishments take a moment to read a history book or two or three.
This script has been written before and it doesn’t end well unless our Congress decides to join a robust press and start playing its appointed role under Article l of the Constitution… or the people finally speak up in November. Let’s hope so!
Ken Grossman
Great Neck
