The Mental Illness of the "Trump Phenomenon"

     The recent comments by Republican presidential nomination front-runner Donald Trump about Muslims in New Jersey celebrating when the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001, were as per usual for Mr. Trump, a grain of truth converted to an entire beach by exaggeration. This recent comment is exemplary of the unworthiness of Mr. Trump for the presidency. Not because it was completely false, but because it was not entirely true. This exaggerated truth for political expediency is not part of the conservatism that I practice.
     I have been displeased at the ease with which many Trump supporters who call themselves conservative accept the advance of half-truths and fact-manipulations that are a hallmark of the Left. Lately it seems that politics have been defined by Republicans deliberately exaggerating the truth for the purpose of advancing a false narrative, as Democrats exaggerate lies for the purpose of advancing a false narrative. While the former is invested in the truth more than the latter, both are engaged in deception.
    But back to Donald Trump. I fail to understand, for instance, how Evangelicals can support a man who has build an empire based in large part on gambling. It seems that faith, and the principles that comprise it, have been subjugated to the political elixir known as Donald Trump. And even those conservatives who are not religious have sold their political souls to an idea and a man who makes them "feel good," but that does not pay tribute to what actually "does good."
     So the fact that Donald Trump makes outrageous statements about Muslims in America celebrating the attacks of 911, and the glee with which his devotees soak up his gravy of inaccuracy, is worrisome, not only for the Republican Party and conservative movement, but for the nation as a whole. For if even conservatives abandon conservatism, there is little hope for this great nation.
     Additionally, I seem to remember a recent mosque collapse that killed over a hundred worshipping Muslims that brought cheers from some on the extreme Right. But Mr. Trump would never mention that because it is more politically advantageous to convince his emotional votaries that thousands of Muslims in this country, and by extension therefore all Muslims in this country, celebrated the tragic events of 911, than it is to engage in a rigorous pursuit of accuracy and truth.  

Now Aint the Time For Our Tears

     The terrorist attacks in Paris, France last Friday perpetrated by ISIS have elicited an outpouring of emotion in the form of sympathy from around the civilized world. They have also generated words of promised retribution from the French president, and babbling nonsense from our own here in this country. Radical Islam, and the terrorism upon which it thrives, precedes President Obama, as well as most U.S. administrations of the last 50 years. However, no United States president has done more to encourage radical Islam with his policy of inaction at a time when the terrorists are most active, than Barack Obama.
      As for our part; the innocent peoples of the world who are the target of such despicable aggression and barbarism, we have not cared enough to push our leaders in the direction of ridding the world of the cancer known as radical Islam. It puts me in mind of a line from an old Bob Dylan song in which the legendary song-writer sings, "Take the rag away from your face, now aint the time for your tears."
     With over a hundred innocent persons dead in Paris, and many hundreds of thousands more dead in recent years at the hands of the collective evil heart known as radical Islam, now is certainly not the time for our tears. As I look at pictures of the memorials in France, with their flowers and stuff animals, my reasoned mind must overcome my emotional heart in realizing that they mean nothing to ridding the world of the evil which prompted them.
     As for our president who seems intent on  staying the course of his drifting foreign policy, where engagement in real solutions is never approached, he has only encouraged and made possible more attacks like the ones in Paris. Barack Obama seems content to just serve out his time without engaging the most severe enemy of civilization since Nazi Germany. His inability, or unwillingness, to use the greatest force for good history has ever seen, i.e. the United States military, to coalesce other forces in the region and defeat this dastardly enemy, is tantamount to a charge of aid and comfort to the enemy.
     I do not make the charge of aid and comfort to the enemy against President Obama in any sense of invoking some constitutional punishment to be visited upon him before the end of his term. I proffer it in the greater sense of the moral wrong in which he has engaged by his drifting to avoid real conflict. When leaders fail, it is incumbent upon those being lead to take the reins of leadership by vociferous demands for confrontation of the evil which afflicts them, not by burying their faces in a flood of tears. We must take the rag away from our faces, because this is no time for our tears.