Today, Senate Republicans released their draft of Trumpcare. You remember, the one they were going to rewrite from scratch? It’s like the kids who did their homework on the bus into school. Republicans changed a couple of words from the House version, cut even more money from the poor and destitute, and called it a day.
I’m too old to bother repeating that the Republican party are open hypocrites. I’ve already described enough of that in detail, and it’s boring to catalog each new lie. Read any of the main media and you’ll get more than you want of that part. Here, I’m mostly writing about our President, Donald Trump.
Do you remember candidate Trump’s promises that Trumpcare would be better, cheaper, more comprehensive, and in your favorite flavor? He insisted he would never betray the weak and helpless. Whatever the other Republicans did — remember: he admitted they wanted to cut too much money — his vision of Trumpcare would be better and kinder and more inclusive than the ACA by every measure. Nobody would do without. He repeated those promises over and over, as a candidate, then again as President. Unlike his usual mumbling, he was specific: he’d never cut Medicare or Medicaid. Never!
Again, who here is surprised that Trump doesn’t even bother to remember whatever he promised on his mother’s grave yesterday? Any hands?
Trump is not, in the southern sense, a gentleman. Maybe that sounds weak, but it matters. Saying he’s a liar isn’t close: he’s a fabulist, compulsively spreading lies so painfully obvious it would make a three-year-old wince. He’s a coward, pushing his minions at anyone who doesn’t adore him, then throwing his own people under the bus if there was any chance the four-eyed librarian dweeb they’d been pounding might still hurt his tiny little feelings. (Which he doesn’t have.) And, faced with any criticism, he doubles down, bellowing louder at the White House TVs like a horse-faced moron.
What a douche-bag.
Trump is a public servant. The President is expected to act independently and quickly, so we depend on his honesty and honor. Every prior President knew that and honored the concepts in public, even the ones who disdained either concept in private.
Instead of a position of trust, Trump seems to believe he’s been elected the Sun King, demigod of superlatives. I doubt he even knows how this system is supposed to work, and if he did, he’d spit on the idea of public service. “I’m the President, not some goddamn bureaucrat!”
But he’s taking our money to do our business. I’d never take that noise from anyone else I was paying. I’d expect better from my plumber or my mail-person (and, I should mention, both of them are nicer than Trump, and… you know, not liars). If someone in my employ started down that path, I’d council them first, then warn them, and eventually fire them. And if I found someone taking money from the company till, they’d be gone in a heartbeat.
Honor is important. But it’s been a decades-long strategy to paint all politicians as equally venial, so that people stop giving quite as much weight to your own lies. So pay attention to who — exactly — claims ‘everyone lies’. You’ll have a better idea who might really be honorable.
And who has no honor.
