NEW YORK CITY – SEPTEMBER 3 2015: Republican candidate for president Donald Trump. iStock photo.
Ours is not just a nation of republicans and democrats, of red and blue states, or of conservatives and liberals. Ours is a bastion of freedom for all of the people. Also of self-government and justice for all — a country in which those that call this place home can say it’s theirs. Ours, too, is a democratic experiment founded on the principle that government is instituted by us, we the people, to help us secure our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Our nation, however, is being thrust into an unknown abyss by the trials and tribulations brought forth by a man that has broken most rules of civility and continues to speak to a political base brimming with the ignorant and the misinformed. To win the election, he tricked middle of the road, disheartened voters into believing in him, asserting that he would drain the swamp in the nation’s capital. He followed his circus barker act with raw words that negatively touched and inflamed the inner fears of a lot of Americans.
But his cataclysmic show was not performed alone; the gone-berserk, “if it bleeds, it leads” media helped him. They gave him TV coverage, newsprint inches, and bytes and bits. They unabashedly devoted resources and time covering the uncultured, vulgar, and hatred-filled rhetoric spewed by candidate Donald Trump. The media, in its quest to grab eyes and ears for their outlets, made it easier for him to enlarge his base, tapping into the undecided and those tired of politics-as-usual.
Now that he’s won, most media joints have reversed course, tracking and smelling the drops of blood from an administration saddled with one scandal after another and led by a man incapable of acting the part. We, Americans, did it, though; we put him there. So we must now live with him, unless he breaks the law and Congress has the guts to impeach him.
Judging by the colossal stature previously projected by some of America’s most prominent presidents, the current leader of our nation is off the chart. On the minus side. During his recent trips abroad he has drawn a mini shadow, a meaningless dot on the world stage, a caricature of the way it was. He has confirmed to our now ambivalent allies that America is being led by a buffoon, a visionless, unprepared, childish, and spoiled brat. Of course, he’s more than that: he’s also a modern tale of trickery and deceit, a “Trump in Boots,” a snake oil salesman who’s gone too far with his lies, his cure-all potions, and his pettiness.
But some folks are still sticking by him, mainly his uneducated base and some Grand Old Party timid souls supposedly representing all of the people in Congress. Most of those political animals, by the way, have also grown a diminished shadow on their own stages as they try to cover up for their party leader or pretend that nothing is wrong at our nation’s floundering executive hall. The GOP has lost its soul.
We, the people, though, will right the ship. We will do it together without regard to political leanings or openness of minds. And just as in the past, America will survive and go forth, pained, but stronger.
Soon after we correct our calamitous detour from what is right, we will regain our stature and our leadership status in the world, a place that many nations in the planet have for a long time expected from us. We will survive; it is our promise. As a nation and as people bound by the principles that we inherited from our founding fathers.
AUTHOR: Pedro Chávez