I am saddened to see what is going on in Portland as I sip my coffee. Since I originally commented on this several days ago the stand-off has gotten more contentious.
I am frustrated that almost every issue the Trump administration touches becomes an opportunity to divide, not an opportunity to grow and solve. If your character is to polarize every issue, dialog and solutions will become very, very elusive, if not impossible.
The examples are everywhere. Facial covering during the pandemic is a prime example. Every country that has gotten a handle on the virus has done so with cooperation between the government and the citizens by following simple guidelines promulgated by the medical experts. They haven't created a confrontation between personal rights and health guidelines. Yet, our fearless leader chose to make masks a personal rights issue and shamelessly politicized the problem with the result that over 140,000 citizens have died while the numbers continue to climb. A simple decree from the government like every other country would have addressed the issue. A constructive sit-down between Washington and the governors of the hot spot states would have been even better.
The demonstrations coming out of the killing of George Floyd were met with a bellicose and confrontational response which could have been totally or at least largely avoided with some compassionate and enlightened leadership - two words not in Cheeto's vocabulary. Instead, he again chose to politicize the issue into an anarchist conspiracy to destroy the U.S. cities. He had a perfect opportunity to acknowledge problems of racial injustice and a commitment to address them. What we have now is a totally unnecessary and dangerous stand-off in Portland where the problem has been grossly mis-characterized by the administration. The scary notion is the threat to extend this federal mismanagement to other cities like Chicago and Philadelphia. As the governor of Oregon said, their goal was to defuse the situation not inflame it as is being done today. Where does the government overreach end? Will Cheeto 'send in the troops' every time he disagrees with a governor or mayor and gets another hair up his ass?
I could go on and on about other issues that have been unnecessarily politicized, but I am whistling in the graveyard. The only solution is to purge the government of this moron and his cronies and put some sanity into the equation. Hopefully, he and Vlad won't have destroyed everything by then.
I'm make another pot of coffee while I shed a tear for our country.