Driving the Car Backwards, Part 1

March 21, 2017

Reflecting on the Trump Administration this past week and listening to the testimony of the FBI director, James Comey, who stands at six foot eight inches a head taller than most of Washington, DC, regarding the Russian connection to the Trump administration and Putin’s interference in the past election, apparently because Putin “hated Hillary Clinton”, for being a stronger woman than he is a man, I am still amazed and appalled that such a President as Donald Trump could ever be elected in such a great nation as ours.  He is antithetical to our American values, he has no understanding of the fundamental principles of democracy, is historically illiterate, and unable to conduct even the normal business of the Presidency.  He has no compassion for the “little guy” and except for his daughter Ivanka, who was promoted to co-advisor to the White House alongside her husband with her own executive office has surrounded himself with only white men, all of whom hark backwards to a generation long past, who as I surmise are simply engaging in “past thinking”, so much so they are in actual fact driving the car of this country backwards down the road!

Most Presidents, in fact, most people who are in leadership have a forward thinking bent to their vision for either the country or their work.  As most people realize since the future is where all life is leading, persons who live in the past, or constantly seek to recover their past dreams, while enjoying themselves increasingly, over time become more and more irrelevant to the present and become an anachronism in the future impinging upon all of us.  Our God who lives beyond time constantly is seeking to pull us forward into the future to be with Him.  However, this administration is so backward thinking and whose vision for today is so antiquated as to be increasingly irrelevant to modern life, they are rapidly losing credibility in the world leadership circles, so much so the Japanese and the Chinese have instructed their diplomats, due to President Trumps temperamental volatility and general stupidity to simply “ignore what the President says in his tweets and look for the substance of the actual policy”, as we all know what Trump says and what President Trump does often bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever.  Talk about confused and confusing.  If I did not know better, I would swear the man regularly uses cocaine so he can spend the late night tweeting out his latest exaltation of his own perceived reality, which often bears no resemblance to the actual world.  (Consider his recent statements about wiretapping by the former Obama White House, none of which are actually true and none of which he can substantiate, or so says James Coney and NSA head Mike Rogers, who say no truth exists in any of President Trump’s accusations.)  This is simply bizarre.  If the Republicans were not enjoying their position of power in two houses of Congress, this would not be tolerated.  But the pot and the kettle like their home in the fireplace and are reluctant to be moved from there.

President Trump’s proposed budget which Lindsey Graham has termed “dead in the water” on its arrival to Congress, owing to massive cuts in the State Department’s budget and what is called “soft diplomacy” also calls for virtual elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency, and a complete disavowing of the science of climate change, even after both 2015 and now 2016 have been termed the hottest years on record (due to CO2 atmospheric buildup and El Nino), and now 2017 is proceeding similarly.  Such antagonism to science and international consensus on Climate Change puts this administration at odds with everyone in the world, including the Chinese, who have recently experienced some of the worst air pollution in ages, due to the change of the winds off the interior of Asia, which normally scrubs their atmosphere, but this year hit Japan and area further north, due to Arctic Ice Melting and wind shifts due to high pressure domes shifting over the Arctic Circle.  The Chinese plan to host another Olympics soon (2022 Winter Olympic Games) and so are worried about air pollution so much so that they are reducing their reliance on coal fired power plants to reduce C02 and other fine particulate admissions in an effort to help their citizens and future athletes breathe.  One would think a man supposedly intelligent enough to be President would actually read the news from around the world, which I find on my cell phone.  Apparently the persons who brief the President are looking so far backwards they don’t even know the history of the Scopes trial which established the fact of evolution as normal science for our school children.  Why are they avoiding Climate Change acknowledgement?  Apparently, their agenda is to remove any regulations on growth so they can pollute without restrictions to fuel economic growth.  This is no different than what happened in the American plains when the prairie grasses were plowed in the 1920s and 1930s to grow wheat during a period of abundant moisture.  For a time things went well, but when the rains shifted back to the normal pattern of dryness, with no grass to hold the prairie soils a great “Dust Bowl” occurred, so whatever gains were lost and more so, with great populations shifts and people having their lungs filled with dust producing in many cases early death of the population so exposed to respiratory illnesses.  It has taken decades to restore the prairie grasses.

President Trump and his crony advisors have no more sense than to plow up the entire United States in an effort to achieve economic growth so as not to deal with world economic alliances, a view so shortsighted as to be ludicrous, and in the end will achieve but one thing, A New Dustbowl of Economic Disaster!

It is sad that persons without conscience are allowed to rape this whole country in the name of economic success, as our children and grandchildren will suffer the consequences of a country so damaged as to be unrecognizable, our air, streams and soil polluted with the aftermath of uncontrolled and non-regulated industrial expansion.  You will say, “This will not happen!”  Yet this has happened before.  If we go back to the policies which governed the 19^th century America, we will have 19^th century American results!  How many of you can find old growth forests?  How many of our streams are not polluted?  How many particulates from coal powered plants already pollute our air, water and land?  Is anyone measuring the pollutants in our waters?  If this happens under periods of regulation, what will happen when we have little to none?  Call me an alarmist if you will, but we should at least be cautious and take a lesson from our past.  Unbridled economic development carries cost to the environment, as great for us as the destruction of the rain forest in Brazil.

I was imagining in my mind what it would be like to drive down an interstate highway going backwards.  The rest of the traffic is going the opposite direction at 60 to 80 miles per hour.  But I am going in reverse, at most 20mph or 30mph at best.  What will the other drivers say about me?  First they will think I am mentally unstable, then a danger to their safety, then finally they will do whatever it takes to get me off the road, as I will be such a danger to their moving forward on the highway.  Such is this Trump administration.  They are driving in reverse down the interstate of the world, creating confusion, chaos and mayhem in their wake.  Hopefully someone who has the good sense to be the Highway Patrol in this situation will eliminate this threat to our public safety!  Will it be our tall FBI chief, James Comey?  Will it be some inquisitive reporter(s) as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who did some of the original reporting on what later was deemed Watergate, which resulted in the resignation of President Nixon?  Only God knows.  The dismantling of this administration cannot come too soon!  Those who drive backwards down the Interstate eventually crash into something or someone else crashes into them.  It is the nature of how highways work.  It is not hard to imagine or predict this future failure.

So in summary, Mr. President.  Turn your car around and go the direction in which the road is designed to work. Otherwise, sooner or later a great disaster is coming for you!  I see it all so clearly, In the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit we say, “Amen!”  “Amen!  We praise you, Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be all praise, glory, honor and blessing, both now and forevermore!  “Amen and Amen.”

The voice of one crying in this wilderness, “Make straight in the highway a way for our God, in Jesus Christ our Lord!”  “Amen!”