Let me start this article
by some “up fronts.” Since this article is about a political figure it is therefore a political article. I am not a Hillary
Clinton supporter. I am pro-life, I am
opposed to homosexual marriage being made legal, I am concerned with radical
Islam. I am also pro-civil and human
rights and I believe the government has a role to play in upholding justice and the care of the poor,
the sick, and the elderly. Okay, so
these are a few things up front in case you seek to put me in a political box. I didn’t vote for either majority party
candidate for the sake of my conscience.
I will try to pray faithfully for our new
president, as I tried to do for our departing president. As I seek to honor that office and seek to refrain
from slander, gossip, or malicious talk about the President I am still
committed to speaking out as to my concerns.
This means that sometimes those comments will be negative. I am
concerned about the behavior of President-Elect Donald Trump, and therefore
concerned about our future as a country.
I am afraid our president elect is putting
himself in the position of being suspected of some shady things. This reminds me of the dilemma that Saddam
Hussein got himself into when he just wouldn’t let inspectors come back into
Iraq while the U.S. government suspected him of having weapons of mass
destruction. Many people accused George
Bush of lying and using the WMD fear as a pretext for war. I blame Saddam for creating ambiguity and
defying the United Nations which ended up in our invading his country and in his
eventual execution. This is simply an
example of creating ambiguity, and not of anything else in regard to Saddam
Hussein.
The ambiguity Mr. Trump is creating has to
do with Russia. He won’t disclose his
tax returns, he won’t be open about his dealings with Russia, and seems to be
in denial about Russia’s hacking of the DNC computers. He seems to prefer Putin to many of his
fellow Americans. So, what are we to
make of these things? He has the
opportunity to be transparent, and if he is an advocate of closer relations
with the Russian leader he really needs to be transparent, or else the suspicions
are going to linger. We certainly hope
there will not be further reason to suspect his motives due to some strange
realignment of our national interests which might just compromise the freedom
of other countries.
I remember when the arch-conservatives were
paranoid of the Soviet Union (the rest of us were somewhere between concerned
and terrified, and not that there weren’t Americans who advocated for communism). There was a book in the 1960s called, None
Dare Call it Treason, by John Stormer.
The John Birch society loved this book.
It smacked of some of McCarthy’s accusations back in the 1950’s, with
the suspicion that communists had infiltrated the State Department. The Obama administration was accused of making
room for Muslims in the government (which by the way is quite legal) and this
was seen by some as giving way to the enemy, (which in not Islam but radical
Islam). For any President to compromise our national interest or strategic
security due to his own personal interests would indeed be a step toward
treason.
The way Mr. Trump has handled things leaves
open the idea that the President Elect might be vulnerable to blackmail by the
Russian President. The fear is that if he
can be manipulated by them he could be used as a Russian stooge. Is it possible
that a Republican President, not a Democrat or a liberal one, is in fact our
worst nightmare for an unethical national compromise with an adversary that invades
other sovereign nations (Georgia and Ukraine), supports and cooperates with our
avowed opponents (Syria and Iran), attempts consistently to intimidate our
military in fly-bys, uses cyber warfare against us on a fairly regular basis,
and plays hard ball with us and our allies with the threat of nuclear weapons? Ambiguity leads to just these kinds of
questions. Admiring strong leadership is
ridiculous when it comes to strong arm dictators.
When I see conservatives, especially Evangelicals, defend Mr. Trump from even being asked legitimate
questions I am a bit chagrined. Some of
the same people who slandered Barack Obama incessantly, and insisted he wasn’t
even born in the USA, was a Muslim, a Socialist, and a liar (and all of this
before they mentioned what policies he stood for that they didn’t like) don’t
seem to realize how hypocritical they sound today. At one time character seemed to matter to these folks but evidently
not recently. What protection do any of us
have for the pursuit of policies in which we believe not being thrown overboard
by someone whose integrity we cannot trust?
What
I am left with is the impression that conservatives are saying, “if your
policies are in agreement with mine I don’t mind your lack of character.” I
think a President’s character is always an issue, as well as their policies. They both count as either one can hurt or
help us as a nation. Having endured top secret security checks during my own
military career I know that consistent loyalty to America matters when you work
for the government. Not only was loyalty an issue but so was susceptibility to
financial or moral compromise. It wasn’t taken for granted, it wasn’t simply
accepted by verbal affirmations or denials, and it had to be verified and
proven. But now, for our highest office
it is evidently to be taken simply by trust while we are given no means of
verification.
Defending Mr. Trump cannot be done simply by
attacking the policies of Barack Obama, or those that Hillary Clinton might
have advocated. He cannot be defended by simply bashing the press. This
situation has nothing to do with them, it only has to do with someone in whom
we will all have to (at least to some degree), and want, to trust. Our freedom
of the press is one thing that helps the American people to believe that we
have something on which we can rely to ask probing questions. I certainly hope we will not have another
Richard Nixon in office, nor a Richard Nixon type scandal.
The
President is someone we all will need to act wisely and faithfully in America’s
interest and not his own. Mr. Trump is,
at this point, leaving us with lots of questions that come from an ambiguity
which he has created, that leads to fear, and will create not only continued disunity
but increasing cynicism. Again, this has
nothing to do with his political opponents, nor about changing the election. It only has to do with him and the leadership
that he is not giving at the moment. I
hope you will join me in praying for him, and our collective future. My hope for that however lies with the God in
whom I do trust.
END
