By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
In fairness, no one could have seen it coming.
No reasons to predict that appointing, to oversee Earth’s most powerful military, an alcohol-abusing, inexperienced, unqualified, sexually profligate (allegedly), threateningly tattooed, weekend talk-show host on a network known for its troubled relationship with truth would be problematic.
After all, America put into even higher office a convicted felon, sexual predator and bankrupted businessman who got there by lying, cheating, threatening and/or suing everyone in his way. Who, as promised, ended the war in Ukraine on day one and cured inflation.
No clues. No warnings for 50 members of a party once self-reported as partial to law and order and meritocracy to have voted against confirmation in hopes of being presented with someone only half-terrible. Plus, there’s the matter of consistency; the same slack-back body approved someone to run America’s most powerful law-enforcement agency who’d shown fawning deference to that failed businessman by refusing to prosecute him for one of his many life-destroying scams. And accepted donations in return.
Nor did they have the self-respect to refuse to put in charge of America’s health a brain-bitten, conspiracy-believing, steroid-pumping man with no background in health care other than promoting vaccine choices that led to dozens of deaths in Samoa, who couldn’t differentiate a credible scientific study from the morning line on a horse race.
Same with a director of the FBI who conspiratorially disparaged the agency, believing fantasies, who spends more time away from the office than in it, posing for pictures. And yet another picture-poser, playing pistol-packin’ dress-up, in charge of Homeland Security, who had her purse containing $3,000, her passport, driver’s license, and DHS ID badge stolen from under her nose. Plus another TV star and pusher of quackery in charge of administering Medicare and Medicaid. All approved with obsequious rapidity by “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose mother’s relationship to my surgical practice HIPAA prefers I don’t detail (nor shall I discuss my surgical relationship with former Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s family), bravely – and why should it require bravery? – voted against some, but not all, of those incompetents. She has since stated the obvious: that colleagues in her party are afraid of Trump; too concerned about primaries and power, future and fortune, to consider their duty to country. Which is exactly how Trump wants them. Exactly how dictators bulldoze and bully bodies theoretically empowered to hold them in check.
But, hey, if good people are being fired from the Pentagon, at least military cadets will no longer be reading Maya Angelou in their libraries, or around 800 other books containing scary words and liberal ideas ripped straight from the Sermon on the Mount. It’s unclear if the words of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded operations in Afghanistan under Trump, are available in military academies, but, speaking of congressional cowardice, they’re worth hearing:
“When our leaders abandon character … it tells people that principles are optional, that decency is weakness, that rules are for fools. It fosters a culture of fear, where hesitation replaces confidence, cynicism replaces trust, and self-preservation replaces the courage to stand for what is right. When those at the top abandon the standards that hold society together, the rest of us, knowingly or not, follow suit. And when enough people do, the foundation doesn’t just erode. It crumbles. We cannot afford to let this stand.”
The general’s words describe exactly where we are. They apply not only to Republicans in power but to every remaining supporter of Trump. The sort that considers Maryland Sen. Chris van Hollen a traitor for calling attention to the dangers of abandoning the rule of law, even for criminals or alleged criminals. The sort who no longer have the ability to tell right from wrong, truth from fiction; who, by following suit, are actively hacking at the foundations of society. Knowingly or not.
Seeing SecDef Hegseth’s disastrous mismanagement and its deleterious effects in the Pentagon, one might wonder if any of the senators who voted for him have come to regret it. The question answers itself; of course not. Had they the inborn ability and insight to rethink decisions, to hold themselves accountable for their mistakes, they’d not have voted for him in the first place. Every day, they reveal themselves to be the opposite.
So, as others have said, a clown was placed in office and the circus came to town. Talk show hosts talking trash. Lib-stickers in lipstick. An “economist” who quotes himself in made-up names. An Education secretary into the A1 sauce. A “border czar” who brags about flouting the law. There’s no one to blame but everyone who put them there.
Finally: Pope Francis was a good, kind man whose life, unlike that of the fake Christians surrounding the fakest of them all, fully embodied the teachings of Jesus. And, therefore, not a MAGA favorite.
He’ll live on in the acts of goodness he performed and in the hearts of those who cherish his memory.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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