~a column by Colleen O’Brien
How happy can I get? This president who received so few — but just enough — votes is gagging me. He’s gagging friends and strangers. People are afraid.
Listing a few good things never hurts in the face of fear.
Hoi polloi (“the many”) — common people, not wealthy: us! — are lining the curbs and surrounding Tesla buildings to shout our dismay at how we the people are being ripped off. There is no fear in sight when protestors get together and know their place (protesting) and the definition that keeps them safe as they march – the Bill of Rights, First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”)
I believe this April 5th across-the-country resistance must frighten an ignorant leader; he has always been zeroed in on the amount of press he gets, and right now it is not good.
Many news companies no longer show his face or broadcast his unintelligible garble of words. We get more information on what he does rather than whatever it is he says. The Irish Times, however, publishes old-age behavior of our President that the American mainstream press does not . . . but did publish about President Biden — tripping up airplane steps, stumbling over words, forgetting where he is, daily out-in-the-open awkwardness. The Irish media understands that the public needs to know all about leaders of countries and companies – the deeds as well as the words, the good and the bad, the smart and the stupid, the truth and the lie.
If anyone or any country stands up to our particular leader, he backs off. Bully behavior. We need to push as hard as we can, peacefully, to befuddle him before he and his billionaire toadies own our country
Many of us out here wonder why he is not treated like the rest of the convicted felons in this country. Why does he get to shuffle around firing people like us, threatening our security and our healthcare, fueling anxiety across his country? Consider this: he will ultimately be confined to the jail cell where he belongs only if we continue to remind Congress and the Judiciary it is their job to put him there, and it’s way past time it happens.
In the meantime, he is the President of us. We need to keep reminding him of this: we are not the enemy. The evidence shows us that he wants to hurt or get rid of those of us who don’t suck up or bow down, so we must continue telling him his job is to be on our side.
A leader who is a threat to our farm economy needs farmers insisting he learns the meaning of tariff. He has dirtied our status in the world as crops await transport via USAID. We have been known for decades as generous to the less fortunate across the planet with our food, the exchange being healthy children abroad and healthy farms here. We WILL return to this most open-hearted promise, signed into law by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Hoi polloi in France, Germany, England, Ukraine, Russia, Africa and so on still like us American hoi polloi and applaud us . . . as long as we continue to fight for our country.
What are the unemployment figures? Who is paying for the newly tens of thousands out of work? We can and will bug the president relentlessly about this, because he may be cutting the budget on one end, but it is costing us on the other.
We own Social Security. It is not the government’s money. We and our employers, since President Franklin D. Roosevelts signed the bill in 1935, have put the money in throughout our working years. Just remember “Hands off!” is the motto from now on.
The April 5th nationwide peaceful protest of around half a million Americans in a thousand cities across 50 states – what positive, intelligent leadership of ourselves. Keep up the good work, fellow citizens. Complaining about wrongs is precisely what a democracy must practice. It is effective. And it relieves anxiety to bitch when you’re fearful of losing your country.
