Is being mean our new cultural norm?

I have no great love for Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  I think he is moving the justice system away from “justice” in his approach to immigration, civil rights in policing, women’s rights, and criminal justice sentencing.  That said, even I was taken aback by President Trump’s repeated public ridicule of the first senator who supported his bid for president when no one else did.  And then the nastiness got worse.I knew this President wasn’t a nice, moral, intellectual, or decent human being.  I think most Americans knew this, but many voted for him anyway.  That says a lot more about us than it does about him.  This week our country (and the world) was treated to a bestial style of leadership that is not found in any of the 1000s of books on effective leadership. It is not hyperbole to say that his leadership style is comparable to that of Hitler and Kim Jong-un (North Korea) or  Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines).  He admits his admiration of and seems to want to emulate the strong man style of dictatorship.  He ran his businesses this way and now our entire country is in his grasp.

Trump was not only mean to Sessions, but he dishonored and devalued the military service of transgender Americans when he issued an unexpected edict by tweet to disqualify them from military service.  These are people who willingly put their lives on the line for our country.  It took the Joint Chiefs to publically announce that transgender service personnel could continue working without further disruption until proper processes are followed.

He was mean to Sean Spicer who thankfully resigned in protest at the hiring of an unqualified and Trumpian “mean” new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, whose head is so far up Trump’s ass that even I am embarrassed for his shear lack of dignity and self-respect.  Then Trump allowed Scaramucci to publicly disparage his own chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and his senior advisor Steve Bannon.  Priebus resigned.  I bet he is glad to finally be released from that cock fighting, Hunger Games contest at the White House, where only the meanest and most servile loyalist can survive.  It makes me sick to realize that our tax dollars are paying these salaries.

While I don’t think much of the job any of these men are doing, the public humiliation and profanity associated with it, are beneath the dignity of the White House.  It seems we have a president who is so insecure, immature, and immoral that he encourages those around him to literally compete for his approval.  Who is actually running the country?  Again, this is the best we can do for our tax dollars?

But the bigger question is what kind of nation do we want to leave to our children?  The Boys Scouts learned the hard way that this president neither represents nor can he even espouse their values.  They felt it necessary to issue a public apology for the inappropriate and uninspiring bombastic remarks of the president of the United States to the audience of 45,000 boy scouts at their annual Jamboree.

And then Friday, the president basically told police officers it was okay to rough up suspected felons as they were being arrested.  This isn’t just any person on the street encouraging lawlessness; this was our president!  The police department felt it was necessary to issue a statement that they will be treating prisoners in their custody with dignity.

The behavior and words of this president erode our sense of decency and social order.  While publicly flouting what we have considered to be respectable leadership behavior and common courtesy, the question is, who do we want to be as a society?  And now, he wants to help the Affordable Health Care Act fail by denying subsidy payments to low income people.  He is okay with allowing citizens to perish without healthcare just to repeal and replace Obamacare with just anything.

I’ve written to the White House repeatedly to complain.  It is going to take our collective voices to speak up against the kind of distasteful rhetoric and undignified behaviors coming out of this White House.  Only we as citizens can truly make America great.  This is a call to action:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/write-or-call