Donald Trump and the Wizard of Oz

Having been born in 1936, I grew up during the post World War II successful-completion high. I was 9 years old on September 2, 1945 when the formal surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay occurred.

I have voted for both Republican and Democratic candidates for President, I have been a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. My views have changed as events in this country have unfolded, as my professional life progressed and as the need to support a family changed over time.

I voted for Eisenhower twice and Obama twice. I have lived through wars and police actions, through presidential assassinations, and when radio was the only form of home entertainment and news. I have waited until a party- line telephone was free to make a call and through the ability to call home in Boston, MA from a cabin on a ship on the Yangtze River.

I have served in the military in the pre-Vietnam era and during the Bay of Pigs. While I was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama with my wife, we became friends with a black couple. We had planned to go together to an affair in officer’s club at a different base in Montgomery, but we were not allowed to travel there in the same car because of racial concerns. Being Jewish, I have faced discrimination myself on occasion.

With all of this, the balance between liberal and conservative thought, through financially good times and bad, through less than competent administrations, I have never doubted that democracy in this country would survive and that the United States would continue to be the leader of the free world.

But now at nearly 89 years of age, I fear for the well-being of my children and grandchildren and possibly generations to come. We have as president, now for two disjointed terms, a petulant man-child who is not only the personification of a playground bully threatening smaller, weaker kids for their lunch money but who is arguably the most powerful man on earth.

He is the epitome of a cult leader with sycophants who fear his retribution and are too cowardly to oppose him. He holds in his hands a metaphorical pitcher of KoolAid for those who would question his judgement.

He has single-handedly (with the help of his ass-kissing, dick-sucking puppets in Congress) destroyed what the American idea had accomplished over nearly 250 years. He threatens our allies, supports our enemies, weakens our health, condemns our institutions of higher learning, indoctrinates our children, eliminates medical science and research, and obscures the existential threat of climate change.

Donald Trump is much like the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtain of authority, whose needs are more about the projection of power than his actual ability to govern effectively. And his congressional sycophants who can be likened to the Scarecrow seeking a brain, the Tin Man who has no heart, and the Cowardly Lion who self-proclaims his cowardliness

There is no way that we, the people, can initiate an impeachment, that power lies in the hands of the House of Representatives. The House, however, is now under the control of the Trump’s allies who genuflect in the presence of their leader finding it easier to lick his boots rather than govern independently.

We must prepare for the 2026 mid-term election now, an election that is probably one of the most important in our history.

We must find the courage, the brain ,and the heart to overcome the Wicked Witch (Warlock, in this case) of Mar-a-logo and the congressional flying monkeys and together return to Kansas.

FTS