Week of 03/30/2020

Ending The “My President” Message
– by David Matthews 2

For the past three years, there has been a troll message uttered anytime someone posts some criticism of a certain orange-skinned narcissist that is currently inhabiting the White House.

“He’s your president.”

It’s meant to aggravate the critic, to remind that person that the subject of his or her criticism is still sitting in the highest office in America, and to maybe not be critical of that person since he is “your” president.

It’s actually the reverse of a certain mantra that I’ve been hearing for quite some time about how the current occupant in the White House is “Not my president”.  And by hearing it “for quite some time” I mean for longer than the current occupant in the White House has been there.

I’ll make this simple so that my critics and even red-hat supporters will understand:

Yes, Narcissist President Donald Trump is my president.

I am an American.  I was born American.  I was brought up American.  I continue to believe in the American system, even if it is flawed and twisted and corrupt and almost at the point of breaking.  We are not “there” yet, although that could change depending on the actions of said person in the White House.  I vote.  I have voted in every presidential election since I was legally able to.  And I have voted according to my conscience, not because some dominant party told me that I had to vote a certain way.

Because I am an American, I have to acknowledge that the person in the White House, if they have been properly elected and sworn in, is the President of the United States.  So that means that person is my president, whether or not I like that person or agree with that person or voted for that person or support that person or blindly worship that person or even despise that person.

Narcissist President Donald Trump is my president.  That is a statement of fact.  I am an American.  He is the president.  That makes him my president.

Do I wish it were otherwise?  Yes.  Do I wish there was someone else in that position who would be a competent leader and not abrasive and polarizing and self-absorbed and self-serving and self-promoting clown and doesn’t parade themselves like a spoiled pampered princess?  Absolutely.  But that person either doesn’t exist or they cannot get elected given our current corrupt and rigged political system dominated by two corrupt political parties and a media that loves a manufactured horserace.

So, yes, we end up with Narcissist Donald Trump as our president, fulfilling the prediction made over a century ago by my predecessor, H.L. Mencken.  Oh, and for the record, Mencken never made reference to that person being a fool or a narcissist.  Just a downright moron.  Anything more is needless embellishment.

But that does not mean that I cannot criticize that person in the White House.  That does not mean that I cannot questions his policies and actions and statements.  Saying that he is my president does not absolve him of criticism or question.

And that is what the red-hat trolls want.  They try to use the “he’s your president” dig to shut you up, to say that you cannot question the President of the United States, that you cannot criticize him, or mock him, or make fun of his eccentricities, or to call him out on his lies and false promises and his Munchausen exaggerations.

To which I say: over my dead body.

Let’s get brutally honest here... Myself and every other American have a constitutional right as Americans to call out those in office, to question their policies and actions and antics while serving in those positions of power.  That includes Narcissist President Donald Trump and the rest of his corrupt gang of toadies and bootlickers and enablers.  That right goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War and it is one of the core reasons why America broke from the British Empire in the first place.

In fact, it is because I am an American that I have, not just a right, but an obligation to question and to call out Narcissist President Donald Trump on his policies and antics and activities.  Because he is supposed to represent and serve all Americans, not just the red-hat cult followers and the corrupt special interests who support him.  Because his actions and activities do have an impact on myself and my family, just like state and local governments impact us.

I expect the President of the United States to behave like a statesman and a world leader, not some petty, spoiled, self-centered princess who throws temper tantrums on Twitter when people aren’t worshiping him.  I expect that person to answer a softball question that would ease any worries of a nation in crisis instead of attacking the reporter and his employers and the company that owns his employers for daring to ask it.  I expect that person to lead America through a challenge like a global pandemic instead of declaring victory before the battle is even halfway fought.  I expect that person to honor the past treaties and obligations made by his predecessors and to fix any discrepancies while in place instead of blindly cancelling them just so he can “rewrite” them as his own later on.  But the fact that the person in the White House doesn’t do any that does not make him any less my president.  It just means he is a bad president.  A horrible president.  Even an incompetent president.

Yes, red-hats, Narcissist Donald Trump is my president, just like Barack Obama was yours, no matter how much you have denied it.  How many of you who are saying “He’s *your* president” today were saying “Not *my* president” when it was Barack Obama?  How many of you were calling Obama’s presidency illegitimate, based on some made-up claim that he was born anyplace other than the United States?  Go ahead.  Own that hypocrisy.  It is yours!  If you believe in an afterlife, then you will have to answer to that later on.

Yes, Narcissist President Donald Trump is my president, just like Barack Obama was, just like George W. Bush was, just like William Jefferson Clinton was, just like George H.W. Bush was, just like Ronald Reagan was, just like Jimmy Carter was, just like Gerald Ford was, just like Richard Nixon was, and just like Lyndon Johnson was my president.  And, starting with Carter, I have been a critic of every president in one way or another.  Anyone who has ever been a regular reader of my column knows that I’ve been critical of every president online since Clinton.  That does not make any of them any less my president.  But what that does is it makes me a much better American than those who expect nothing but blind cultish worship for “their” leader and have nothing but a venomous revulsion for anyone else in the position.

It was former Interior Secretary and retired general Carl Schurz who said it best following the Civil War: “Tis not, 'my country right or wrong'; tis, 'my country, that which is right to be kept right, that which is wrong to be set right'.”  The same can be said of those who lead it, no matter who that person is.