Dissent is Patriotic

The Golden Rule of Living & Traveling Overseas

There is--or once was--a kind of golden rule for Americans while living or traveling overseas: never disrespect your country or its leaders in public--even those you might have opposed back home.

Following President Donald J.Trump's fine example last week--in which he did precisely this in Hamburg, Germany, at the G20 meeting--I have been given license to throw in my two cents.

Lest we forget: The Pilgrims were undocumented.

The Swampmaster-in-Chief Strikes Again

It is utterly surreal to be in a beautiful Mediterranean country--in fact, the very land where "democracy" was coined as a phrase and as an enduring concept, a place where in a general sense tolerance reigns supreme--and listen to a buffoon of epic proportions pontificate about "American values." Trump's diatribes were an utterly shameful display of what has been described as American "exceptionalism." The only thing exceptional about Donald J. Trump is his irrelevance.

The swampmaster-in-chief and his merciless band of hypocrites (aka, the Republican party) are subverting the national interest with a reckless velocity. It is a shameful display of self-serving.

We know from the US Election Commission that 47 percent of Americans "elected" the current U.S. president, who in short order has perverted the very notion of democracy, incited violence, and upended electoral fairness in a way that makes Richard Nixon look like an Amish Boy Scout; Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton look like combat war heroes; and George W. Bush appear to be an intellectual giant and foreign policy genius by comparison.

There are many places to begin, but let's choose health care. Among other travesties, the Republican non-plan at destroying health care eviscerates pre-natal care for women. Of course, men can't have babies, so why should they pay for women's health? And let's face it, the Republican Party is composed of  old, white, rich men.

Health care, in the Republican view, is someone else's problem. Their plan is a catastrophe for America--and that's not just my opinion but the assertion of every major health policy research group with any credibility, including the American Medical Association, the spectrum of insurance companies, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Only the likes of pathetic Breitbart News, the Koch Brothers, and the jihadist Republican "leadership" (in quotes, please) would beg to differ.

The Republican leadership is morally shocking and a devastating blight on America. The Republican Party, once called the "party of Lincoln," has devolved into a jihadi terrorist fringe element now supported by just 32 percent of the electorate. A funding machine for the extremely wealthy, the corporate elite, and the privileged few--the Republican party is an unbridled obscenity by any measure.

One would be hard-pressed to find a bigger assemblage of political carpetbaggers than the current Republican leadership--Senator Mitch McConnell, Representative Paul Ryan, and their audacious phalanx of single-minded minions that is subverting American democracy for nothing more than narrow self-interest.

And so, the extremists that run the Republican party, the Taliban for the very rich, have totally surrendered the party of Lincoln to an irrational and volatile man who only 12 months ago they uniformly labeled "unfit for office."