One thing “we the people” have to understand is those around the world are not stupid as we are often brainwashed into thinking.  In fact, as a retired teacher, I often noticed during my career that “new” instructional methods would come from other countries – especially regarding literacy.  The sad truth is that the number of American’s who drop out of the education process is startling.  The reality is there are many “uneducated voters” in America that Trump so famously embraced during the previous election and, with the help of the Russians’ “fake news” (the real fake news – which was supplemented by  the republican congress along with media outlets like Brietbart, Fox, and social media sites like Facebook), managed to smear Hillary Clinton to the point where “we the people” elected the MOST unprepared president in our history.  Everyone who’s paying attention knows that Donald Trump is in way over his head – he’s unable to understand how our country operates let alone what a foreign policy might be.  (That doesn’t even take into account his personal corruption)  As I see it, those foreigners who don’t like America will be pushing harder and harder in an attempt to get Trump to further expose his incompetence.  Unfortunately, this could be a very dangerous scenario – for us AND for our adversaries.

Trump is the second republican “elected” president via the Electoral College.  That is, both he and president Bush failed to carry the most votes – in Bush’s case it took the Supreme Court to block the true counting of the votes in Florida that SHOULD have swung the election to Al Gore.  In Trump’s case – he LOST by a record number of votes for a “winner” (3 MILLION) – and he had the help of the Russians, the congressional republicans (Benghazi), the FBI and Jim Comey’s blunderous announcement 11 days prior to the election, AND all the voter suppression tactics emanating from the Supreme Court’s “gutting” of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to overturn the actual will of the people.  We all know what happened with Bush – the “endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – and, now we’ve got the Russians, the Iranians, and the North Koreans – to name a few – who are gearing up to push Trump into some kind of stupid military move that could result in disastrous consequences.

This is all really hard for me to watch – I’ve been observing politics in America since the days of Eisenhower v Stephenson.  I “get” the frustration many people in America’s “heartland” feel about the dysfunction in our nation’s capital.  The biggest problem, as I see it, is that they don’t understand the role the republicans have played in bringing us to this point.  Yes, the democrats leave a lot to be desired, but it’s the republicans who’ve practiced the strategy of obstruction since – I want to say since the days of Newt Gingrich and the “Contract for (on) America” republicans ran on in the early 1990’s – but, I believe it really started with the now infamous “memo” of then soon to be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell to the Chamber of Commerce back in 1972 which started the organized push to turn America into a “corporatocracy.”  During President Obama’s two terms, for example, Mitch McConnell – in a brazen attempt to make sure Obama “failed” – filibustered around 700 (that’s HUNDRED) democratic attempts to push through a progressive agenda aimed at improving the lives of the middle class.  Just their blocking any infrastructure legislation drastically hurt many of the areas of the country which went for Trump – and, their strategy worked – because, either via republican propaganda or the inability of democrats to defend their own message – many blue collar Americans are voting republican – which would have been unthinkable before Powell initiated the corporate strategy to put the working class “in their place.”

During this time republicans have proven over and over again they are much better at winning elections than democrats – AND, they’ve proven over and over that they are incompetent at governing.  Bush/Cheney managed to push through some horrific tax cuts that pushed our annual deficit to historic heights and our national debt into scary territory (at least from my perspective) – but, they proved incompetent at almost every other aspect of governing.  Even the war mongering was done incompetently.  The end result of their two terms in the White House was the lingering wars AND the meltdown of our economy due to the inevitable conclusion of their encouraging reckless monetary policies that had no basis in economic reality.  President Obama managed to kind of stabilize the “ship of state” despite the obstruction of the republicans EVERY step of the way, but many Americans – especially in the 50 – 64 age group – are hurting financially.

I found it almost humorous (except all of this seems really serious to me these days) when I heard Donald Trump announce “I inherited a mess.”  As I see it, here’s the reality;  Trump inherited a fairly strong economy that had been on a slow “upswing” for about five to six years.  It’s kind of like the huge ship slowly plowing through the water and it’s hard to slow it down.  From my vantage point, Trump will “benefit” from Obama’s economy for about another – maybe – six months (it won’t take much to shorten that time-frame significantly) and then the reality, good or bad, of what he’s “accomplishing” will begin to take effect.  From the outside it doesn’t appear that much of anything (other than “signing statements” and “executive orders”) is getting done.  It’s apparent to me that if the republicans in congress can manage to put ANY type of legislation together they have a willing “signer” in the White House.  Trump will sign whatever they come up with – and, if it doesn’t work, the “blame game” will be interesting.  For example, if republicans manage to pass a “health care” overhaul (tax cut) it will undoubtedly be referred to as “Trump care.”  Based on the preliminary reporting (the bill is being put together in secret) the resulting legislation could be very unpopular.  Trump, himself, characterized the House version as “mean.”  Should be interesting to say the least.  Either way – if they allow the Affordable Care Act to “fail,” or they pass their own bill, the republicans are going to be looking for creative ways to shift the BLAME away from themselves – that’s what they’re good at!

Getting back to how the world is viewing what’s happening in America, this morning I listened to an “expert” on foreign policy say that the danger of something escalating into some kind of war is at a point that would have been unthinkable a year ago (Donald, that’s when President Obama was in charge).  Even the Russians appear to be “pushing buttons” to see how Trump will react to their bullying tactics in international air space.  A couple Russian fighter planes “buzzed” an American unarmed transport plane (? I’m actually not completely sure what type of plane it was) reportedly coming within five feet of one of its wings.  The first question that came to my mind was “Is Vladimir Putin” trying to find out if there’s anything he can do to get Donald to say something negative about him or Russia?  Do they have to shoot the plane down to get Trump to react?  Makes me wonder, “What do the Russians actually have on Trump?”  I keep thinking of the so-called “dossier” and the suggestion there might be a video of the most salacious part of that “dossier.”  If that’s true, and if it comes out, it could be more than very embarrassing for Trump – this one would be worst than the “Access Hollywood” tape.

It appears to me that every day the republicans in Congress “look the other way” at the actions of Trump in his legal battle with the FBI, his incompetence in governance, the real possibility he’s using his office to make money for his business interests, and the REALITY that he’s still NEVER even acknowledged Russia, essentially, ATTACKED our republic – ensuring there will be no concerted response and the attack will be ongoing – our nation becomes weaker and more vulnerable.  The Russians are getting (I’m sure) more than they anticipated when their (supposed) goal was to weaken Hillary Clinton’s presidency.  They are weakening the foundation of our democratic republic and, so far, Trump hasn’t even acknowledged it happened.  Trust me, everyone interested in damaging America is watching and understands how vulnerable America has become.  I don’t believe Mike Pense is the one to solve this problem – so, “we the people” will need to endure this until 2020 and hope and pray for the best.  (Pense has proven to be a willing LIAR for Trump on several occasions and he’s lost whatever credibility he may have had prior to the election – and, I might add – from my perspective Pense is a terrible LIAR.  He doesn’t hide it well)

I started this post a few days ago and Trump has now acknowledged that Russia “may have” interfered with our election.  However, instead of taking some kind of action to send a message to Vladimir Putin all I’ve heard from Trump is more blaming of President Obama.  Like: “Why didn’t Obama do something about it?  Everything that comes from Trump’s mouth is either a LIE or a poorly thought out comment.  I could write, probably, a couple posts on why I believe President Obama didn’t come out with a stronger response to Russian interference prior to the election – but, the reality is that our “liberal media” had all they needed by early October.  They were more focused on allowing Trump to “play” them right up till election day and virtually IGNORED the warnings from the intelligence community prior to the election.  Our media is now totally “IN”  on the “Russia investigation” – but, it took Trump’s election and the reality of what that means to get their “attention.”  I would say to Trump, stop blaming Obama for everything you can think of – you’re never going to be as cerebral as him and he’s not the problem – you’re the problem.  You’re so ignorant you keep “shooting yourself in the foot” because of your LYING mouth and you’re LYING “tweets.”  If Trump was concerned about the reality “we the people” have been ATTACKED by Russia, he’d create a response that damaged Russia’s banking system.  From what I’ve read that’s a doable option – EXCEPT, that I believe Trump is beholden to Russia’s banking system – and, when that all comes out, much of what we’ve been trying to understand about Trump’s actions will become crystal clear.