...and a little afraid.
As I've said before, I try to avoid politics in general here, and usually when I do address it it's a military-related issue. The last time I told anyone I was hurt by and ashamed of my president was when the WH never issued an official statement on the hate-motivated attack on American soldiers in Arkansas.
But I am once again hurt and embarrassed. He is showing an appalling lack of leadership, and an outright hostility to over 50% of the American population. That is far beneath what is expected of a president--he's my president whether I agree with him or not, and he is the representative of all of us, whether he agrees with us or not.
Peggy Noonan, no right-winger is she, has an important column this morning. She puts it as nicely as possible, assuming the best:
All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies [and the DNC] to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect.I'll leave it to my three readers to decide the implications of all this, but it's certainly not good.
The Democrats should not be attacking, they should be attempting to persuade, to argue for their case. After all, they have the big mic. Which is what the presidency is, the big mic.
Frankly, it sounds an awful lot like the tactics of Alinsky-style "community organizers" (i.e. dividing/inciting people) and he's the organizer in chief.
I am very ashamed of my president for doing nothing at best, and for acting the community organizer in chief at worst.
