The title of this article is not only a fact, it is important now. This is an election year, and when America’s people go to the polls, we are choosing who will lead us for the next, two, four, or six years. Members of the House are elected every two years; one-third of the Senate is elected every four years for a six year term; and the woman or man who is elected as our president will serve at least one four year term. Think about this carefully as you consider the events happening in our country today.
The American people look to our president for leadership in times of crisis, with the support of congress. Future President George Washington led us to victory in the Revolutionary War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt encouraged our nation to have faith and courage: we would defeat the evil and ambitious leaders of Germany and Japan in WWII. After his predecessor’s failed policies placed our nation in the Great Recession, President Barrack Obama saved our country from financial ruin and restored America’s respect around the world, constantly reassuring our nation’s people that our country would survive and become stronger.
Donald Trump is not a leader; he is a capitalist. His failure to take the lead when we learned about the probability of a health crisis coming to America has resulted in the deaths of more than 110,000 of our nation’s people: more than all lives lost in the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined.
When healthcare experts confirmed that wearing masks would help lessen the spread of the virus, Trump refused to wear one. That’s the opposite of leadership.
This is a big enough reason to remove America’s greatest failure from office.
However, his choice to violate the first amendment rights of hundreds of peaceful protesters in Washington Monday evening is the most egregious and unforgivable act by any president in my lifetime. All this for a photo op.
His march to St. John’s Episcopal Church, led by police and military using tear gas and rubber bullets was an act of treason to the people he is obliged to serve.
I n a CNN appearance, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde blasted Trump for the grotesque stunt. St. John’s is in her dioceses.
“Let me be clear: The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, at one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as the backdrop to a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our churches stand for.”
“I am outraged,” she fumed. “The president did not pray when he came to St. John’s nor did he acknowledge the agony of our country right now.”
So, Trump was trespassing on church grounds after tear gassing the crowd that had peacefully assembled there.
Trump’s former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, was also upset with Trump’s un-American action. He had no legitimate reason to go to the church.
“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis said in a statement published in The Atlantic.
“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens —much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside,” Mattis wrote, referring to a series of events on Monday in which peaceful protesters were physically cleared from around the White House to make way for an appearance by the president, Bible in hand, outside a historic church.
Mattis called Monday’s actions “an abuse of executive authority.”
Not once over the last week and one-half has Trump stood before the American people and promised that he would do the right thing. Instead, he is attacking our nation’s people for expressing their right to address grievances by their government. Once again, he fails to lead.
The leaders of our military forces must support the American people. Trump is not an American, he is a fascist, wannabe dictator. He cannot be called the “commander-in-chief” of our nation’s armed forces. The American people are the country, not a failed and unprincipled politician.
Because his party supports his every action, even when he is violating the Constitution, they must be forced out of office. Let’s help them retire. This election is the most important in history.
You can save America and all you have to do is vote on November 3rd.
Op-ed by James Turnage
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