By Brigitte L. Nacos
Instead of singing “God bless America” this July Fourth holiday, we must rather wish and sing, “God help America!”
We do not need blessings for the dismal state of affairs but rather help to prevent further damage to our democracy.
To be sure, the great ideals of America were never fully realized—but there has been progress, sometimes more rapidly and sometimes more slowly.
Since Donald Trump took the highest office in the land, the president himself, his advisers, his incompetent department heads, the blindly following GOP in Congress, and his media propagandists led by FOX news have violated or supported the violation of laws and democratic rules of the game. Instead of moving Americans forward to a more promising future, they united to usher in a reactionary regime presided over a demagogue in bed with despicable dictators around the world.
Trump’s role at the G-20 meeting in Japan and his self-organized unreal reality show meeting with North Korea’s supreme human rights violator Kim Jong-Un was another embarrassing horror show on the international stage. After sharply criticizing Japan and Germany just before the meeting began, Trump’s jovial get-togethers with Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman( MBS), bolstered the international standing of ruthless rulers that violate civil liberties, human rights, and international law.
Trump continues to believe Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election campaigns in order to help candidate Trump rather than believing his own intelligence agencies that found ample proof of Russian malfeasance. He believes MSB’s implausible denials that he ordered brutal murder of a Saudi journalist and U.S. resident in spite of contrary findings by the CIA and the United Nations.
The Donald’s latest meeting with North Korea’s Kim, with whom he fell in love thanks to the North Korean’s lovely letters, was not only celebrated by the President but by the American mainstream media as “historical.” Obviously, the very press that Trump has labeled again and again “enemy of the American people,” is falling again for his pre-campaign antics as they did before and during his 2016 campaign.
While Trump assured Kim and the world that he was “honored” by the joined crossing of the border between the two Koreas and lauded the Chairman Kim’s “powerful voice,” North-Korean security guards and state press used physical force against American journalists in the official press pool who pushed for access—bruising the new White House press secretary in the process.
Trump and his crew, including daughter and son-in-law, ignored these signs of Kim Jong-un’s horror show—probably happy to draw the attention of Americans away from potential Trump opponents in the 2020 electoral race.
That brings me to the second point why God needs to help America this July Fourth: Unless Democrats competing to challenge the President next week get their act together, they will hand Trump his reelection on a platter. While it is fine to point to Trump’s promises made and promised broken record, Democrats need to offer voters a precise program for a brighter future in both domestic and foreign affairs.
The focus point must be on
Economic inequality and how to find better solutions without demonizing Americans who have done well, a group that includes most of the men and women who stood on the debate stage last week.
Health insurance for all in form of a public insurance, best an expanded Obamacare model, and the right to keep and select private full or supplementary health insurance. If the Democrats nominate a candidate that aims at abolishing the private insurance option, this alone might seal Trump’s reelection.
Immigration policy must be rethought with respect to legal and illegal immigrants, common sense border protection, orderly and humanitarian asylum regulations, a way to legalize the status for illegals born here or with long residencies, and, last but not least, massive assistance for Central American countries so that violence and lack of jobs do no longer force citizens to leave. If the eventual Democratic candidate appears to favor “open borders,” as the GOP shouts already, Trump will repeat and win on his predominant issues of 2016—immigration, immigration, immigration!
For a while I thought that Joe Biden, a middle-of-the roader, would be the best candidate to beat Trump and become a transitional Democratic president—ideally for one term only. But even before his poor performance in last week’s debate I became doubtful that he could unite his party’s wings and win over enough of those voters who opted for Trump in 2016.
Unfortunately, Biden is yesterday’s, not today’s candidate. The same is true for Bernie Sanders.
There is a promising crop of next generation candidates among those running for the Democratic Party’s nomination. We need progressive politics and policies. But embracing the agenda of the self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders would a gift for Donald Trump and a tragedy for the nation. We do not need a democratic socialist but a SOCIAL DEMOCRAT!
So, again, God Help America!
Halleluja, Helga, let's still keep some hope alive for Election Day 2020!
Posted by: Brigitte Nacos | June 30, 2019 at 06:32 PM
Absolutely true, why can Brigitte Nacos tell us what is taking place and what should be done, people voted for these politicians only to be ignored by
these lawmakers who receive salaries, the best healthcare, etc for life. It is
shameful that our president negotiates with our enemies and does not
care about the people. Americans, let’s wake up.
Posted by: Helga Hormozdi | June 30, 2019 at 06:00 PM