As is often the case, I must temper my remarks by noting my personal exhaustion: I had a “short finish” (31 miles out of the official length of 40) in yesterday’s BUS Anniversary Run in Queens (Alley Pond Park), followed by today’s NYRR Retro 5-Miler in Central Park to mark the NY Road Runners Club’s 59th anniversary. Seems a big weekend for running club anniversaries.
And speaking of things that have been around a while, what can we say about the President’s ongoing feud with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, which resulted in the President pouring salt on the wounds of Londoners with tweets critical of their mayor’s call for calm after the recent multiple attacks in London that left at least seven dead.
Among other things, the President called for the U.S. Courts to back him in his desired “travel ban” (even though his own legal team is trying to argue it isn’t a travel ban.) Anyway, the President’s policy appears to be to never leave behind an opportunity to drive a wedge or put distance between the United States and its traditional allies. Perhaps this can be explained by kompromat to Putin’s Russia (isolating the United States, especially from Europe, certainly must bring a smile to Vladimir Vladimirovich). I believe, however, that most things with the President can, unfortunately, be explained all too easily.
Mr. Khan is one of the few Muslim mayors of a major Western City, and for that reason alone, it seems, the President must oppose and attempt to humiliate him. Just as, it seems, the President must try to repeal “Obamacare” (and send over 23 million people, a huge number of them presumably his own voters, into the realm of not having health insurance) as well as to take the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord (notwithstanding that his executive orders largely repealed many of the measures intended to implement it already and the Paris agreement requirements were ultimately “voluntary”) for no reason other than to attempt to sully the legacy of his predecessor Barack Obama; in short, both Khan and Obama have dark skin, and that seems to be the principal guide to Mr. Trump’s policies.
And the thing is, say what you will, it is this petty school-yard racism that won him the Republican nomination and ultimately the Presidency, and is still holding his base together (albeit less overwhelmingly than he once did.) Which means that a huge number of Americans continue to believe that, as long as it is done in the spirit of racism, it is o.k. to crap on our allies, isolate the country in terms of near universal agreements (we now join Syria and Nicaragua in being on the sidelines of the Paris Climate Accord) and and even sentence millions of Americans to go without health insurance as our population ages and likely sickens.
Which means that this petty, counterproductive, hateful bullshit is likely to go on for the foreseeable future. Isn’t that special?
tdog
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