Knocked Down
I’m doing my best. I’m trying to let the Trump outrages, from Guantanamo to Kash Patel to halting cancer research; wash over me. It’s like diving under a five foot swell coming into the beach. But today, right now, he got me. Sixty-four Americans lost their lives last night in a helicopter/plane crash in Washington, DC. The investigation is underway. Many of the bodies are still strapped in their seats in the ice-cold Potomac. The ultimate cause of the accident is still unknown.
Except, of course, to President Donald “F-kin’” Trump. He just spent ten minutes denigrating the Federal Aviation Administration, and blaming “DEI” hires for the accident. Trump spoke about mentally disabled controllers, and those with physical disabilities from paralysis to dwarfism. He somehow claimed it was Pete Buttigieg’s fault, or Barack Obama’s fault, or, of course, Joe Biden’s fault.
He made it clear that he blamed the Air Traffic Controller (whoever that person was) for the crash. And he made it sound like America has unqualified, handicapped and disabled controllers killing our aircraft passengers, pilots, crew members, and military personnel.
Then, after all of that reading of FAA hiring practices and the placing blame; Trump said, “Well, we really don’t know what happened”.
Sycophants
The new Transportation Secretary, the new Defense Secretary, and even JD Vance, Ohio’s addition to the Vice Presidency; backed Trump’s assertion. They all paid obeisance to the President: “thank you for your leadership” (may I have another??). And they all backed his “analysis” of the problem. None of them gave the final, “Well we really don’t know…” after their statements.
So we now have a President doing his “level best” to tell us what happened in the Washington accident. It’s as if he has some expertise in Air Traffic Control – which he doesn’t. It’s as if he has some intelligence on this issue; which he doesn’t. He’s just “spun” this problem into another Trump “triumph” of changing America.
It’s despicable. It’s disgusting. And it’s disrespectful to the living, and the dead.
And it’s the new era of Trump: a tidal wave of idiocy, racism, and hate. This wave knocked me down; kicked the wind out of me; ground the sandy bottom into my face. But I will get to shore, and gather my wits, and head into the waves again.
It reminds me: how much I hate what America is becoming.
The guy in the White House said the possibility of “DEI” causing the collision arose from his “common sense”. I much not have much of that, since my first thought when hearing of the collision was, why was it necessary to fly an Army helicopter training mission in the middle of a glidepath to a busy airport? My prayers to the victims’ families and friends.
Only in today’s Orwellian Republican Party, where they have a despotic ‘Big Brother Trump’, could the words diversity, equity and inclusion be called bad concepts.