The Silence Still Disturbs Me

I wrote in 2016:

“What a tragedy it is, in this multimedia world, to hear only noisy presumptions, the perversion of facts, and the demagoguery of the presumptive nominee for the presidency of The United States.  I know I’m a real “sleaze” for rebelling against it, a protester that some may want to “punch in the face.”  I’m sorry.  I do not want to offend.  I only want to be “free” to speak—and no matter how hard I have tried not to speak about this present situation, I find myself compelled to do so.”

The great tragedy of this present moment is not the noisy presumptions, the public degradation of persons, the racial innuendos, or even the disdain toward our justice system and the international community by a very rich, narcissistic, reality show host, but the appalling silence of the media to correct, investigate and challenge, the silence of the church, synagogue and mosque, and the public.  Someday we may have to repent not only for the diabolical and vitriolic rhetoric of the presumptive nominee, but also for our own crippling apathy and the silence that attends it…..”

That was what I wrote three and a half years ago.  The presumptive nominee became the forty-fifth President of the United States, not by an overwhelming majority of the popular vote, but via the electoral college.  He has since been impeached by the House of Representatives and  acquitted by the Republican majority in the Senate.  The presumptions, the perversion of facts, the degradation of persons, the racial innuendos, the disdain for the judicial system and the international community has not abated, not even in this time of a global pandemic.  Nor has the silence been broken!

The “lies” are now “fact.”  The degradation of persons has been accepted as okay and normal.  The racial innuendoes have become acceptable without retaliation or argument.  Certain media outlets are now actually seen as “fake news,” not on the basis of fact, but by the public demeaning of those media representatives. The justice system has become the trumpeter and defender of aberration rather than justice.  In a time when the world needs to unite to do battle with a pandemic, when the grief-stricken of a nation and world need a comforter, when fact and truth are essential, we have "a whining victim” in the White House.  A person who cannot focus on anything or anyone other than himself.  

And still—after three and a half years, after a partisan impeachment and a partisan acquittal, (and the vindictiveness that followed), after years of reading, listening and hearing (and being told that whatever it is you are reading, listening and hearing—isn’t true),  and after weeks of bizarre briefings (now designated as “enemy” media briefings) aired worldwide—the silence continues. It really does disturb me.  

“I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me — 

and I’ll build them very inexpensively.  I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, 

and I will make Mexico pay for that wall.  Mark my words” (DJT).