As an aside, but interesting context to viewing the Rump Circus that is currently caricaturing actual governance, I have been reading an old Tom Clancy piece of fiction, Red Rabbit, from 2002. Clancy has as a leitmotiv for his recurring hero, Jack Ryan, the line "wars are started by frightened men". One could easily tweak that to read unreasonably fearful men, since it is my long held contention that conned-servatives are poor assessors of objective risk, and that they fear the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
A pair of bad actions that deserve our attention is both Rump's commitment to turn the United States into a Christian Theocracy, voiced at the recent Prayer Breakfast, which was also attended by former President Obama, and his alienation of yet another ally in his recent call to the Prime Minister of Australia.
Both actions can reasonably be expected to make us less safe and to further agitate and empower our enemies.
As noted by Vox, which I find to be an excellent independent news source with consistent high quality analysis, Australia, like the UK and Canada, has been one of our staunchest allies, over more than 100 years. Rump appears to have antagonized and offended PM Turnbull.
From Vox;
On his 13th day in office, President Donald Trump threatened to break an international agreement. On Twitter.
Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!
It is not rocket science to recognize that breaking a deal with one of our closest allies is bad. It is not rocket science that the temporary President - I can't believe he will last a full term - should not be making calls like this to a foreign leader, EITHER an ally or otherwise. This idiot, this buffoon, clearly has no idea what he is doing or the harm that it can cause. Antagonizing our allies does not make us safer, anywhere, ever.The tweet appeared to confirm a report from the Washington Post that the president, in his call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Sunday, had berated Turnbull about an agreement made with the Obama administration — in which hundreds of refugees being held offshore in Australian detention centers are being screened for admission to the US.
The executive order Trump signed on Friday banned nearly all refugee admissions to the US for four months — but with a loophole to allow refugees to be resettled per a “preexisting international agreement.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer and the US Embassy in Australia have both explicitly promised, since the executive order was signed, that the Trump administration would honor the deal. “The president, in accordance with that deal, to honor what had been agreed upon by the United States government … will go forward,” Spicer told journalists Tuesday.
That may be news to Trump.The president and his press secretary also appear to differ on the scope of the deal; Spicer said the US would take 1,250 refugees, which appears to refer to the number currently in offshore detention centers (not all of whom are guaranteed to pass through screening); Trump’s call with Turnbull referred to 2,000, which could be a reference to the fact that the US is also screening hundreds of refugees receiving medical care in Australia (or could just be wrong).Taken together, it’s clear that the best-case scenario is that the new president dislikes a deal he also doesn’t understand. The worst-case scenario is that he will break it.
And it is not rocket science to recognize that promoting what is clearly Christianity influenced government to the exclusion of other faiths or no faith, as Rump did at the recent prayer breakfast, is an invitation to a further religious war with Muslim extremists, as well as alienating to our Muslim allies in Africa and Asia.
Rump personifies the insanity that we saw previously with popsie candidate Sarah Palin, the notion that people do not need to know anything to serve in any branch of government at the highest levels.
They are wrong, and now we get to see how dead wrong, as in what the death count will eventually be, because make no mistake, people will die because of this faulty poor excuse for thinking, and for this failed ideology.
Those who voted for Rump will have a great deal to answer for in the near and middle future. The blame for this, the guilt for this is squarely theirs and theirs alone.
