Monday, October 15, 2018

Trump Fiddles As Florida Struggles

According to MSNBC's Morning Joe, "As Hurricane Michael tore through the Florida Panhandle, President Trump met with donors and held a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. Trump once criticized President Obama for campaigning in 2012 during Sandy. The panel discusses."


Nero Playing Fiddle as Rome Burns c.1780
Photo Courtesy of Amazon's Affiliate Program.
I was disappointed, but not surprised, when I heard about this on the news. Donald Trump has a habit of doing what is good for Donald Trump. Rather than using the office to serve the people he uses it to serve himself.

Since taking office, it's been a well- known secret that the president, "strongly encourages," foreign diplomats to stay at Trump hotels when they visit the United States.  As a result, he is using the job to enrich himself.  The idea of public service is completely foreign to him.

This is a man who does not allow morality to get in the way of a good deal.  Recently, Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post,  went into the Saudi Arabian embassy, in Turkey, and never left.  There is every reason to believe he was brutally murdered on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.

Instead of sanctioning Saudi Arabia for violating Khashoggi's human rights, President Trump still plans to sell them one-hundred billion dollars worth of weapons.  While the deal doesn't profit him directly, he's publicly admitted to a history of selling the royal Saudis forty & fifty million dollar apartments.   Keeping Prince Salman on his good side is in Trump's best fiscal interest.

On October 10th, 2018, Hurricane Michael pummeled Mexico Beach, Florida with sustained winds of 155 miles per hour and accompanying rainfall.  As billions of dollars of damage were being done, thousands of Americans were losing their homes, and eighteen Americans (by most recent count) were losing their lives, President Trump was mocking the "Me Too" movement in front of supporters in Eerie, Pennsylvania.

Historically the images of Marie Antoinette suggesting that the starving peasants eat cake and Emperor Nero playing the fiddle as Rome burned have served as illustrations of an out-of-touch leader putting himself/herself their people.  Yet, I fear that the image of a billionaire president making fun of victims of sexual assault, while his people struggled for their lives, will join the aforementioned archetypes within our collective unconscious.

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