If this sounds like I am supporting Donald Trump's behavior as our nation's leader, you will be missing the point. As noted previously, he got my vote in November because he seemed the more likely of the choices to bring about change in Washington and it is, in my opinion, long overdue. He needs to grow up, think before he opens his mouth -- a hard thing to expect of a very successful New York businessman -- take his cellphone to the nearest trash can, and get serious about the fact that his role is not that of a television personality. If he could at least act a little bit presidential, it would help me believe a lot more of what he says.
America is not all bad, regardless of how the news media tends to portray us at times as they try to cast Trump as the villain in every news program. If we look closely at the other nations of the world dealing with the same type problems we have here, it is easy to see we just hear more of the problem because we have too doggone many television channels and they repeat the same "news" no matter where you turn.
In the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette of Feb. 24 (last Friday) there was a story from the Washington Post, written by Alan Freeman, concerning the immigration issue in Canada. You can read anything you want into the article as it is written, because it sounds like a mini-American Mexico border question. The question being, how do you deal with those who refuse to follow the legal (Canadian) method of moving into Canada? The article states that the asylum-seekers are leaving America because Trump's policies are a threat to them here. They seem to be welcomed up in Canada, but the politicians appear to be bickering over the Canadian government's policies being too harsh OR too lax! Doesn't that sound like our political parties trying to exploit an opportunity to make the other side look bad regardless of the side they are on? In Canada it is Trudeau's fault, in America it is Trump's fault.
Canada apparently has a target of 40,000 refugees for 2017 but some Canadians question whether they can handle that quantity and the article said that 25 percent of the citizens in Ottawa wanted to enact a travel ban similar to the one proposed by Donald Trump. The Canadian Conservative Party apparently claims the government isn't doing enough to "protect the integrity of the border" and the New Democratic Party (of Canada) wants to make it easier for the refugees to gain political asylum. One of the quoted authorities, not a government spokesperson, but a person from a Vancouver based opinion research group asked "What will happen when the snow melts and it will be easier to walk across the border?" To quote the article "will we be facing down our own mini-Greece or mini-Italy moment ?" -- Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute.
Our problems are not much different from the rest of the world except for two points -- the scale is probably a lot larger even proportionately for population, because our life-style is more desirable; and second, we hear much more about every small potential political issue until it sounds like it is unique to America.
Some of our elected representatives -- Senator Cotton and Representative Womack -- tried to hold town hall meetings recently but so far all I have seen on the news is the protesters creating a lot of news. That is not to say something wasn't accomplished at the meetings, but you wouldn't know from the television coverage. I may be wrong, but if there were no television cameras around, how many people would actually attend the meetings? When we had people in the inner cities rioting, the cameras were there long before the crowds got unruly -- who came to protest and who came to make news?
It is not pleasant to look back over the last 80 plus years and wonder if we have made much progress in our political, race, religious and economic differences. I saw the smoke rise from the fires in Los Angeles on television and witnessed the burned out store-fronts in Milwaukee. Some things seem destined to stay the same unless we, ourselves, change. And, we have to accept some change to our political objectives even if it means we accept Donald Trump's leadership for the time being.
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Editor's note: Leo Lynch, an award-winning columnist, is a native of Benton County has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Editorial on 03/01/2017