The days of wine and roses are gone and we are faced with a new reality.
America must endure four to eight years of what will be the worst presidency in recent times, maybe in our history.
The Democrats have two choices.
They can tuck their tails between their legs or they can stand up on those hind legs and bellow.
We have all heard the argument that we should be conciliatory and maybe, just maybe, Trump will show signs of rationality.
But why would someone whose previous behavior is best described as disturbed, defensive and egocentric suddenly change his stripes?
I have a pugnacious nature and am committed to making the fight.
In Roman mythology there is a story about the forces of good engaging the forces of evil in a battle in which it is foreordained that evil will triumph.
In spite of this predicted outcome, the “good guys” engage because they can do no other.
So, to all citizens of good conscience, there is something to be said for “doing the right thing” no matter what.
If nothing else, you can feel good about the stance you took.
Teddy Roosevelt was a fighter who argued that we must enter the fray.
“…credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; … who spends himself in a worthy cause; …and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
But let us see why those who hold out hope for a new Trump are dead wrong in their assessment.
Here are some of the folk Trump has chosen.
Stephen Bannon (who does not need Senate approval) is the former chairman of Breitbart News.
He will serve as Trump’s chief strategist.
Bannon chose not to send his daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because there were too many Jews in attendance.
He also argued that he admires women like Anne Coulter and Michelle Bachman because they aren’t “a bunch of dykes that come from the Seven Sisters schools…”
What kind of “strategic counsel” can we expect from the likes of Bannon?
Jeff Sessions is most likely our next Attorney General.
An enemy of civil rights and women’s rights he has said: “I don’t characterize” grabbing women by the genitals “as sexual assault.”
He also voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act as well as opposing bipartisan legislation to curb sexual assault in the military.
Steve Mnuchin, nominated as Secretary of the Treasury, foreclosed on more than 36,000 homes in a fashion that a federal judge described as “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive.”
The former Goldman Sachs executive is on record as attacking the Dodd Frank Wall Street reforms reining in big banks.
Wilbur Ross, a Wall Street billionaire has been nominated as our next Secretary of Commerce.
Known as a “vulture investor,” and “the king of bankruptcy,” he has off-shored American textile jobs to China and Mexico.
Myron Ebell is Trump’s candidate to head up the Environmental Protection Agency.
He views global warming as a pretext for the expansion of government and urged the Senate to reject the international climate agreement signed in Paris.
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn will be the president-elect’s National Security Advisor.
In 2014, he was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency where he was considered “volatile” and “unbelievably arrogant.”
So much for “making friends and influencing people.”
Flynn also shared an anti-Semitic tweet which he later deleted, but this will not affect anything since he, too, does not need Senate approval.
Finally, there’s Betsy DeVos our soon-to-be Secretary of Education.
Never having taught or been a school administrator makes her eminently qualified for this post.
She is a staunch supporter of charter schools which, often as not, are inferior to public schools in spite of their not having to accept all students as do their public counterparts.
She favors vouchers for private schools and claims that public education is failing.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has called DeVos “the most ideological anti-public education nominee” since the creation of the Department in 1979.
It is ironic, but not surprising, that Donald Trump would choose to surround himself with the likes of these candidates.
More worrisome is the fact that Ebell, DeVos and Sessions will undermine the very agency or department they will lead.
The E.P.A. should regulate polluters, the Education Department should be a cheerleader for public schools, and the Attorney General’s office should promote civil rights.
Sadly, these right wing ideologues will attempt to do the exactly the opposite.
To those who argue that the past is prologue and that Trump has, repeatedly, been successful in defying conventional wisdom, I maintain that Trump is vulnerable.
It would take a Svengali to “con” the American people for four years.
If “we the people” speak truth to power, truth should prevail.
In 1940, when World War II was going badly for the British Empire, Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons. His prose was a rallying cry:
“…we shall fight them in the fields and streets, we shall fight them in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if… this island were subjugated and starving… our Empire would carry on the struggle until in God’s good time…the New World…steps forth to the rescue of the old.
With unparalleled eloquence, the prime minister inspired his countrymen leading to the ultimate victory over the Nazi hordes.
Loosely paraphrasing the prime minister, here is my plea.
We must fight Trump in the halls of Congress; we must filibuster his cabinet and Supreme Court appointments; we must donate money, write letters, staff the phone banks, ring the doorbells, and truly make America great again.
Dr. Harry Sobel
Great Neck
