Suckers

Here's the news in a nutshell:

The good.

The sad.

And the ugly.  Which is where this post comes in.

Trump once famously said, speaking of the late Senator John McCain, "He's not a war hero.  He was a war hero because he was captured.  I like people who weren't captured."

I could never understood how even Trump could say anything so callous.

But it recently dawned on me that Trump has spent his entirely life trying not to get caught, and thinks that anyone who does get caught is a sucker.

In other words, anyone who serves in the military is a sucker.  Why die (or get captured) for your country when you can get someone else to do it?

According to Trump, anyone who pays taxes instead of avoiding paying them as much as possible is a sucker.

According to Trump, anyone who pays employees and/or contractors instead of declaring bankruptcy (again and again) is a sucker.

Trump's bottom line:  Anyone who acts in a responsible manner is a sucker.

I find this personally and politically distressing, and even frightening.  In my worst nightmares, I would never have thought that my native land would fall under the spell of such a self-obsessed, irresponsible, overgrown child who's not only ignorant but doesn't care and who routinely wages verbal and/or legal war against anyone who gets in his way ("fake news," and Stormy Daniels, anyone?).  Nor did it ever occur to me that, worse yet, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, which have the Constitutional responsibility to protect the United States of America from a would-be despot, would simply refuse to do so, more concerned with being reelected than with upholding the law and serving this country.  America was great until Trump came to power.