Why Can't This Good Good Deed By Trump Go Unpunished?

With a government shutdown hurting its employees and the nation's security, to name a couple of things, Trump ended the shutdown he should have never started. The shutdown was intended to force Congress's hand on funding Trump's Border Wall. But Congress, with its democratically elected representatives, refused to fund the wall.

That Trump would shutdown the government and cause significant suffering for those who do essential jobs for our nation because Congress refused to agree with him was wrong. It is as if Trump is trying to override what is left of our democracy because he could not get his way. And so the shutdown began and lasted over 30 days. 

As Trump relented, the true character of our nation was put on full display and it could not have been uglier. His fellow conservatives blasted him for being weak. But what was his weakness? Was it that he no longer wanted to stiff government employees? Changing his mind to bring relief to those working without pay is being weak? We should all be so weak.

The conservative response to that was that Trump had to stay firm for the sake of his Wall, and reelection. But should The Wall be that important? And the conservative response to his backing down was savage. That savagery should raise red flags among my fellow religiously conservative Christians who follow some conservative icons. Their loyalty is to a conservative movement that has lost all of the compassion George W. Bush claimed it has.

And what was the liberal response? It was mockery because liberals want, almost more than anything, to punish Donald Trump. And in terms of being overly eager to punish others, they are no different than many of their conservative counterparts.

Now I am not a fan of Donald Trump. I do not think that he is mentally fit to be President. Then again, I would say the same about myself. But we do not serve ourselves well when we first seek to punish those politicians who deviate from what we would have them do. And we hurt ourselves when we mock those whose change of mind and/or heart was for the better simply because their previous positions were wrong.

There are many negative attributes to Donald Trump as President. But focusing on those attributes so we can lash out at him only shows how self-destructive we are. That eagerness comes from an authoritarianism that many of us have embraced. And here we should note that authoritarianism comes in other flavors in addition to conservatism.

What our wanting to punish Trump shows is how eager we are to prove our superiority. And in a land where one of its foundational documents stresses the equality of all men, should be people, our penchant for punishing each other shows how unAmerican  we are when Americanism is defined by the beliefs we claim to have.