In the Crosshairs
Now we can add five more names to the list.
Last week’s mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis continues the apparently endless stream of gun violence that has gripped this terribly misguided nation.
I’ve worked at small newspapers, so this latest attack is particularly disturbing.
I think of the newsrooms in Pennsylvania and Connecticut where I used to ply my trade and see how easily it would’ve been for some gun-toting lunatic to walk in and start shooting.
Yes, the shooter had a personal beef with the newspaper, but we can’t ignore the fact that Trump—I refuse to call him president—has declared the press “the enemy of the people,” that he has repeatedly labeled any unflattering story as “fake news” and encouraged the crowds at his vanity hoedowns to jeer at reporters.
I’ve covered many seminars about corruption in the business world and one phrase that I’ve heard repeatedly was “tone at the top”—meaning how the behavior of a company's leaders can have a major influence on the actions of the rest of the staff.
If your C-suite people are being honest, your employees are likely to follow suit because of the example that management has set. Likewise, if the top executives are flipping the bird at the very notion of integrity, well, why should the underlings behave any differently?
The tone at the top of this country is vile.
We have a lying, thieving, and possibly traitorous megalomaniac occupying the White House, who surrounds himself with a mob of grifters and bootlickers.
We have Border Patrol officers taking children away from their parents, while that smirking Aryan chimp Jeff Sessions cites scripture to justify it—the very same passage that was used by Colonial Americans loyal to the Crown and slave owners who wanted to hold human beings in chains.
Conceived in Liberty
And we have an administration and congress hellbent on making the rich richer and corporations unaccountable.
I’ll never understand how middle class white people could ever sign off on tax cuts for the wealthy.
Do you seriously think these money-grubbers are going to share anything with you? They got rich by inheriting their millions from their daddies and keeping that money in the family.
The shake-up at the Supreme Court is the latest blow to the country I love. Trump will undoubtedly nominate some free market ideologue who will rubberstamp all the Republican talking points and make them the law of the land.
I keep thinking of the sequence in It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey sees what his world would be like if he had never been born.
This includes learning that his beloved hometown of Bedford Falls has been turned into a vice-ridden rat’s nest called “Pottersville” after the diseased old man who owns just about everything.
George realizes his value and sees his town restored. But that’s only a movie.
Life is a little more complicated. Right now, this country is well on its way to becoming Trumpville as a diseased old man and his cronies do everything they can to make life easier for themselves and their rich buddies.
With each terrible incident, I hear people say “we’re better than this” but that’s not slowing down our moral decay. This well-funded minority is turning this country into an angry tribe of self-centered cretins who will believe anything as long it conforms to their own twisted world view.
Happy Fourth of July.
Last week’s mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis continues the apparently endless stream of gun violence that has gripped this terribly misguided nation.
I’ve worked at small newspapers, so this latest attack is particularly disturbing.
I think of the newsrooms in Pennsylvania and Connecticut where I used to ply my trade and see how easily it would’ve been for some gun-toting lunatic to walk in and start shooting.
Yes, the shooter had a personal beef with the newspaper, but we can’t ignore the fact that Trump—I refuse to call him president—has declared the press “the enemy of the people,” that he has repeatedly labeled any unflattering story as “fake news” and encouraged the crowds at his vanity hoedowns to jeer at reporters.
I’ve covered many seminars about corruption in the business world and one phrase that I’ve heard repeatedly was “tone at the top”—meaning how the behavior of a company's leaders can have a major influence on the actions of the rest of the staff.
If your C-suite people are being honest, your employees are likely to follow suit because of the example that management has set. Likewise, if the top executives are flipping the bird at the very notion of integrity, well, why should the underlings behave any differently?
The tone at the top of this country is vile.
We have a lying, thieving, and possibly traitorous megalomaniac occupying the White House, who surrounds himself with a mob of grifters and bootlickers.
We have Border Patrol officers taking children away from their parents, while that smirking Aryan chimp Jeff Sessions cites scripture to justify it—the very same passage that was used by Colonial Americans loyal to the Crown and slave owners who wanted to hold human beings in chains.
Conceived in Liberty
And we have an administration and congress hellbent on making the rich richer and corporations unaccountable.
I’ll never understand how middle class white people could ever sign off on tax cuts for the wealthy.
Do you seriously think these money-grubbers are going to share anything with you? They got rich by inheriting their millions from their daddies and keeping that money in the family.
The shake-up at the Supreme Court is the latest blow to the country I love. Trump will undoubtedly nominate some free market ideologue who will rubberstamp all the Republican talking points and make them the law of the land.
I keep thinking of the sequence in It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey sees what his world would be like if he had never been born.
This includes learning that his beloved hometown of Bedford Falls has been turned into a vice-ridden rat’s nest called “Pottersville” after the diseased old man who owns just about everything.
George realizes his value and sees his town restored. But that’s only a movie.
Life is a little more complicated. Right now, this country is well on its way to becoming Trumpville as a diseased old man and his cronies do everything they can to make life easier for themselves and their rich buddies.
With each terrible incident, I hear people say “we’re better than this” but that’s not slowing down our moral decay. This well-funded minority is turning this country into an angry tribe of self-centered cretins who will believe anything as long it conforms to their own twisted world view.
Happy Fourth of July.
Comments
I think the so-called "PC culture" can get on some people's nerves, but it never ceases to amaze me how lower middle class white people consistently vote against their own interests.
Tax cuts for the rich, deregulation--these things only benefit the 1% but somehow Joe Sixpack thinks he's going to get some goodies, too. So much of this is rooted in race, of course, which is why Republicans keep pushing race every chance they get.
Let me know how the book is and take care!