A Warning

by Anonymous

President Trump has been in power for several years, and he’s been thoroughly tested. The results are revealing. It’s been said that character is a tree, and reputation its shadow. The character of the president casts a long shadow across all Americans, and in time, his reputation will become our own. As you read this chapter ask yourself: Is this who we are? If not, is this who we want to be?

I have to admit, it’s knee-slappingly hilarious to watch Trump tackle this issue. In late 2015, he said his wall would “be made of hardened concrete…rebar and steel.” At one point in 2017, he proposed that the wall be solar powered to generate clean electricity. A month later, he said that “you have to be able to see through it.” The wall was no longer a concrete slab, but “a steel wall with openings.” Then the wall became “artistically designed steel slats.” Then, in 2018, the president claimed he could have “a steel wall—or it could be a steel fence—but it will be more powerful than any of the concrete walls that we’re talking about.” At the end of 2018 he said “an all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED, as has been reported by the media,” only to tweet less than a week later that “We are now planning a Steel Barrier rather than concrete.” Midway through 2019, he flipped again, touting the “brand-new” “high steel and concrete Wall” that he’d already built and previewed that there was much more to come. Officials would come out of meetings on the subject looking like they’d stepped off the Gravitron at the county fair. The president was constantly changing the design. Ten feet high or fifty feet high? Electric fence or not electric fence? He couldn’t make up his mind, officials complained. They were pulling their hair out in frustration. Trump’s shifting preference in aesthetics seemed to be matched only by his shifting explanations for the construction timeline. At variou...

America didn’t become an assertive country, the story goes, until it boldly intervened in the First World War and turned the tide against fascism. This is an oversimplistic rendering.

This is an apparent mistake. WW2

He enthused to reporters about Kim Jong Un’s ability to control his population: “He’s the head of a country, and I mean he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks, and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” —Ulysses S. Grant