The new year again brings new resolve with my efforts to improve my ability to think more clearly.
Here is one productive activity I engaged in during the last three months of 2018 and will continue in 2019:
I expanded my menu of tv news watching from just CNN to include FOX News.
I watched the same amount of news on each channel. I’m usually fine watching FOX until I get to Sean Hannity’s show. Half way through I start thinking I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.
President Trump is actually easier to take than Hannity.
Trump lies, he makes up his own facts, he’s mean spirited, but at least he’s succeeding in implementing his campaign promises, chief among them being his efforts to drain the swamp. Interpretation: he wants to shrink the federal government.
I’ve never seen anything like it. The State Department can’t even get ambassadors appointed to places like South Korea. In most instances, he serves as his own Chief of Staff. And by forcing the recent shut down of the government, he continues to be loved and supported by his radical populist base, who would love nothing more than to dismantle the entire federal bureaucracy.
However, lately the question I hear the most is, will Trump be impeached? I hope not. I’ve been through two impeachments in my life. One was justified in Nixon’s case. The other one was Clinton, and was not.
But then, during the Bush administration they called for his impeachment. The same happened during Obama’s time in office.
Now, they call for Trump’s impeachment. These days no matter who is in office, some constituency puts forth an impeachment claim.
All this means is that we are now a very divided nation. Maybe we’ve always been divided. Perhaps that’s what American democracy is, and the only times we are united is during catastrophic events like Pearl Harbor.
However, even with these kind of terrible events there are groups which remain disunited. For example, there is a very vocal group that believes 9/11 was a government conspiracy. Wow, I guess in America you can believe whatever you want. You can say whatever you want. You can even act on those beliefs. (The limit of those actions begins when someone is directly hurt physically by your actions.)
Ok, back to this constant harangue of impeachment no matter who is in office. I’m not for it. If I were on the Supreme Court, I would support laws that protected presidents from such attacks. Absent that, there’s nothing inherently wrong in believing a president should be impeached, saying it, and acting on it.
Personally, I do not want Trump impeached. At this point, there is nothing he has done to deserve impeachment. Maybe that’s how watching more FOX News has balanced out my thinking. But, Sean Hannity remains a nightmare in my mind.