Anyone that doesn’t believe that the hatred dividing is directed at one man is summarily fooling themselves. Anyone who believes that political and ideological differences are the source of the constant and continual conflict in our government is equally shielded from reality.
That man, of course, is our current sitting president.
While Trump was running for his current office, he suffered no end of slings and arrows to be president, not the least of which was penny-ante “trump-ed”-up charges in order to ensure that he was not to be elected.
Now that he is in office, the lawfare continues, only this time instead of trying to make the man unelectable, it’s now used to hamper his ability to perform the duties of the office.
Many of Trump’s actions have ended up almost immediately in court. For instance, his use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal aliens who were convicted or suspected of serious crimes. The federal district court judge even went so far as to demand — of the executive branch, no less — that the plane carrying the deportees be turned around.
The extremely necessary and certainly controversial Department of Governmental Efficiency has been hamstrung at every turn, even with department functionaries refusing to cooperate by providing requested information.
Several employees who have been terminated have sued, essentially claiming that even though they work in an at-will agency, they cannot be fired (an appeals court found that they could but waffled about it being permanent). The government’s plan to provide buyouts for superfluous employees was challenged, as is many of Trump’s policies.
Another area of concern has been the military, and generals and commanders of all stripes have openly defied the chain of command, claiming that Trump doesn’t speak for the military despite his position as commander in chief. And while the military isn’t the only department under the executive branch that has been openly defiant, it’s just part of the whole position of the entrenched bureaucracy that has its own idea how the country should run and refuses to listen to the will of the people.
The solutions we need require a broad variety of ideas, voices and a huge smattering of common sense, as well as a healthy respect for the law and the chain of command. When the opposition insists of throwing up roadblocks, or putting every move through the lens of a lawsuit, problems will never get solved, and anything that the country needs will take an excessive amount of time to accomplish and cost infinitely more than necessary.
That, to my mind, is precisely the opposite direction this government needs to go.
Ultimately, this is simply a way to deny the results of an election and, through activist judges, enact policies that better suit the political minority. There is nothing at all to suggest that we as a people understand how to compromise and discuss issues, or whether we ever will unite as a country.
Tony Farkas is editor of the San Jacinto News-Times and the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
