Lashing out against tweets from twit

It’s almost become the news judgment equivalent of “dog bites man,” President Donald Trump uses his Twitter account to post yet another rant that somehow singles out Mexico for everything The Donald wants to believe is wrong.

The latest anti-Trump retaliatory rant … 

Although there’s something many of the ideologues who chant and cheer every time Trump spews more rhetorical trash ought to keep in mind – the level of contempt is returned.

AND IN THE end, the amount of contempt people wind up feeling toward the United States is escalated – because many figure we were either stupid enough to vote for the buffoon OR were to weak to prevent a man who couldn’t get a majority of the vote from rising to the presidency.

Seriously, people ought to see and/or hear the trash talk that comes from Mexican-Americans whenever the topic of Trump comes up.

Much has been written and spoken of the number of piñatas made in the image of Donald John Trump. Since the ultimate purpose of a piñata is to be smashed by partygoers, it gives people the chance to vent their contempt by taking a two-by-four upside the paper-mache skull of the presidential image.

There also are many t-shirts printed up that take the image of Trump in vain.

… based off the hot-sauce logo

I COULDN’T HELP but notice one shirt I encountered just this weekend when I ventured into the Taste of Mexico festival – held in various cities across our nation. I spent a little bit of time Saturday at the one in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood.

The shirt was a mock-up of the Tapatio hot sauce logo – only turning the product brand name into a Spanish obscenity, and proclaiming that Trump was all about “hate sauce.”

That, and it reinforced my long-held suspicion that the way to make anyone look ridiculous is to portray them in a sombrero – as this t-shirt did to our sorry excuse of a national leader.

All provoked because Trump himself has a desperate need for someone to bash about, and feels Mexico is an easy target, Largely because it’s right next door. He picks on the one within easy sight. Resulting in the return fire.

Bashing Trump -- literally!

TRUMP’S LATEST TWEETS made Sunday morning were an extension of his threats to impose tariffs that would escalate steadily against Mexican-made goods being brought into this country.

He says he’s more than willing to punish U.S. companies that have transferred operations to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs. As Trump put it in his less-than-articulate manner, companies will be, “brought back into the United States through taxation (tariffs). America has had enough!”

While also referring to Mexico as “an abuser” that is “invading” our society.

Actually, what we, the majority of our society, has had enough of is the notion of Donald Trump as president. It’s the reason a growing number of people – including two members of Chicago’s congressional delegation, Jesus Garcia and Danny Davis – are calling for impeachment proceedings.

Garcia and Davis (below) have joined … 

NOT THAT I think such a tactic would work – because I have no doubt that the ideologue nincompoops who run the U.S. Senate and would preside over any impeachment trial would wind up undermining any effort to remove Trump from office – then try to claim it as “God’s will” that Trump remain in office!

The fact is that we’re stuck with him through the end of next year, and will have to hope the political opposition can put together a credible enough campaign on behalf of a candidate who can defeat Trump at the polling place.

… the impeachment parade

Perhaps then, we’ll be able to look back on all the anti-Mexico rhetoric and find some of it amusing – such as the portrayal of Trump in the Tapatio hot sauce sombrero. Or find it as historically telling as we now view much of the anti-Japanese propaganda of the World War II era.

Or perhaps we’ll regard Trump someday similar to how late night television host David Letterman once put it to right-wing radio host (and Trump proponent) Rush Limbaugh, when he asked him on live television, “Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think to yourself, ‘I am just full of hot gas’?”

  -30-

Improving our foreign relations likely would require dumping the isolationist nitwit chief executive we now have

What are the chances that the recently-completed Winter Olympic Games held in South Korea will kick off a process that could someday result in improved relations with the Communist North Korea?

TRUMP: Gets in the way of solutions?

Probably about the same as the notion that Mexico will some day take on the cost of actually building that ridiculous barricade that President Donald J. Trump has long fantasized about erecting along the U.S./Mexico border!

AS MORE EVIDENCE of how vacuous our nation’s president is when it comes to foreign policy, both issues are in the news these days, with Trump’s stubborn streak standing out as the reason nothing is likely to happen on either front.

Take the ongoing fight between the United States and Mexico over the border wall – the one that Trump foolishly thinks would have any impact on the flow of people between the two North American nations and which he insanely thinks the Mexican government would pay to have built.

Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president, was planning to make an official visit to Washington, D.C. sometime in March to have a one-on-one meeting with Trump. But Peña said he’s cancelling such a trip because of a 50-minute telephone conversation the two presidents had last week.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that Peña doesn’t see the point of antagonistic rhetoric, and Trump let it be known he’d likely use such a Mexican presidential visit to the White House as yet another excuse to spew his trash talk about how those crooked Mexicans were going to be forced to pay the construction cost of a border barricade that many Mexicans feel is blatantly offensive.

THE TWO OF them haven’t had an official meeting, unless you count the face-to-face meeting the two had at an international conference held in Germany.

It also seems there won’t be any real progress made in terms of relations between the two because Trump seems to value having antagonistic relations as a way of getting his ideological nitwit backers all riled up in support of him.

PENA NIETO: Won't meet w/ Trump

Get them to “Blame Mexico!” for whatever, and maybe they won’t pay attention to how little of worth is being accomplished by a Trump presidency, or how much harm is being caused.

Which is how I view the whole situation of the Koreas, where on Sunday South Korea President Moon Jae-In had a meeting with North Korea general Kim Jong-Chol – with hints it could be the first step toward talks that could include the United States.

NOT THAT THE United States had any interest in being part of the token gestures made as part of the Olympic Games in Peong-Chang – Vice President Mike Pence went out of his way to not be a part of anything.

Now I can comprehend the need to be wary – I’m sure that whatever actually occurred from any future talks, North Korean officials would try to spin it into the capitulation of the evil U.S. But talks have to begin somewhere.

And considering that we’re long hearing horror stories about how a North Korea with nuclear weapons and rockets capable of unleashing them on U.S. cities, you’d think this would be a priority.

But I suspect that just as Trump wants a Mexican “problem” so his politically-ignorant followers can have someone to complain about, he also wants a North Korean “villain” to keep people distracted from the many inactions of his presidency.

KIM: Who'd be the crazier in a meeting w/ Trump?

BECAUSE WITHOUT THESE gross exaggerations, we’d have to focus our attention on the fact that while Trump claims to have repealed 67 federal regulatory actions while only enacting 3 new ones, the New York Times reported this weekend that it’s an exaggeration.

More spewing of news as “fake” as anything the National Enquirer ever concocted.

That is, unless you’re all worked up over their recent How the Philly Mob Fixed the Super Bowl report?

  -30-

“Shithole countries” controversy shows how we don’t agree on what is truth

The word has spread throughout our society about how President Donald J. Trump used a vulgar expression to describe certain countries around the world, many of which are on the African continent, as places where we ought to be discouraging the residents of even dreaming of immigration to the United States.

DURBIN: Speaking out against president

Trump made the so-called comments during a meeting he held last week to discuss potential immigration policy reform with members of Congress.

YET A MOVEMENT that has cropped up just as quickly, and one that is being taken up vehemently by some of an appropriate ideological bent, is a claim that Trump said no such thing.

There are those people in full support of this Age of Trump we’re in who say Trump didn’t say it. He didn’t say any such thing. It’s a fairy tale coming from people who can’t get with the program that Trump wants to present for our society.

The effort to discredit has become just as strong as the claim that Trump really was such a buffoon. Although perhaps not as intense as those neo-Nazis who, on the one hand, deny that the Holocaust ever occurred, but then engage in their jokes about how the ovens of Auschwitz were a fate too good for Jewish people.

My own thought, having not been present when the comments supposedly were made, is to admit that it is totally in character with Trump’s persona and past trash talk about so many issues to think he would use such a crude term – and probably really would think such a thing.

IF THAT MEANS I’m siding with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. – who in recent days has become the most outspoken politician insisting that Trump really said it – then so be it.

Although I’m sure the kind of people who want to believe Trump are the ones who want to be critical of Durbin (who was present at the Trump session with Congressmembers) because he has long been a proponent of having our federal government do a significant overhaul of our national immigration policy.

The one that has so many glitches that can make it nearly impossible for some people to make it all the way through the naturalization process to U.S. citizenship.

TRUMP: Are his pants on fire?

Of course, those glitches are appreciated by the nativist element of our society – the ones who really don’t want anyone else being able to gain U.S. citizenship and are amongst Trump’s strongest supporters.

SO DID HE, or didn’t he, say “shithole?”

The ideologues amongst are going to insist he didn’t. I’ve lost track of the number of Facebook dialogues where people try to discuss the issue, only to have someone barge in with their rant that “It didn’t happen” as though they expect to be taken as the final word that ends the discussion.

The second-most common response I’ve encountered is for people to respond by saying the United States has portions that could be classified as “shitholes.” The only point for debate on that aspect is whether a “shithole” is Detroit, Baltimore or South Side Chicago.

Or rural Mississippi, Arkansas or West Virginia?

I’M CURIOUS TO know how long this particular debate will last. And will it be strong enough to be the major debate point of 2018? Or can Trump say something more absurd later this year that will overcome this. I find it hard to believe anything could top this.

Then again, when it comes to partisan political rhetoric, I suppose there is no limit as to how outrageous the cheap talk can get.

It may turn out that the Gallup Organization is the best barometer of public feeling. In their presidential approval rating, Trump had a 57 percent disapproval (compared to 38 percent approval) rating from the public.

So I suspect a majority of our society is inclined to believe Trump really could be that crude. And that there’s nothing anyone could say or do to convince Trump backers that he really did say it.

  -30-

How has this “Age of Trump” impacted the U.S/Mexico foreign relations?

Most of us who have any interest in Mexico Independence Day got our celebrating done last weekend – in Chicago, parades were held in the South Chicago and Little Village neighborhoods. Yet the actual holiday Saturday will be acknowledged in the Pilsen neighborhood with yet another parade.

U.S. acknowledgement of Mexico independence

So on this 217^th anniversary of the date on which Spain’s North American colonies officially declared their independence as a free and sovereign nation, it intrigues me to wonder of the state of relations between our two nations.

PARTICULARLY SINCE OUR current president has gone out of his way to bash about Mexico every chance he can get so as to enhance his status amongst the nativist nitwit segment of our society.

It was right after Donald J. Trump was sworn into office at the beginning of this year that The New Yorker published its own commentary under the headline Donald Trump blows up the U.S.-Mexico relationship. While the Washington Post published a commentary by the former Mexico ambassador to the United States under the headline The U.S.-Mexico relationship is dangerously on the edge. Just a couple of examples – I’m sure you are aware of many more.

Now I don’t doubt the xenophobes amongst us could care less about this. The fact that we shouldn’t want the most significant nation with which we share a border to think of us as a hostile presence seems to allude them.

Mexican cry of Independence

Yet that seems to be a reality, according to a new Pew Research Center study.

SOME 65 PERCENT of Mexicans surveyed now think negatively toward the United States – that’s double the amount compared to two years ago and most-definitely an all-time high.

Yes, this is attributable to the presence of Trump as president – it seems only 5 percent of Mexicans surveyed have confidence that Donald J. will do the right thing with regard to world affairs Admittedly, most foreign nations think the U.S. president is a boob, but Pew surveyed people from 37 foreign nations and the Mexican perception of Trump is the lowest of them all.

It also seems that only 55 percent of Mexicans think that economic ties between their nation and the United States are beneficial – down significantly from 73 percent back in the Obama presidential days of 2013.

It’s not a pretty picture. Trump’s trash talk has created an environment that interferes with the ability of business to get done. Which is ironic, since Trump backers always like to claim (foolishly, I’d argue) that Trump’s business background and leanings supposedly give him an edge in achieving the bottom-line of success.

YET WITH THE activity of recent days where Trump is supposedly willing to consider backing off some of his rash trash talk on immigration policy and consider serious negotiation on issues such as DACA (that childhood arrival policy), it could be a positive step.

Except that Trump has our nativist nitwit segment of society all riled up into thinking that mass deportations of everybody not exactly like themselves are imminent any day now. They could wind up turning on him.

Whereas there are people who think that serious efforts between Mexico and the United States to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement ought to end because Mexico should not negotiate with such a political crackpot as Trump.

A move that truly would hurt interests in both countries – since we should keep in mind that the people most inclined to hate the concept of NAFTA are the ones who have ideological hang-ups about doing business with Mexico. They value their alleged Aryan purity over the almighty dollar.

SOMETHING THE NATIVISTS ought to keep in mind. That for all the hostility they want to spew toward Mexico, the sentiment is similar on the other side of the border. All because of the trash talk.

Mexico Independence celebrations, such as this 1957 parade through South Chicago neighborhood, have become Chicago traditions in their own right

Something we should keep in mind on this date when people in Mexico celebrate their independence, and the Spanish-speaking enclaves of this country also make their efforts to acknowledge el grito – the cry of independence first heard just over two centuries ago.

Something to think about just in case you happen to be amongst those out in the Pilsen neighborhood celebrating the holiday. Or maybe you're celebrating U.S. District Court senior Judge Harry Leinenweber, the Ronald Reagan era-appointed judge (and real Republican, rather than these ideologue-tainted and racially-motivated nitwits who run the GOP today) who on Friday issued the ruling that favors cities declaring themselves to be sanctuary cities and goes against the Trump-era government's threats to cut off their federal funding.

We really are better off as a nation if we manage to co-exist with our neighbors in a peaceful situation. Or at least don’t have them thinking our economic downfall would somehow benefit their interests.

  -30-