The Desperate Need For Believable Leadership

Recently a listened to a young American express his support of President Trump and his displeasure with some of the policies of DJT's predecessor and those who worked in the previous administration. Interestingly, he expressed these opinions and also simultaneously invoked some of the values implicit in the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.

While it is true that Clinton has pursued a neo-conservative, regime-change agenda with regard to both Libya and Syria and Obama carried out a relentless assault in the so called war on terror in a variety of countries with whom we are not at war, it is a serious mistake to conclude that Trump is somehow a practitioner of peace. Within the first six months of DJT's presidency, we have been responsible for the massacre of at least 30 civilians (children included) in the failed attempt to capture a 'leading operative' in Yemen, killed scores of non-combatants in the bombing of a mosque in Syria, murdered perhaps as many of 100 citizens of Mosul in Iraq, and detonated the largest explosive device since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Afghanistan, leaving perhaps hundreds dead in its wake. Add to this, Trump's ongoing support of Saudi Arabia's relentless and merciless attack on the rebel forces in Yemen which has incurred the onset of famine for an otherwise innocent population of long suffering civilians. Hardly the work of someone dedicated to deescalating the use of violence in the conduction of foreign affairs.
As for Trump's efforts to counter the MSM...his dissatisfaction with corporate media has less to do with attacking the corporate underpinnings of how information is framed, packaged, and delivered to the American public and much more reflective in his personal angst regarding unfavorable characterizations inconsistent with his own inflated and pathetically tenuous self image.

The TPP deal's demise to the contrary notwithstanding, identifying the president as a representative of positive, progressive, or sustainable future change is a bit like employing the arsonist to oversee and administer fire safety for an emerging community.

What was significantly reveled in this young person's statement was a deep dissatisfaction and mistrust of establishment politics and the people who have extolled the virtues of maintaining the status quo in its many and varied forms. Democrats who believe that they are destined to inherit the anti-Trump sentiment and be automatically elevated back into office seriously misread the prevailing and persistent need by a new generation of voters who long for genuine and authentic confrontation of the issues at hand and a voice of leadership which is reflective and responsive to the real challenges of the coming years. It is sad and perhaps a bit frightening to contemplate that, for at least this one young citizen, Donald Trump represents this abiding need for change.