{COMMENTARY}
Predictably, President Trump is back in the news with his misogynistic attacks on a cable news host. “Shocking!” say even members of his own party, “beneath the dignity of the office,” “embarrassing to the nation,” blah, blah. Really? Who didn’t know by now that the president is a crude boor, with the ethics of a schoolyard bully and the antics of a professional wrestler?
At the risk of giving the president more credit for political guile than he deserves, I suggest we ignore this latest outburst, and any others that follow (and who doubts for a moment that there will be more?), to stay focused on the far greater danger – the dismantling of what remains of the social safety net and the dismembering of the commons in all its forms – as the very deliberate core component of a corporate-funded right-wing agenda.
Even if the current horrible proposal to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act fails, the gang of neo-liberal kleptocrats will be back in no time with “improved” plans for health care, for the environment, for education, for Medicaid/Medicare/Social Security equally horrible in the long run. The assault on democracy, and everyone in the nation except the well off, will continue, as Trump, the “insane clown president” in Rolling Stone reporter Matt Talibbi’s telling image, provides tragi-comic distraction.
Our task is threefold: 1. Denounce but waste little time and energy on Trump’s nonsense; 2. Resist regressive policy initiatives; 3. Articulate a new vision of a genuinely democratic solidarity society that will resonate with the vast majority of Americans.
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 