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Viewpoint: The Distractor and Chief

The truth is often disturbing in an inconvenient kind of way. Isn’t it? But there’s no way around this one. Of the many troubling realities about President Donald Trump, one is taking on a disturbing life of its own. Growing up within the weeds of his repeated legislative and personal failures there appears to be one success. “The Donald” has succeeded at willingly trading his title of Commander and Chief for what appears to be an equally influential new position. He has officially become the nation’s “Distractor and Chief.”

His “Reality TV” administration masters the fine art of baiting and switching. He’s even trying to use Federal Indictments of three of his high level campaign people to get away with a kind of presidential okie doke.

Virginia’s Third District U.S. Congressman Bobby Scott has shared his take on the “Russiagate” indictments. He acknowledged the justification. But went on to point out how, while we are talking indictments, Trump is pushing a $1 Trillion tax cut for businesses and corporations and another half trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy. The largest pro business tax cut in U.S. history. No doubt this plan would be a precursor to “draining the swamp” in Washington and dismantling the Federal Government everywhere else.

We are watching talk shows and news programs about indictments while he’s rolling back civil, women’s and personal rights with the efficiency of a Bull in a well put together China Shop.

His discombobulated presidency also feels like it’s having a tragic effect on the collective psyche of the American Public. The nation’s symbols of stability have been destabilized. The White House is now a set for North Korean provocation, for abject bad taste.

It’s now a back drop for disassembling decades of civil rights gains. His open encouragement of “white supremacy” is amplified by an administration literally mired in a treasonous web with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The military, once a symbol of strength, is now a symbol of neutered uncertainty. With each Tweet, he plunges the nation further into the shallow waters of childishness.

Our “Destabilizer and Chief” is heightening a national sense of anxiety the likes of which I’ve never seen in my lifetime. Folks are agitated, anxious, on edge in churches, at work and in almost every facet of life. You can see it in the persona of almost everyone you meet.

Makes me wonder whether this national agitation is somehow giving frustrated people license to initiate mass murder and mayhem from Manhattan to First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

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Perhaps the most encouraging and under reported story nationally is a growing multi-level resistance to the Trump Administration’s mis-behavior. As The Atlantic Magazine’s Peter Beinart writes “The (Federal) bureaucracy, the press, the judiciary, and the public are not only pushing back, they’re having some success.”

So all is not lost. There’s a ready cure for Trump’s assault on the stability of a frustrated nation. The average person can join this push with their own version of a final say so. A vote on Tuesday against the Trump administration’s assault on the nation’s progressive sense of self was a great step against those who would do anything to roll back the clocks of social, political and economic gains among the middle class.

Trump’s party can be stopped with our votes and we can put the nation back on the path to stability. From here on out fathers and mothers take your registered sons, daughters, grand children and cousins with you to the polls.

Keep Voting as a family against a “Distractor and Chief” who’s destabilizing your life and the collective futures of your family.

Dennis Edwards is the Interim-Pastor of Richmond’s Historic 4th Baptist Church. He is an Emmy Award Winning Investigative Television Journalist, a graduate of Virginia Union University and its Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.

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