Musings - on the editor's mind

Ken Stern | Jan 09, 20190

In our little town, bucolic and tucked away, almost as isolated as an island, there are those who don’t want the far away world of national politics to intrude. Some will say the paper is partisan and divisive when it criticizes the president. But every one of us living through a historical moment needs to be honest, with each other, our children and ourselves. If, as is increasingly apparent, President Trump is perhaps demented and almost certainly delusional, this paper has the responsibility, an obligation to the entire community, to provide an analysis. Five years after the fact, reflecting back, do you want to wonder why the Weekly News was silent during Trump’s crack up?

Harry Reid, former senator and majority leader from Nevada, and a consummate politician, said in last week’s New York Times that Trump is “the worst president” ever.

Consider: not only has this president, who bragged that he surrounded himself with generals, lost them all and falsely claimed he fired his defense secretary, he shares his musing that he might have been a pretty good general himself.

Do his current actions back him up?

This man, who probably gained the title “The Art of the Deal” by paying someone to make it up, can’t negotiate. He has not with the leaders of China, North Korea or the congressional Democrats. Instead, he is a lone wolf terrorist, holding 800,000 federal employees hostage and destroying our national parks through hostile neglect.

The man is worse than a loose cannon. He is a walking disaster. He is an emperor without clothes.

We fail ourselves when we neither remember history nor consider the philosophy of earlier cultures. For the former, Richard Nixon lied when he said, and this is a quote, “I am not a crook.”

If we included ancient Greece in our current considerations, we would reflect on their warning against hubris.

Trump never wrong? Those in our community who are ever Trumpers are in for a big fall. It is not my fault, and I am not against you because I wrote these words and you read them here first.

I refuse to live in a looney bin just because no one in the Republican Party has the integrity to bell the cat.

The only part of Donald Trump that is Achilles is his heel.

From Merriam Webster: “To the Greeks, hubris referred to extreme pride, especially pride and ambition so great that they offend the gods and lead to one’s downfall. Hubris was a character flaw often seen in the heroes of classical Greek tragedy, including Oedipus and Achilles.”