Donald Trump's ascendancy to the presidency was predicated on one thing: the idea that a black man was not capable of running the country. It doesn't matter that Barack Obama was light-years ahead of Trump in his ability to elucidate what our country really stands for; or that Obama followed Constitutional principles in his approach to running the country; or that Obama's personal life and  presidential administration were free from any sort of real scandal. (In spite of a hundred attempts to find one.) No, what mattered was that, for an embarrassingly large number of Americans, Obama's blackness disqualified him as a worthy representative of the American people.
   This idea was pounced upon by the Republican party and employed as a dog-whistle wedge issue without actually playing the race card. That they did this cannot be denied, from the 'one-term-presidency', to their persistent unwillingness to work with him on any legislation at all. Their non-stop denunciation of his motives, his birthplace, his religion, his wife's attempts to deliver better food to schoolchildren, etc., etc., etc. The main point in all of it was that Barack Obama was not a worthy individual. It went without saying that he just happened to be a black man. In complete opposition to reality, his presidency was painted as the end of America's greatness.
   So now we have Donald Trump and we can see what an unworthy representative of the American people really looks like. With absolutely zero accomplishments outside of the acquisition of power, the Trump administration is an embarrassment for the whole world to judge. Oh yeah, Trump has stayed busy, issuing executive orders that undo whatever ones Obama had enacted, and appointing young judges to lifetime positions to ensure that the agenda of the wealthy elite is ensconced in the courts for the next forty or fifty years.
   As for undoing some of the foreign policy moves that Obama had made during his two terms in office, we have the Paris Accords on climate change and the Trans Pacific Partnership as two glaring examples of how Trump has undermined American interests abroad. The TPP was designed mostly by the American financial sector to weaken China's grip on trade dominance in the Pacific region. Well, Obama was for it, so the Republicans have to be against it. Now Trump is doing everything in his power to piss off China in the other aspects of national trade issues. He does it all with the finesse of a ham-fisted butcher, his trademark approach to everything. His denial of human induced global warming and subsequent withdrawal from the Paris accords is simply stupid and will set American interests back by twenty years in terms of developing green energy sources. His woeful approach to undermining the Departments of State and Energy is truly frightening and dangerous. I won't even talk about Russia, NATO, Central America, Mexico, and Canada.
   Now we have Trump's lack of statesmanship to provide insight into our most pressing domestic issues-the economy, race and violence. For starters, he is trying to take credit for Obama's success in pulling the economy out of dire straits and establishing an upward trend in employment. Then we have Charlottesville and a vainglorious Commander-In-Chief who cannot bring himself to denounce hate groups without two days of coaching. Why? Because those groups were a significant part of his electoral base. It was racism that got him elected and he knows it. The Republicans know it, too, but they are so enamored with power that they can't bring themselves to denounce his behavior for fear of an electoral backlash.
   Donald Trump didn't recognize integrity when it took him by the hand and walked him through the White House, trying to ensure a peaceful transition of power. The Republican refusal to recognize Obama's integrity, coupled with the abandonment of their duty to America's interests while he was president, managed to mislead the American public into giving them absolute political power and they can't do anything worthwhile with it because they managed to destroy America's trust in democracy along the way.
   Republican lust for power has given us the worst possible president available. Their abandonment of integrity has made our country much worse off than it should be, after we had eight years of true integrity, intelligence and fair-mindedness in the executive office. Too many people are learning the hard way that the color of a man's skin means so much less than the quality of his character.

I know people don't like to hear it, but government regulation is a necessity. One synonym for government is discipline, and discipline done correctly, same as the rule of law, is good for everyone.  Doing it effectively and efficiently is the real challenge, as always.

     Is this not the ultimate irony? A madman starts shooting at Republicans playing softball and who are the heroes that charge the gunman and engage in a firefight to save them? Two black Capitol police officers- David Bailey, an immigrant man from Brazil and Crystal Griner,  a lesbian who's married to another woman. No one denies that their behavior was absolutely heroic in nature, especially the GOP senators and representatives who were saved from being shot. There is no doubt that they will receive Congressional commendations for their actions and that a full joint session of Congress will give them a well deserved standing ovation. Then we can watch to see how those Republicans vote on issues most concerning to blacks, gays and immigrants.

(This is in response to an email from a friend who blames bad parenting for all the mass shootings in recent years.)

 I'm sure that bad parenting is the root cause for some of the shootings, but I think the guy who shot Steve Scalise is older than us and he seems to have led a somewhat normal life until now. It's kind of hard to blame his parents. Some people are just crazy; some people are plain evil, some people have bad events that change their personality; some people are influenced by bad people other than their parents; some people have mental illness that suddenly appears. There are lots of reasons why people commit acts of terror. Frustration about sex, religion and/or politics also leads people to commit desperate acts.
 Also, a lot of people in this country have an abnormal fondness for guns and consider the idea of using them as a reasonable approach to solving their problems. American culture glorifies their use. How often do people get shot in movies, TV shows, and video games? It is presented to us as an acceptable thing. A few things for certain: gun violence in America is out of control; easy access to guns is definitely a problem; the American attitude toward gun use is culturally influenced. We'll never make progress in any way without collecting data about these things. The fact that our government prohibits the pursuit of knowledge about these subjects makes us look like a country of idiots.

   When we complain about another person's behavior, we are referring to that person's inability to conduct themselves in a reasonably civil manner. We are actually saying that that person doesn't discipline themselves properly, or better yet, they just don't govern themselves well. I believe that this type of self-government is what the founders of our country had in mind when they originally tried to establish a system of law for America. They envisioned an ideal society comprised of self-governing individuals, whose system of laws would serve to the benefit of everyone by limiting potential conflicts of interest. Self control, self government, would be the ultimate expression of their freedom.

   This is why a lack  of seriousness about self government is so hard to comprehend. When Walter Williams writes about a population hoax (Another View, The Advocate, 6/5/17), he gives a definition of overpopulation as "when an ecological footprint of a human population in a given geographical location exceeds the carrying capacity of the place occupied by that group." Then he proceeds to give the population densities of Hong Kong, Congo, Somalia, and Singapore, with numbers that are quite probably correct for those areas. He launches from here into a heap of conclusions about how horrible are the U.N. programs based on population moderation.

   Please notice that not once does he mention anything about the carrying capacity of those locations. He leaves out half of each equation. He gives us fractions that have numerators but no denominators. It's an utterly wrong approach to the problems of overpopulation. It's quite incomprehensible when one considers that Mr. Williams, who serves as a member of the elite when it comes to the formation of public opinion because he is a regular contributor to the editorial pages of this newspaper, doesn't possess the self discipline required to address a real problem head on. It seems to be a deliberate hoax. He wants to create a hoax about population, to the effect that we need more people in the world. As if more people is the solution to our inability to govern ourselves better.

   He confirms as much when he states that "The greatest threat to mankind's prosperity is government, not population growth." No, Mr. Williams, the greatest threat to mankind's prosperity is a lack of government- especially the lack of self government by members of society's elite.

Our president Trump told us long ago, and many times, that his only moral is to win, to beat the other guy. We, on the other hand, see the presidency aspirationally - we expect our president to be capable of making the right decisions, and to have the desire to do so, i.e., to have a conscience guided by the basic moral principles acknowledged and embraced by a community of rational citizens. Trump has neither the capability nor the morality. Rather, he sees every situation as either a challenge to his person and possessions or an opportunity to advance himself or gain more possessions. To put it sharply, he is a sociopath. Meanwhile, the party of Lincoln watches quietly on the sidelines for its chance to do the only thing which animates it - to better the position of the winners in our society, the rich. It is sacrificing our common morality for more money for the moneyed people. Lincoln would be ashamed and angry. So should we.

   Donald Trump is blaming Barack Obama for yesterday's gas attack on Syrian citizens! Could he be more irresponsible? Do an internet search for 'Trump blames Obama' and see how many listings appear. At some point, Trump has to accept the fact that he is now president and, at the very least, make an attempt to look the part. He's the new sheriff in town and somebody just murdered scores of innocents on his watch. Talking about the old sheriff being weak just doesn't cut it.
   Maybe, just maybe, the fact that this administration recently made statements to the effect that Bashar Al Assad's tenure as the leader of Syria will be determined by a vote of the people. Well, we can see where an election in Syria would be headed after Assad kills everyone who opposes him.
   Apparently, Russian warplanes assisted in the attack and this has to trouble our current president immensely. It's very easy to imagine Vladimir Putin coordinating with Assad in this attack as a way to test Trump's willingness to challenge Russia. If Trump doesn't react forcefully, all the distraction about Obama will be ignored and his ties to Russia will be ever more obvious. Putin is nothing if not aggressive and this is a perfect way for him to test the water of Trump's wading pool.
   We're just beginning to see how deep the level of our president's understanding of the world really is. Just like health care, 'Who knew foreign relations could be so complicated?'