No end to corruption

By Dr. E. Faye Williams
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist

Each day I get up I’m thinking things with our government can’t get any worse. Despite my hope for a better day, things do get worse. All too often another Trump official seems to be coming under fire for some bad act such as allegations of peddling influence, ignoring the bad acts of members of the President’s staff and/or associates, some new allegation about President Trump or his family and on and on!

How could one man have so much smoke around him without there being fire somewhere? One has to wonder what dirt Donald Trump has on some of these people that allows them to either seal their lips or outright defend his apparent corrupt behavior. In nearly three years of his selection, and I say selection because no rational person could believe a majority of the American people would elect someone so unqualified to follow in the footsteps of President Barack Obama, who had the right credentials, right temperament, right family and right values to be president.

The tragedy of what’s happening with our government is that Donald Trump seems convinced that he’s the smartest man in the world. He believes he’s doing a great job. No matter how many crooked things he does, he believes everybody else is the crook! The other day I heard someone say, “When you work for a crook (and stay) you, too, become a crook.”

At one time, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC was keeping a board that listed all who exited the Trump Administration either by being asked to leave or volunteering to leave after getting a taste of what was going on around the White House and various government agencies. The list has gotten so long that Rachel can’t seem to find space to place anymore names on the board.

A few months ago, those who judge truth from lies indicated that Trump had told over 10,000 serious lies. They’ve been coming so fast lately that no new numbers are being given! Many of us try to teach young people right from wrong, teach them to be truthful and teach them to be respectful. What can we tell them that makes sense about how this president gets away with so many violations of decency, of our Constitution, of diplomacy and of just plain old common sense?

We deserve to have leaders who play by the rules, and we’ve always been taught that ignorance of the law is no excuse for wrongdoing. When I look at the behavior of certain Members of Congress, I wonder how they sleep at night and what their own children think of them when they see their parents defending this president or remaining silent in the face of gross behavior. Some of them give such silly arguments and defenses in support of this man that it’s mind boggling. This man is bringing this country so far down that we may not be able to emerge from the sorry depths to which he has taken us in our lifetime.

Normally, someone rises up to say, we shall not continue to allow this foolishness but where is that person who has the power to do so now? We deserve better than what we have running our government. The 2020 election seems so far away to wait for a resolution. Impeachment alone is not good enough if Republicans in the Senate are not willing to show some courage to get our country back on the right track. Let us pray that all is not lost and that Republicans will have an awakening before too long. In the meantime, let us not sit still and wait. Let’s do something that makes a difference.

Dr. E. Faye Williams is National President of the National Congress of Black Women, Inc.

This article originally published in the October 14, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.