American Media--Presumptive Moral Arbiters

With the San Bernardino terrorist attack the politicians and media pundits are all out to outdo the other with their wisdom and insight. So forgive me if I want to shake the radio and punch the TV with their arrogance and presumption of being the moral arbiters of our society. My heart pounds as I listen to their derision of those who disagree with them calling them morally base and uneducated.

I am amazed at their condescension to all who see some common sense in Donald Trumps' admittedly politically incorrect statements. He disagrees with these smug arbiters of morality who had no compunction about supporting bombing innocent Muslim civilians, Muslim women and children, in Iraq with the mere assumption that if they were Iraqi Muslims they must be supporters of Al-Quaeda. Brave, honorable Americans were sent to fight and die in a foreign land for a cause that was based on a lie--Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction. 

By the way, I am a college graduate with a Masters degree, an author of historical fiction who finds that much of what Donald Trump says makes sense. Perhaps part of my support for Trump comes from my disgust with the arrogance of the talking heads presuming superiority of values simply because of a journalism degree and a love affair with a camera and the sound of their own voice.

How ironic it is for Dick Cheney, with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands, to deride Donald Trump for espousing “un-American” values with Trump’s call for a moratorium on Muslims entering our country. Cheney was the major hawk beating the war drum to drop those bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan and send those troops into the Middle East calling their efforts a war on terror. Yet most of the terrorists who committed the 9/11 atrocities were from Saudi Arabia, not Iraq! May I be so bold as to point out that this event happened under the watch of George W. Bush. It is an event erased from the memory bank of JEB Bush as he claims that his brother "kept us safe", yet none in the media call him to task for this mammoth misstatement. JEB even has his brother's advisers now advising him! 

These folks in the media and the government are culpable for the world situation with which we now must deal. It was they who supported our country's interjection into an ant bed of religious wars going back over a thousand years.

And now they want us to let those who created the problem tell us how to fix it? Trust their moral compass?

And you wonder why those who have “experience” in government are so low in the polls?

It is morally okay to drop bombs and kill folks in fighting terror, but it isn’t okay to protect Americans (including Muslim Americans) by slowing down on immigration and actually enforcing the laws already on the books in order to assimilate the vast numbers of immigrants we already have? As for profiling, Presbyterians are not committing acts of terror. It is sane policy to look for terrorists where terrorists abide.

Every day in the news we hear about the numbers of unemployed looking for work. We know that the major cause of discontent among the young who are most vulnerable to radicalization is their feeling of alienation in the country in which they live. Rather than bringing more competition for the economic benefit that draws immigrants to America, it is time to allow the economy to recover so that we can offer these immigrants the hope of a prosperous future they expect to find. And, in the meantime, give those Americans whom the policies of the past have injured time to get their feet back on the ground.

Yet, Trump is being derided as espousing "unAmerican" values calling on the baser instincts of the "great unwashed" with his call for a moratorium on Muslims entering our country. I find this ironic when one considers that the neocons who are lambasting him with all of their power were the ones who had no compunction about bombing innocent Muslim women and children in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria. It is considered moderate and "all American" to advocate carpet bombing all lands held by ISIS whatever and wherever that might be to the degree that "we'll find out if sand can glow in the dark." I dare say it is not Trump's cautious defense of Americans that has stirred the cauldron of jihad but the war dance of the neocons running roughshod over countries and customs about which we STILL lack understanding. 

So we fight and spill more blood, American and Muslim. What if we "win"? What leader will we install to fight our enemies over there? Our nation building record leaves much to be desired. With all the weapons and training we left in Iraq, they still do not have the will to fight. What can we do differently? 

If as The Atlantic article, "What ISIS Really Wants," (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/)
is right, that ISIS is intent on bringing about the apocalypse, the media and its governmental minions are certainly determined to be a participant. War drums pound once more. 

What kind of a crazy world is this?