Saturday, December 8, 2018

Glaring Contrasts: Trump Rebuked in George H.W. Bush's Eulogies

photo Huff post.
The state funeral of president George H.W. Bush, for a brief moment in time, was orchestrated to restore a sense of dignity to the Office of the President and the democratic republic for which we stand.

DC looked grand and beautiful. The images of President Bush lying in state in the Capitol rotunda, the ceremony and pomp, brought solemnity. The service dog at the coffin brought humanity. The armed services members and honor guards who carried the coffin and stood watch, disciplined, the embodiment of loyalty, touched a chord of patriotism.

Whatever we may feel about politics, whatever our party, it felt good to be united around a sense of common decency.  All those Republicans and Democrats who filled the National Cathedral sat in common purpose, at least for a time, beyond the polarization and politics rending our nation asunder.

Well, maybe with the exception of Trump, who looked miserable.  He looked like he didn't want to be there, like he didn't belong. So did his wife, who wore macrabre eye makeup that totally hid her eyes, dark, ghoulish, inappropriate. I looked at Hillary, looking straight ahead without acknowledging their presence, and I was with her in silent dissent. Trump has been nasty and vicious to Hillary and to just about everyone sitting in that pew. He really does not belong.

wikimedia 
We are hungry for the return of respect for our institutions, the three branches of government, now enmeshed in the noxious swamp of the Trump regime and McConnell's abuse-of-power..

We are hungry for honoring our immigrant past and diverse present, a diversity so natural and beautiful in the service at the National Cathedral, evident in the choirs, the honor guards, military bands, the families, the pastors, the audience. It felt like the real America was for the moment, for the occasion, on display.

We are hungry for moral leadership and respect for public service.  For "humanness."  A sense of humor would go a long way, too.

There's no getting around it: Every tribute to President George H.W. Bush, whether understated or overblown, every remembrance, every story, was a rebuke of the current occupant of the Oval Office. It's simply impossible not to make the comparison. One appears as the antithesis of the other.

It felt like that when presidential historian Jon Meacham said of his friend Bush that his "life code" was "tell the truth, don't blame people, forgive, stay the course."  Trump is just the opposite.  Mean, vindictive, undisciplined, impulsive, petty, a liar and a con.  His hubris, his unwillingness to listen and learn, is bringing him down.

Faithfulness, loyalty, humaneness.
Trump didn't even offer the appearance of participating in the service.  He sat there in the front pew, arms crossed, like a lump on a log, a man without a practicing religious belief, without spirituality, without moral scruples. No doubt he is as ignorant of the Bible as he is of the U.S. Constitution. He doesn't read.

Nor does he have any idea of what it means to lead a life of public service or to believe in a purpose larger than himself. It's just not there.

To put it bluntly, Trump is so unfit, so bad for America, that any president who came before him looks pretty good by comparison. It's how history is revised.

If anyone who came before Trump didn't lie to the American people daily, if they didn't impulsively say mean things (tweets in the time of Trump) about our institutions, our government agencies, our civil servants, the media, they look pretty good. If they didn't hide their tax returns from the public, have outrageous conflicts of interest, befriend enemies and alienate friends, they look okay. If they didn't act in plain view as if they were above the law, they look even better.

I wasn't a fan of George H.W. Bush when he was president. I railed against his domestic and foreign policies, his trickle down economics, his unwillingness to address the AIDs crisis, the Iran-Contra affair.  I was glad that he signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Clean Air Act. But much of the politics, apparent in hindsight, actually became, on many levels, prelude to the rise of the Trump wing of the Republican Party. The Republicans went pretty low. That wing has now eclipsed the old East coast elite and taken over the GOP.  They now go lower than ever, traitors to our democratic values, the right to vote, the rule of law. Nothing is sacrosanct.

As an historian, I can see how and why the narrative is shifting and will continue to shift. History will look at the documents and the facts, the complicated evidence, the criminal cases, the Mueller investigation,  the impact of social media and the weaponization of information, the flaws and the strengths, the negatives and positives.    

Eulogies at a funeral will not be the defining measure of the nature or success of a presidency.  But in this present case, in the words and stories carefully chosen to remember George H.W. Bush, the eulogies shed a somber light on the current occupant of the Oval Office, and it's not good.






Here's a little history of that train ride that went through small town Texas carrying Bush to his final resting place.  I enjoyed that ride!
The train carrying Bush's coffin from Houston to College Park, TX.
Getty images.
The first President to use a funeral train was President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
"With malice toward none," he said after the Civil War. What a tragedy his murder was. 
Corbia/VCG via Getty Images

Train carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt's coffin across America.
Getty Images. I think that was the last time there was a funeral train ride, until George H.W. Bush. 
This is a good time to remember FDR actually. We need a new New Deal for America. The income and wages gap has gotten worse under the Republicans, who know as well as the Congressional Budget Office, economic gurus, & financial experts that 'trickle down' doesn't work, has NEVER worked. Still McConnell/Ryan/Trump & ignoble Senate Rs rammed through their tax cut for billionaires  and huge corporations knowing it would explode the deficit and our national debt. A recession is coming, hard economic times.  American workers and middle class  will suffer.  The only good thing about the tRump era is the rise of RESISTANCE, the revival of a nationwide REFORM movement, working for change from the bottom up, in town and farms, in our communities. We've also seens a revival of investigative journalism, boding well for our time and the future. 

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