Chris Jepson: To debasement now

Psssst. Wanna know a secret? It’s about all of us. Here goes: Canadians are laughing at us. They think Americans are a bit daft.

A highly educated couple I know in their 30s took jobs as professors in the Canadian system of higher education. While the husband was traveling, their young child became ill and the mother took him to an emergency room. When she started to pay, they told her to put your wallet away. Such care is covered by the Canadian healthcare system. Not only that, but they asked if a cab should be called to take them home (and offered to pay).

According to these American ex-pats, Canadians laugh at us over our health care system, our bloated military budgets and our undeniable propensity to militarily intervene, willy-nilly, in the affairs of other nations. They laugh at us because we’ve gotten our pious, uptight undies all in a bundle over where people pee. They laugh at us over our politics, too, but unequivocal dread is more the general emotion.

Here’s a fictionalized scenario I can well imagine. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his bootlicking retinue of subservient political hacks enter a golden Trump Tower elevator on the top floor. The elevator operator quickly asks, “To what level, sir, will we be descending?”

Without hesitation, Mr. Trump shouts, “Debasement, now.”

No truer words possible. The Trump candidacy is unquestionably debasing the American political process.

I know. I know. Hillary Clinton used a private server for her email. She was secretary of state during Benghazi, when four Americans died. Hmmm? What else? Oh, yes, of course, she stood by her husband when he lied about having oral sex in the Oval Office.

Aside: Regarding Bill’s less-than-candid responses regarding his White House sexual history, quite frankly, I do not know of any man who, under similar circumstances, would not have lied. And that pillar of moral rectitude, Ken Starr, the man who “prosecuted” President Clinton? What became of him? Well, he was recently forced to resign in disgrace as president of Baylor University for failure to oversee that school’s “morally” suspect athletic programs (he ignored reports of sexual assault). Too ironic.

And, of course, who can forget that Hillary Clinton had the temerity –uppity woman that she is – to attempt to transform America’s health care system to adequately cover all Americans back in the 1990s. For shame. Back to the kitchen woman and scrub those pots and pans.

Should Americans be surprised that Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s choice to be president? Hardly. Oh, many Pubs are shocked –

SHOCKED! – that Trump is their party’s standard-bearer. They must have only recently fallen off the turnip truck because the Republican Party for the past 50 years has been one of separation and marginalization of the races (see: Nixonian Southern Strategy). That is fact. Undeniable fact.

Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric reflects his simplistic thinking. He feigns surprise that white supremacists such as KKK leader David Duke support his candidacy. He belittles his opponents – not their ideas – denigrating them as human beings, their physical qualities, their personalities. Again ironic, because Trump is a shallow, insecure, infantile bully of a child-man.

Donald Trump sings but one note and it goes, “Me, me, me, meeee.”

Every age has its challenges. America needs every good idea it can muster, both conservative and liberal. Trump is not at all about ideas, he’s about vanity.

Should America elect Trump, our Canadian neighbors won’t be laughing. Few of us will.