Love America?

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani claims to know that President Obama does not love America! He further claims this is because Obama was not raised like the rest of ‘us’ and can’t possibly love our nation as those who have been born and raised totally within America’s culture.

What a ditz he is.

I always wondered what bothered me about Giuliani. Now I think I know. He is intellectually bland, perhaps zero. Empathy, logic, search for truth and understanding, allowing differences to exist among those folks different than ourselves, those sort of elements in a person’s character are missing in Giuliani. Oh he played to the masses in his sympathy for victims and families of victims of 9/11. He was masterful at that. A hand holder. We need hand holders from time to time; they are comforting. But governing? We need more substantive qualities – like telling the truth and being positive.

He seems distracted. Only into social things and politics because somehow it feeds his ego, brings him some type of fulfillment that he cannot do for himself.

Thank God he never got far on his presidential journey. As it is New York City suffered under his tutelage. Mayor Bloomberg pulled the city out of its deep morass and rebuilt it carefully and consistently over several years. What previous mayors proved unable to do, Bloomberg set the record straight and proved the others wrong. Or at least ineffectual.

So now, here we have Giuliani again, back in the public eye speaking nonsense much as he has before. Only this time his outrageous behavior is bordering on treason. Like speaking ill of the dead, speaking junk about a sitting President discredits the nation, the office targeted, and the sitting President. It also demeans the coterie of friends who were addressed by Giuliani in the first place. Why do they even listen to him?

I think I know why they listen: because they are people who can only feel good about themselves if they can demonize another person. In this instance it is a political foe they have lost to repeatedly and they desperately want to understand why.

The why is pretty simple: people who focus all their energy on tearing someone down miss working toward the good they think should be the objective of the nation. Trouble is they have no ideas in that regard. Their sole belief is that government is bad in any form, and that government must be shrunk to minimize the damage it can do.

It seems odd to me that people, who claim to be patriots and celebrate American history and the US Constitution, have made destroying what the Constitution stands for their calling card. Only they know what’s good for the country. Only they know who should serve as leaders. Only they can recognize who we should be afraid of, the enemies to be shredded, you know the drill. They are the prophets of doom and gloom. And we should be very afraid. Of what, I've never been certain.

9/11 was a disaster visited on our nation. It happened for many reasons, many too complicated and convoluted for us to understand. This has left many of our people as innocent observers or non-observers of what goes on in our country. They are easy marks for the likes of Giuliani and his pals in his political party.

Sowing fear is their easiest tactic. Finding wedge issues that have no lasting impact on our nation but seem to hit opinion nerves are the strength of the GOP: abortion, gay marriage, religious freedom, freedom of speech – you know the issues that republicans often tout to gain attention. Their sound bites are legion.

Each of their ‘issues’ can be civilly discussed, even debated without harm to the body politic. However when they are bandied about as sound bites little can be done with them. They are mini bombs designed to fuel unrest. Unrest, not factual debate or problem solving.

The energy we lose playing this game would better be spent on studying problems and finding solutions. Even determining proper priorities for solving each problem would be an advancement. But we cannot do this work if our attention is spent on the other nonsense.

Rudy is a master at that nonsense. Voters have rejected him on a national scale before. Strange that his ‘friends’ still listen.

Or is that only the media out to grab ratings?

President Obama loves his family, nation, God and truth. He cares that we get down to business with the nation’s business. Thank God for that!

February 23, 2015