Yes, Donald Trump and I both want to get rid of the annually challenging concept of daylight savings time. If you’ll pardon the pun, it’s time.
Beyond that, at the risk of overreacting, “May the good lord be kind to us as the next few years transpire.”
Donald Trump’s first four years as leader of a very important nation, a nation that seriously affects our wee Canada, were a train wreck that ended very badly for untold millions of people.
It seemed that a week didn’t go by without another gong show dominating the news from his White House.
Please, don’t remind me of Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway — slapstick, followed by fingernails on a grade school blackboard.
Many long public service careers ended in shambles and his unnecessary public humiliations of both foes and friends were beyond belief.
It would serve no purpose for me, in our hyper-local journal The Lake Report, to call the president-elect Trump names.
Name-calling is sophomoric, so I won’t call him a bully, a felon, a narcissist, a golf handicap sandbagger who regularly cheats on the links, a felon, a sexual predator, a “locker room talker,” a fraud who shamelessly and regularly stiffs skilled tradesmen who have done their work as promised or a vain twit.
Calling him names would take me down to his level.
Years ago, I memorized a short poem that is timely:
“Never fight with a pig. You can’t win. You both get dirty. And the pig loves it.”
Thanks to Herb Capozzi in Vancouver for these wise words. Advice to live by.
But enough. President-elect Trump speaks highly of me, and he is not here in Niagara-on-the-Lake to present his side of the story. So let’s be kind and fair and cut him some slack.
Still, I worry.
He takes office on Jan. 20, a date he is calling “Liberation Day.” This will be serious for our unguarded, but very much observed and monitored, border.
Too, he plans to demand ownership of the Panama Canal. He refers to a treaty negotiated in 1977 and ignores a very clever and appropriate palindrome.
Stop me, as I ramble on to terrain far outside of my expertise or knowledge.
We all know that if the head coach of a team gets caught in a lie, or behaves really badly, he or she should resign. There is an old saying about a snake rotting from the head.
An honourable CEO steps down if caught in a serious lie, for the good of the entire company or organization.
I don’t care how your net worth or portfolio will be affected by the Republican Party versus the Democratic Party. I lose sleep because I love America and Americans.
It pains me that so many of the citizens of this once-great country have put this man in charge.
May the Good Lord be good to us for the next four years. This is serious.
Rambling back one hundred years now. It was 1925 when the very racist, supremacist and anti-Semitic Klu Klux Klan was working very hard to get established in Niagara and other parts of Canada.
Saskatchewan was their most active territory, but Niagara was seeing lots of recruiting activity too. In London, and right here in Niagara.
Can’t believe you didn’t know anything about this dark chapter in our wonderful nation’s history? Drop by our well-stocked local library and borrow Brian Martin’s 2022 book, “From Underground Railroad to Rebel Refuge.”
The well-respected author lives just over in London, and reading this book seems familiar, with street names like Mississauga Road, Gage, Front and Wellington.
Confederate leaders and their families lived happily here in NOTL, known then as America’s Attic, while the danger of being convicted of treason cooled down.
This research reminds me that we have a shocking ability to forget what we don’t want to remember and not to learn what we don’t want to know.
The dark web and social media make our world an increasingly dangerous place. As citizens, we must be vigilant as we monitor our elected officials.
Enough said. May the good lord watch over us.
