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Carnes: Justice a bitter pill to swallow (column)

Richard Carnes
My View

Editor’s note: Find a cited version of this column at http://www.vaildaily.com.

When the going gets tough, the tough hold a campaign rally to ensure the insecure man in the golden mirror has his enormous ego stroked to the point he can sleep well enough at night believing his throne is safe from any and all who might possibly criticize his words or actions.

Mass delusional therapy sessions for the gullibly ignorant.



And now, our schizophrenic Monarch-in-chief has decided the longest war in our nation’s history should be extended indefinitely because we need to continue avenging those who died avenging those who died on 9/11.

No leader will ever admit any American deaths were in vain.

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“We’re going to have a big, beautiful war,” he said. “Although there are very fine people — on both sides — it’ll be the best war, and the terrorists will pay for it.”

At least I think that’s what he said, but perhaps he was referring to another subject.

Yet, just like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Heir Donald Trump is stumped when it comes to a definition of “winning.”

Over and over again, history has proven that ideologies cannot be defeated, and Al Queda, the Taliban and ISIS are all religious belief systems, not nations. Each is based upon whose version of the current 4,200 recognized deities is the only one that actually exists.

Trump insists our troops will “fight to win,” but if 100,000 troops have not worked in 16 years, how will another 4,000 finish the unjustifiable job?

And, oh yeah, we can’t have any more of them “funny boys” involved in the mix, either.

At the same time, we have one racist pardoning another in the form of an 85-year-old sheriff who defines justice as building tent cities for inmates, forcing them to wear pink underwear and serving green bologna sandwiches to the delight of the alt-right media and supporters.

In his illustrious career from 1995 to 2015, Ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office in Phoenix spent $142 million on legal fees, settlements and compliance costs due to questionable tactics, speculative inmate deaths, discrimination lawsuits and his uncanny ability to lock up legal “Hispanic-looking” Americans until they could prove they were Americans.

In 2011, he was ordered by federal court to stop the illegal racial profiling, but the attention whore publicly announced his intent to defy the order and, six years later, was convicted of criminal contempt.

A kindred spirit with Trump, since they both milked Obama’s birth certificate for everything it wasn’t worth, the president thumbed his self-serving nose at the American people by defying the entire judicial process, granting a complete pardon before Arpaio was even sentenced and sending a crystal-clear message to all who might testify against him that they do not have to be honest because he is King and will pardon whomever he wishes.

Trump is incapable of rising above this mud because he dug the pit and is continuing to fill it with water himself. The circle of Trumpette wagons keeps getting smaller and smaller, and all we can sadly expect is more therapy sessions.

While justice may be bitter, the truth will be much harder to swallow.

Richard Carnes, of Edwards, writes weekly. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.


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