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No. 1 Signature!

This is where we are now:
our President is governing by proclamation,
and inordinately proud of his signature.

Every time he signs a miserably crafted order,
he holds it up so that we can see
his very bold, decisive, reality-changing signature.

That is the problem with Twitter:
you really do not have a place
for a really good signature.
"#TrumpRules!" does not cut it.
It is like a ball-point alongside a Montblanc.

I will not say that Ego is our President.
I will say that Ignorance and Narcissism are.

Like many people in business,
Donald Trump seems to believe
that government should be run like a business;
like a car dealership, or a hardware store;
like a for-profit college or business school;
like a Trump business.

Government is not a for-profit business:
it is a solemn pact to be a nation;
to live in peace and to provide for the common good.
Government is how we manage our life together,
how we provide for our common defense and civil order,
how we educate our children to understand and achieve
what it is we have committed ourselves to,
how we treasure our resources, build roads,
provide clean water, and maintain the health of us all.

The aim is not to make a profit.
It is to achieve common purpose.
While profit-making companies are useful,
they are not our main purpose.  In fact,
it is the role of government to insure
that profit-making companies also serve
the larger goals of governing ourselves.

Good government is a balancing act.
In a democracy, a republic, it is the case
that a flurry of opinions exist about everything,
and those voices must be heard, and negotiated.

And like it or not, we are just one of the nations of the earth.
That is a balancing act, too.  What Germany, or England,
or China wants is not necessarily what we want,
so we learn to juggle, and wrestle, and dance.
Boasts about being No. 1, or America First and Finest, are childish.
Howling that our god thinks the USA should win all the games is infantile.
It is like demanding that every transaction should give us the advantage.

There are a lot of good things about America,
but that is true of Ireland, too, and France, and Finland.
And in many things, we are not first, but about twentieth.

To mangle a Barry Goldwater quote,
ignorance in the service of government is no virtue,
and learning something instead of parading a stunning signature is no vice.


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