“Disruptor” or Wrecking Ball?

(The following column appeared in The Evening Tribune in Hornell, NY on June 14, 2019.)

At a recent town hall meeting in Hornell, Congressman Tom Reed, when asked about the policies of our president, said he appreciates Donald Trump as a disruptor. Isn’t that the cutest? (deflection)

What’s not to love about the way our president cozies up to murderous dictators (Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin), abandoning our nation’s long-standing advocacy for human rights and pretending that North Korea and Russia are our friends? After all, Kim sends him beautiful love letters; and Vlad strongly denies that he attacked our federal election process in 2016—so our intelligence agencies are just flat out wrong. Oh, that’s precious.

After Trump called white supremacists in Charlottesville “very fine people,” hate crimes increased by 17% nationally. With Kavanaugh in place on the Supreme Court, several states have passed laws that completely overthrow women’s constitutional right to bodily autonomy. And in what can only be explained as ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome) Trump has reversed every rule and regulation he could find pertaining to climate change mitigation, making our country a threat to the world. That is downright adorable!

Trump has replaced hard-won trade agreements with tariffs that hurt our farmers and could destroy our alternative energy industries, lying about who will pay those tariffs and telling us our country is raking in millions of dollars. In fact, American consumers are the ones shelling out millions of dollars to cover the tariffs in what is basically a tax on all of us and a death sentence for the family farm. That’s our guy, disruptor through and through. 

Congressman Reed could stand to learn from his hero and do some disrupting of his own. How about demanding that Congress rein in the pharmaceutical companies that are extorting millions of dollars from Americans who must choose between food, shelter, and drugs just to survive diabetes or cancer? How about disrupting the mass murders of children in our schools by supporting sensible gun policies and removing weapons of war from the marketplace? How about disrupting the Kool Aid party and telling your constituents the truth about the Mueller Report? 

There must be 1000 ways Mr. Reed could be a disruptor in his own right and do something that’s actually good for our country. Call for a halt to our president’s attack on the CIA and FBI (including his recent announcement that they will not be allowed to do their jobs vis á vis N. Korea). Kindly ask him not to collude with our enemies in the next election (even though he has already announced that he intends to). Demand, on behalf of the millions of people now under water in our heartland, a serious approach to climate change. I could go on and on.

The 23^rddistrict needs a representative in Congress who is rational in the good old-fashioned way where right is right and wrong is wrong, where there is such a thing as truth, and facts actually matter. Most of the people out here are not fooled. We can see that the emperor has no clothes, and the “disruptor” dodge is gas-lighting. We are insulted by this, and we deserve better.