A New Day In America (?) Let's Wait and See

I was at the doctor's office when Donald John Trump placed his hand on the Bible and took the oath of office making him the forty-fifth president of the United States.  In my sixty plus years on this earth, I have seen presidents come and go.  The first president I remember caring anything about was John F. Kennedy.  Everyone was excited when he was elected president.  Of course, I lived on the Southwest side of Chicago so the fact that he was a Catholic AND a democrat made him the perfect man to be president of the United States.  In Chicago you were democrat and if you lived on the Southwest side of Chicago, you were most likely Catholic.  I remember the day he was killed.  The nuns ushered us into the church where we prayed for him, to no avail, as he died anyway.  Next came LBJ who I think was really glad to take over. LBJ did not work out so well and Nixon next infested the White House.  He did get us out of Viet Nam, the place that Kennedy and Johnson got us into but beyond that, he was a bully and as the tapes revealed he suffered from a potty mouth.  He resigned and Ford stumbled into office, did not do a whole lot and was followed by Jimmy Carter.  In my opinion, Jimmy Carter was the most honest president that served during my lifetime. He was a bit of a bungler and was in the White House during the Iran Hostage Crisis.  He lasted just four years when an actor turned politician Ronald Regan entered the White House.  Many have good thoughts about him but I am still waiting for some of the trickle-down to trickle-down to me. Then came Bush the Elder, followed by Bill Clinton a sex maniac who almost achieved fame at becoming the first president to be impeached. Billy did win reelection and turned his office over to George Bush the Younger who got us embroiled in the Middle East. George moved out of the White House and Barack Obama moved in and for the next eight years presided over a legislative branch that blocked him at every turn.  He did get his health care initiate passed and spent the rest of his time chipping away at religious freedom.  Mandating that religious groups would have to go against the conscience and supply contraception through their insurance plan.  While he was in office it almost became against the law to be a Christian or to support Christian values.  Those that did were accused of promoting hate speech. The democratic policy during the eight years of Obama deserted the working people of the land.  Instead, it pulled its support from those whose agenda contained traditional American values and gave their support whose beliefs included abortion on demand, gay rights, gay marriage, and mandated every sort of thing the Christian working man was against.  Obama was a good orator.  I admired his ability to turn a phrase.  Unfortunately, I believe that that is all he was good at, speaking. I do not think that he had a clue what the working class Americans were thinking.  It was his blindness to the needs of the common person that cast the democrats into the cold at the mid-term elections and finally gave the GOP power in both houses. That brings us up to today.

Today we have a president in office that is different than any other president that we have had in modern times.  He is a president who does not necessarily follow the beliefs of the GOP in full.  He is a man that is used to winning, a businessman who likes the thrill of the deal.  He is not so much of the diplomat but is rather more of a man filled with thunder and bombast.  I have not made up my mind about Donald John Trump yet.  In his first days, he and his vice president have done things to promote Life.  The president himself mentioned the Walk for Life and challenged the press to cover it and the vice president actually gave a speech at the event, the first time that has happened, ever.!  He also has recognized that the Syrian Christians are being slaughtered for their faith and has said that they will receive preference in immigration matters.   In this respect, DJT is a breath of fresh air for those of us concerned with the sanctity of life from conception to natural death and for those of us concerned about the Christians being martyred in the Middle East. For eight years under Obama, we had to watch while abortion was touted under the name "women's health care" and the family and the law of God was trampled upon under the guise of "equality.  Marriage in America will never be the same, it has been changed forever with the legalization of same-sex "marriages."  We saw under Obamacare the mandate that even the Little Sisters of the Poor would have to provide contraception to their employees in spite of their religious views opposing it.  DJT will disable this clause and help build up the right of a Christian to be a Christian.

Donald also has some things on his agenda that are downright silly.  The so-called wall between Mexico and the United States is dumb.  I believe that we should keep illegal aliens out of our nation. My grandparents, on both sides of my family, immigrated to the United States and were admitted legally.  They were honest, hard-working people who obeyed the law.  There was one minor incident when my grandmother was told to stop making bathtub gin, she was turned in by her best friend.  Other than that, they all learned the language and became naturalized American citizens.  For those who are here and are undocumented, DJT proposes to round up the ones who are criminals, are in gangs, who are violent, and to send these illegals back to where they came from.  I support this idea but I do not support deporting families that are here that are working to make something of themselves, who are obeying the law.  These are the types of people we need to have in America.

DJT also wants to make sure that the Muslim immigrants granted entrance to America are vetted to make sure that they pose no threat.  These immigrants are coming from lands that have been traditionally hostile to America.  I see nothing wrong with this. America gathers its strength and power from its diversity. Every one of us here (except Native Americans) are the result of people who left their homes and came to America to embrace life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We do not need people who are radically opposed to our ideals and who would resort to violence to attempt to bring their radical form of Islam to the forefront.

I am not going to tell you whom I voted for in the past election. It is my business and I will allow you to conjecture on your own.  For now, I have to say that I am going to take a wait and see approach to our new president.  I am going to pray for him and our country.  I am going to wish him good health and a clear mind.  To do otherwise would be like wishing the pilot of the airplane you are riding in to crash the plane.  There are interesting times ahead for Americans.  By the way that is an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."