It has been a harrowing few days. Mostly because we had to get through something which caused the very air we breathe to grieve.
The Bettina Network, inc. – A Lifestyle Community – Defining a Creatively Elegant Lifestyle. And in the subtitles created by our business model, we are a company with diversity at its core. We see the transformational power of diversity on a daily basis. We deal with all religions, races, nationalities and are open enough – some would say arrogant enough – to feel we are beyond bigotry and its inhibitors and destroyers of beauty, life, love, creation.
We wanted to give you an overview of our reaction to the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump as 45th President of these United States, remembering that many of our members live around the world. We are not solely within the United States.
To do this, we kept in touch with many during the day to get their feedback and thoughts as to this new administration; the inauguration; what people took away from it about the future of the United States – to sum up, what is it this whole thing meant to us and what do we see in the future.
We have known for some time, that some members of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle community are strong Donald Trump supporters; some think Obama and God are related; some are too busy to bother; and some are just political junkies. Most THINK – a rare quality these days – and practically all are avid readers (which is one reason Bettina’s Blog comes out with words, lots of words, and not many images, videos, etc.).
As we talked to Trump supporters, many of them have changed their commitments and are no longer Trump supporters. Of those still supporting him they are doing so because they are holding tight to his promise of bringing into being Term Limits for all Congresspeople. That struck us as strange, especially given all that is swirling around Trump today, but basically, their discouragement and dropping of Trump in all other areas has come about since the election and comes from watching him as “President in Waiting”.
Most of the Trump supporters we previously talked to said they turned against him when they heard his Inauguration speech. For the first time, some of them questioned his sanity. Others said it was amazing to see and hear someone give such a speech at such a momentous occasion. They’d heard him before with his claims of this being the best inauguration of all times and the most people in attendance – and even when they saw and were sure he saw the small numbers of people in front of him – he still talked about he and his being the best ever. Donald Trump held to his claim that more people turned out for his inauguration than any other in history. Some 1.8 million turned out for Obama’s inauguration and less than half of that number were now there for Trump. That denial of reality is a Trump hallmark. Even before his term as President of the United States began, he had a very substantial reputation as a liar.
If Trump does not come through with the term limits on Congress he will lose the last group, in Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community, still hanging in and trying to support him – at least the sampling of those we contacted to get their feedback.
For those not supporting Trump – most were beyond simply not supporting him, they had moved to be very afraid of him and what he represented. Their big issue was his bigotry and how that is going to change the country and the world. They were super concerned that Trump thanked “the world” for some of his support. To many, that immediately said his arrogance was way over the top and considered that an admission of his connection to Valdimir Putin, Russia and others like him acknowledging their interference in the American Presidential election. Others were concerned about the clenched fist salute he gave at very particular and seemingly coordinated times in his speech.
The surprise of what came out of this for us was the acknowledgment by everyone of Trump’s lies – with the postscript that even though he lies about everything, the truth seems to always come out, and from him, like highway markers along the way. This comment of his thanking, among others, the world – was taken as one of those highway markers.
Those most frightened by Trump were those who saw this Trump administration as a takeover of the United States by the 1%. Not the “establishment”, but those newly wealthy – as is Trump – and “feeling their oats” and exercising ‘power over’ without any consideration for anything or anyone except themselves. The “fright” comes from the fact that extreme wealth seems to make those having it extremely self-absorbed and not able to see anything outside of their wants. What we heard often was – “wealth blinds” and that old hack saw “power corrupts”.
The theologians amongst us saw this as an example, being worked out in front of us, of how being self-absorbed with nothing around which one allows to mitigate that, being the road to hell. Well – they expressed it better and in greater detail, but we have compressed that long theological argument. The wealthy and self-absorbed being surrounded by Sycophants leads to sin and eternal damnation – or something like that.
Others were concerned about the “Militaristic” forces moving the United States in the direction of a dictatorship with the support that requires. This coming, apparently from the requirement in the U. S. that the Secretary of Defense be a civilian and Donald Trump ignoring that and appointing a military man to that position with others in government and who could and should have stopped that, allowing him to move in that direction. That said to them – it is not just Trump, but he has supporters in all the right places to create an ugly fascistic dictatorship.
Those who were looking towards the next election to begin to make things “right” saw this dictatorship forming itself very quickly and consolidating its gains by its attacks on the Voter laws. Only a handful saw that as a racial move – most saw it as a consolidation of a fascist government in waiting making sure it could continue to shape up its structure and put down roots while uprooting the Republic. Some things that brought this up were the brakes being put on a voting rights case and the voter ID laws being put down and more. Those who didn’t see this as a racist move saw it as using racism to blind us to the fact that this is the next step – after destroying the media – to the establishment of a dictatorship.
The Europeans we talked with were mind blown by Trump’s inauguration speech, which they saw as a parallel to the speeches given by the incoming Nazi’s right after the second world war with its descriptions of America which in Trump’s speech, sounded like a war-torn country immediately after a war that was lost and the country stripped of everything.
Given the wealth of America and the strength of its Armed Forces and everything else, it was seen by most Europeans, especially Germans, as the kind of speeches which were used to allow the structure of Nazism to form within the German government with the help of its citizens. But that was not limited to Germans. Surprisingly, Italians were also upset over the landscape of that speech.
Many heard Trumps’ call to totally eradicate radical Islamic terrorists from the face of the earth as really code for eliminating Islam.
Ridiculous parts of the speech were “the middle class ripped from their homes”. No one missed the fact that with that comment and Mnuchin Secretary of the Treasury that was clearly a comment meant to keep the middle class quiet and supporting Trump while he and his minions raped the country.
Rape came up as a constant theme. Most thought Trump was going to rape the country of every kind of wealth possible and not being able to do it alone, his cabinet members were perfectly chosen to create that perfect storm. Practically everyone in his cabinet seems to have been chosen because they are against what the department they have been appointed to lead stands for – and Congress is going to do nothing about that, except pass along Trump’s appointees. Governor Perry from Texas who many times talked about his burning desire to eliminate and shut down the Department of Energy is now appointed to head it. in spite of all those comments, he now says he has had a change of heart. That was a joke to most. A change of heart to be able to be appointed and it all seemed like a wink, wink, nod, nod to most of those with whom we talked.
What was most amazing to most of our ‘informants’ was Trump’s ability to lie and spread that lie seeming to be so honest in his speech. He talked about jobs going overseas and we need to bring them back – and he said that as though China, Mexico and others were the ones responsible for sending those jobs overseas. The fact that United States Multi-National Corporations are the ones who emptied the factories and eliminated U. S. jobs – not the countries to whom those jobs were exported was nowhere to be heard – neither in the speech, nor in any of Trump’s previous campaign speeches, nor by anyone he has appointed to his cabinet, nor anyplace else in this “Trump Movement.”
Nowhere does Donald Trump make any pledges to bring back the jobs his companies have sourced overseas to other countries – nor has he nor his daughter pledged to bring back such jobs to the United States. Always the finger is pointed at others. His daughter has moved her jobs from China to Bangladesh, but not back to the United States. Clearly, China was coming in for negativity from the “Trump Movement” when we saw that movement happen.
What amazed most is, they haven’t seen any mainline media coverage of this fact. Nothing which analyzes and talks about the Trump family contribution to jobs having been moved overseas.
Also not in evidence is how the people hired in those sweat shops and other factories and places are being used as indentured servants to increase the wealth of Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump and their friends and relatives. They are not jobs uplifting the masses in the countries to which they have been exported. It is just another form of near-slavery because the wages are so low to non-existent.
A few people wanted it known that the fact that “America First” was coined by the Nazi Regime and is being used by Trump and others as though it is a good thing. Germany “Uber Alles” is something else they wanted highlighted. It is certainly not Christian and that was the theme of Trump’s inauguration. The prayers by the three people were all definitely and exclusively “in your face’ Jesus and company. Nothing wrong with that, per se, except that this was about the state and not the church and it was about being president of all the people and many in this country pray to other than Jesus. It was a very strong statement made by this inauguration. It became very clear what “Make America Great Again” really means. If you didn’t get it before, you got it at this inauguration. “Make America White and Mainline Christian Again”. All of you ‘fringe’ Christian denominations need to take note.
People are being rounded up as you read this – and this is neither a joke, nor a fantasy, nor a story. Who we have elected with his supporters is a bully and so are many of those he is appointing to key Government positions. To see the outlines of his bully nature – read again his description of grabbing women without their consent. I think we are going to see that acted out as Trump and his wealthy friends grab and reset government. They are the ones now in control with the money and power. They had the money – now as a group, they have the power to basically change these United States.
We think you will see a corporate crime wave like none other. Trump has already shown he is taking the constraints off of police violence and its consequent abuse of U. S. Citizens and others. Given the FBI report of decades ago about the goal of infiltrating the police with those seeking to maintain White Privilege by any means necessary – they have had a couple decades to do just that and we have seen its beginnings.
It is tragic that all police have been tarred with the same brush. Without an investigation to determine what is going on within the police forces around the country, there is no hope for anything other than a clear path for those who want to maintain control through this kind of police violence. With Donald Trump and his administration, they now have the go ahead to escalate and instill fear into the populace.
Trump, in his inaugural speech, described the fictional America which was needed to put in place the structure to allow for Trump’s Nationalist and Populist government to rape and squander what has taken this country from 1789 to build. It can all be lost in just a few short years. One goal seems to be to limit which voters are going to be allowed to go to the polls and vote in the next two years so the “Trump Movement’s” playground won’t be lost.
What could have come out of this is a three party system, which is much needed in this country, if Trump had different moral values. The Republicans, Democrats and the Trump Party. With their leaders lack of character and inability to tell the truth. With Trump’s lies saying whatever he feels will get him over the moment along with the bigotry he used to get where he is today, that clearly will not happen.
From our leader to Trump – you reap what you sow and there is no getting out of or going around that universal truth. So, we need to buckle up, but so does Mr. Trump.
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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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