Detestable Donald Trump- a New York echo opinion

An echo opinion letter published in The Buffalo News, a New York state newspaper.

An echo opinion published in The Buffalo News:

As the (#fake) “leader” of the free world and (presumably) the most powerful man in the western hemisphere, (the stupid!) Donald Trump has an obligation and responsibility to set an elevated example of morality and principle, while representing and defending the broad diversity of these United States.

Instead, he plays to the most detestable and base aspects of our societal flaws.

He fortifies and encourages the worst characteristics of our human nature to divide, separate and isolate while he promotes xenophobia and intolerance.

Regardless of how well the economy may be doing for some, or how low the unemployment rate may be (thank you President Barack Obama), overtly telling over ten thousand lies within the past two years is unconscionable, and economic well-being in no way justifies his excessive indiscretions.

I am far from alone in my concern that if the heat and pressure continue to back him into a corner and the prospects for impeachment or removal from office loom heavier and more plausible, there is little doubt that he will resort to creating a military conflict (Iran looking most probable right now) to divert the attention away from him.

If Obama had been alleged of doing any one of the things Trump has been queried of doing Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and the Republican leadership would have to be tied down and tranquilized for fear of them injuring themselves in spasms of uncontrolled indignation.

The (the 21st century version of the right wing GOP KuKluxKlan...) Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, and Marc Theissens of the world can only hope to reduce the severity of his reckless image and his influence on the office of the presidency and our Democracy using their hollow propaganda and jargon to reach the simplest of minds in the voting public; fortunately, most of us recognize skewed partisan fabrications when we hear them.

Just as the outcome of the 2018 election was pivotal, the 2020 election results will be crucial!

I don’t want to think that the America I grew up believing in and honoring was just a transitory illusion vulnerable to the destructive capabilities of a misguided, prejudiced and greedy megalomaniac. (In other words, Vote Blue no matter who!)

James Galbo from Buffalo, New York

In MaineWriter opinion, Donald Trump is a #fake_potus!

Religious leaders must educate Americans against Trumponian racism

"...undocumented immigrants contributed billions to Social Security and paid taxes though they did not necessarily receive the benefits of those contributions — a phenomenon that persists to this day...."

Bishop DiMarzio is a Roman Catholic Bishop who is calling on the US Presidential candidates (aka "Donald Trump") to be humanitarian and inclusive of immigrants to America.

Bishop Nicholas Anthony DiMarzio

NEW YORK (Religious News Service) The Roman Catholic bishop of Brooklyn, one of the largest and most diverse dioceses in the U.S., is defending immigrants in a powerful essay that — without mentioning names — seems to take direct aim at Donald Trump and his supporters by ripping the “racist and xenophobic tendencies” in society and arguing that immigration in fact helps the economy.

“Those who are in favor of mass deportation seem not to have an understanding of what this might mean for our reputation, and the lives of those who are deported,” Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio wrote in his weekly column for the diocesan newspaper.

But besides the human toll, he argued, the “estimated costs of mass deportation would be $400 billion and [would] reduce the gross domestic product … by about $1 trillion.”

Trump, the brash New York real estate tycoon who is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has regularly disparaged immigrants, especially Latinos, and has vowed to deport millions of them and build a wall along the border with Mexico.

DiMarzio, whose ministry before he became a bishop focused on immigration and labor issues, wrote in his column on Sunday (May 21), titled “The Facts About Immigration,” that he dislikes the “current politicization of the issue of undocumented workers in our country.”

He stressed that human beings cannot be “illegal” and added that the question of undocumented immigrants is “not an issue that can be solved without addressing the racist and xenophobic tendencies that lay below the veneer of even just societies.”

Although the Bible’s words and Catholic teachings on welcoming immigrants, Bishop DiMarzio says his defense of immigrants “will not be a religious one” but would be based “on past research and present analysis of this issue.”

DiMarzio went on to note that his own research, when he did post-graduate work on immigrants and the economy back in the 1980s, found that undocumented immigrants contributed billions to Social Security and paid taxes though they did not necessarily receive the benefits of those contributions — a phenomenon that persists to this day, he wrote.

The bishop detailed how the immigration system has worked in the past by encouraging immigrants to enter the U.S. and then regularizing their status, and he said the current outdated system must be reformed to provide the same pathway to citizenship or another recognized and stable status.

“To exclude the undocumented from citizenship would be to return to a two-tiered society,” DiMarzio wrote. “We have enough experience with the exclusion of former slaves and their descendants to remind us that those who are members in our society should never be excluded from the full rights of citizenship.”

“We must put out into the deep recesses of our memory as a nation built by immigrants. We cannot forget the contributions of the past nor the present made by new Americans in building our society and our church.”

The Brooklyn diocese covers the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and while it is geographically small it is one of the most populous of the 189 U.S. dioceses, with 1.5 million Catholics from around the world.

That diversity does not mean that DiMarzio will earn universal praise from his flock.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917) at the urging of Pope Leo XIII she came to the United States with six nuns in 1889 to work among the Italian immigrants.

In the New York primary in April, where, unfortunately, Donald Trump won convincingly, the GOP candidate did somewhat better in Brooklyn and Queens than elsewhere in the state, and he appeared to draw especially strong support from old-line Irish and Italian Catholic neighborhoods. (Ironically, in the recent past, the Irish and the Italian Catholics experienced discrimination - read the life of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini.)