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The Screaming Moderate

What would Donald do?

8/27/2015

2 Comments

 
Yesterday, I started writing another post focused on Donald Trump. And then true reality TV happened.

Two journalists were gunned down doing a morning live shot on TV. The two issues struck me – on the one hand, Donald Trump's campaign strategy seems to be making  stupid statements and being a “loser”, to borrow his favorite word about others, and two young journalists at the start of their careers and coupled life gunned down for no good reason.

Donald Trump seemed not important. And he isn’t. But he is leading the pack for the GOP presidential nomination and, while I still don’t believe he can win, he ought to be taken more seriously.

Those two journalists’ deaths are a tragedy, not a strong enough word. Trump this morning blamed it on mental health. He said the man was sick (I agree) and that those around the man should have noticed and done something. Guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people, was basically what he said. And “others” around the killer should have institutionalized him. Lordy, Donald – do you ever listen to yourself? Yes, he displayed disturbed behavior for years, according to the stories I’ve read, and, yes, he should have been getting help. Many of us need help – and many might say you, Donald, are close to the top of that list.

I do not mean to trivialize what happened in that small Virginia town yesterday by bringing Donald Trump into it – but what struck me was, what would the situation be if he were running the country? He’d feel badly, of course. He’d be compassionate. But he’d do nothing, based on his statements. He believes in the Second Amendment, he said, a signal to that lobby that he doesn’t want to change the gun laws. He believes it’s mental health is part of the solution, and it is – but he said it was “others” who should have done something to institutionalize the man. What would he do?

That, my friends, is the question that he needs to be pressed with on every issue. With all his ranting and raving – what would Donald do??

2 Comments
Larz Neilson
8/27/2015 04:58:20 am

Indict the entire NRA membership as accessories to mass murder.

Reply
Bob Dorr
8/27/2015 05:33:30 am

The question is what he should do. Most everyone knows the answer to this as we did it for over 150 years. Our nation, based on the advocacy of Dorothea Dix, created a the modern mental health system based on pastoral care. The insane were removed from society and cared for. That system has been dismantled and now we see the results. Our next leader should create a national system of mental health facilities (not prisons) to care for those mentally ill or addicted. After all, it was a Federal program expanded by Pres. Nixon in 1972 (SSI) that caused the states to disband their MH systems by discharging the patients into the community making them eligible for those SSI funds.

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    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

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