This essay is another of my diatribes about Donald the Dumb, our fake president. To be honest, he won’t read this article. I know that, and none of his handers will read it to him. So, what is the point of writing about such a despicable person who happens to be the president of the United States?

The shadows lengthen….

My answer is that I learned a great deal about life by reading Martin Niemöller and his opposition to Hitler during WWII. Niemöller’s mindset can be explained in these four sentences.

In the next few weeks, we will hear some of Trump’s minions say that they didn’t agree with him. Bob Woodward’s book, Rage, spells it all out. His tapes of Trump are far more damning than the Tricky Dicky’s tapes.

The Trump tapes

The only two members of Congress that had the moral backbone to standup to Trump are Sen. Mitt Romney and Rep. Justin Amash. They had the guts to run counter to Donald the Despicable. Nevertheless, the rest of the Republican will leave the sinking ship soon and lie about having no idea about what Trump was really like.

Shakespeare wrote, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.” This is a partial list of the Republican cowards: Ben Carson, Greg Abbott, Larry Kudlow, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo, Lindsey Graham, Tony Perkins, Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, Doug Collins, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Nikki Haley, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, David Duke, Richard Burr, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, John Kennedy, Rand Paul, Tim Scott, Rudy Giuliani, Susan Collins, Jim Inhofe, Rod Blagojevich, Mike Huckabee, Scott Walker, Joe Arpaio, Richard Shelby, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, and the list goes on seemingly ad infinitum.

Some Republican cowards

The other reason for writing about Donald, our liar and chief, isn’t really about Trump per se. It is about us; it is a present day parable for us. You and I have no control over the chicken that has returned home to roost, but we do have control over ourselves. The story about Trump is merely a metaphor about what we need to grasp.

Bobby Kennedy was my most important mentor. This single sentence of Bobby’s changed me. “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.” He paraphrased something that George Bernard Shaw wrote in Back to Methuselah.

Like my mentor, I came up with my own one-liner. “It is in giving that we get.” I started using that phrase nearly four years ago in a title for an essay. At the time, my one-liner seemed like something that someone else wrote. So, I googled it. I had inadvertently paraphrased St. Francis of Assisi. “For it is in giving that we receive.”

Interestingly, William Shakespeare wrote something very much like what St. Francis and I have written. “One of the finest comforts that life offers us is that you cannot sincerely help others without helping yourself.” All three statements are essentially a logical contradiction. How can you get by giving? Nonetheless, it is the truth.

The parable uses Donald the Dumb as personification of a truly despicable person. Trump needs to grasp that his greed and wanting everything could have worked wonders for him. Nevertheless, Donald the Dumb didn’t grasp what St. Francis, Shakespeare, and I came up with. It could have been a win-win for him. However, it resulted in a lose-lose for him.

Let me tell you something from the deepest part of my heart. I’m not rich. I still owe about half of what my home is worth. I drive a 2009 Jetta, my beater car, has a quarter million miles on it. What money I do have is with Stifel, which is located in Crown Point, IN. It is a financial and investment planning group. Shawn Sabau, CFP, is my planner. I told Shawn that I appreciated his help even though I possess less money than anyone of the other investors. If I keep teaching for another decade, I’ll have enough saved until I go belly up.

However, nearly seven years ago, I had the good fortune of discovering my family in Myanmar. It started with Ti Ti who was nine at the time. She was the link that tied my family in the States to family in Myanmar. That was the single most important thing that ever happened to me in nearly eight decades. I have been with my family three trips to Myanmar in the last half-dozen years. On my first trip, Moh Moh Moh was my tour guide. On my second trip, Ko Ko, Moh Moh’s husband, was my guide. On my third trip, we, as a family, toured a part of their country. We had the best time of our lives.

In January of this year, I returned to the States and started to teach the spring semester…and then COVID-19 arrived.

COVID-19 came to America, Myanmar, and the rest of the world. There aren’t any tours in Myanmar or any other place in the world due to the coronavirus. COVID-19 caused massive unemployment in both American and in Myanmar.

What would you do if a part of your family were unemployed and had three children? Enter St. Francis, Shakespeare, and me. It is in giving that we get. Man, you can’t believe that truth about sharing. If you give, you get back more than you gave.

Trump believes that if he hoards everything, he will be rich. Trump, you are the fool on the hill who could have been a great leader and person…had you followed St. Francis and Shakespeare.