I’m going to tell a joke that I heard a long time ago so please indulge me because it seems so apropos to the era of Trump; to be more precise the era of Mr. Donald John Trump. I don’t know who the author is so I will attribute it to ‘an unknown author’.  The joke goes as follows:

A woman returned home from work early one day and when she entered her house she saw her husband on the couch having sex with another woman.  When her husband saw her, he and the woman quickly got up off of the couch, put their close on and the husband shepherded the woman out of the house.  As she brushed passed the wife who was standing there with her mouth agape, the husband rushed back over to the couch, straightened the pillows, picked up the newspaper and began to read it as if nothing had happened.  What were you doing having sex with that woman?!…  And in our house!  The husband casually looked up from the newspaper he was reading and calmly asked, what woman?  The woman that I just saw you having sex with on the couch, the wife said!  I wasn’t having sex with any woman on the couch, the husband responded.  I saw the two of you having sex on our couch just now with my own two eyes, she said!  Honey, I wasn’t having sex with anybody; who are you going to believe – me, or your lying eyes?

Now, here is a quote from Mr. Trump on about July 23, 2018.  “Remember, what you’re seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening”; [who are you going to believe – me, or your lying eyes].  I added the ‘who are you going to believe…’  Do you get the gist of why I feel that this joke was worth telling in order to make my point?  What a bunch of nonsense there is contained in that joke.  And there is just as much nonsense contained in the quote from Mr. Trump.  And this kind of nonsense has been coming nonstop ever since Mr. Trump was elected.  Do you see where I am headed here?  Is this the America that we live in and must contend with now?!  God help us!

To make matters worse, in an effort to convince Americans to believe him instead of our ‘lying eyes’, according to Rachel Maddow, Mr. Trump and his minions altered the White House official transcript and video of the Trump-Putin press conference by excluding a very important question that Jeff Mason, a Reuters reporter, asked Mr. Putin.  A question to which Mr. Putin responded “yes.”  That question was, “President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”  By the way, this question is missing entirely from the Kremlin’s transcript.

Mr. Trump and his minions said the exclusion was caused by a technical glitch.  But with their reputation of being liars; a technical glitch?  Come on!  And so far they have not changed the White House transcript or video.  When will this Republican-led congress find the nerve to speak truth to power?!  When will they decide to step up and defend America and the American people against the unorthodox kind of leadership, which ignores all norms that all U.S. presidents in recent history proudly and honorably embraced, that Mr. Trump is providing?!  Will it be too late to allow America to ever completely recover from the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to her?

These are very somber and frustrating times and many Americans might feel like just throwing up their hands and giving up.  But that is just what Mr. Trump is counting on us to do.  So for that reason and so many others that impact on whether or not democracy as we now know it will survive, we cannot and we must not do that!  Americans cannot afford to wait for a president other than Mr. Trump to be elected and then hope and pray that they will be able to repair the damage that has been done.  No, we must fight back now!  And in the words of Senator Elizabeth Warren, when we get knocked down we must get right back up and get right back in the fight!  This is too important for us to just throw up our hands and quit; failure is not an option!

So whether you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent always remember, your vote is the most important one of all…unless you don’t use it!  So get informed, stay informed, get in the fight and get out and vote in the 2018, 2020 elections and beyond.  As a matter of fact, vote in ever election that you are eligible to vote in whether it is at the local, state or federal level.  It’s your civic duty!

Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line