NOTE: Remember former House Speaker Paul Ryan? He was still the Speaker when I wrote and published this post back on Dec. 8, 2016, not long after Donald Trump bullied and lied his way into being elected president.
“What is truth?” Painting by Nicholas Gai
President-to-be Donald J. Trump, who lost by 3 million popular votes and barely squeezed out an electoral championship in three key states, was never a Rotarian.
He undoubtedly would have been kicked out had he ever joined.
Rotary Club International is the greatest of service clubs. Its purpose is to encourage and foster service and high ethical standards in the business and professional sectors.
Rotary is everywhere. It does great service projects right here in San Ignacio, Belize. Rotary’s mission is to advance international understanding, goodwill, and peace through global fellowship.
One thing I like about Rotary is its 4-Way Test that is supposed to be applied to every action a Rotarian takes:
1. Is it the truth?
2. Is it fair to all concerned?
3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
* * *
Now comes the powerful Speaker of the House Paul Ryan–-who like so many people had his character assassinated by Donald Trump as recently as October–-who says Donald Trump’s lies don’t matter.
In an interview on “60 Minutes,” Speaker Ryan said it doesn’t matter that Trump claims via Twitter that he won the popular vote because “millions of people voted illegally.”
Let’s get one thing straight: this is a lie. If it was the truth, Trump and Ryan and every Republican political leader alive would have bombarded us with evidence to back up his claim.
They would be calling for massive reforms to the election system to make sure that every vote cast in the future will be an honest-to-God legitimate vote.
The fact is that Hillary Clinton, whether Trump or anybody else likes it or not, won the popular vote by 3 million votes. (Being the lying loon that he is, Trump claims he won by twice that many votes.)
Ryan went on in his 60 Minutes sit-down to address Trump’s daily barrage of tweets.
“The way I see the tweets you’re talking about, he’s basically giving voice to a lot of people who have felt that they were voiceless. He’s communicating with people in this country who’ve felt like they have not been listened to. He’s going to be an unconventional president.”
So what if his tweets are full of brazen lies and assaults on the characters of good people–-he’s just being unconventional. That’s become the Republican Party’s default defense for every god-awful thing Donald Trumps says or does.
Never mind that what Trump says is rarely the truth; rarely fair to all concerned; rarely aimed at building goodwill and better friends; and rarely if ever beneficial to all concerned.
He’s not the kind of supposedly “great businessman” fit to be president of your local Rotary Club, much less the leader of the free world.
Ask not what your memory can recall of Paul Ryan; ask what a liar, cheat, and law-breaking, self-professed “pussy” grabbing, “Two Corinthian’s” quoting, champion of Republicans (including Evangelicals) can do to “make America great again!”
(Sorry, but trying to make sense of this is still merely preaching to the choir, and Ryan is not wrong in his view about giving voice to a large (in fact very large) part of the populace who feels they are voiceless. He is wrong to legitimate it.)