A Perilous Journey, Indeed.  Fasten your seat belts, secure your belongings, check all the hatches…we are about to embark on a remarkable journey.  A journey that will answer the question: Can this nation ship survive a voyage with a fool at the helm?  Barely three months into the trip, the prospects are not promising.  Our navigator is merrily sticking his nose into the wind, boldly going where….well, actually, where no one with good sense would go.

This is a captain who compares the Israel-Palestine issue to USA-Canada.  This is a man who states repeatedly that our nation does not have a spending problem.  This is a man who sees executive branch leadership as annihilating the opposing party so that no negotiation is required.  This is man who will say anything, to anyone, at anytime, in any place, with absolutely no respect for what he has said before or for the passage of time since he said it.  This is man who lives like a king; he and his entourage taking royal trips and vacations while crying out to the masses for the wealthy to pay more lest the poor be trodden underneath it all.  Not bound by what he has said before, nor by the hard lessons of history, he charts a new path of promised prosperity based on the premise that a diminished few individuals, with the courage to risk all they have to build wealth and opportunity for others, will continue to do what they do while keeping much less and giving much more to others who choose not to try at all.  This is a man who faced with a momentous victory, chooses to continue the battle rather than make the peace.  This is a man who rewards his cronies and lackeys with positions of power or financial gain in order to keep them in the palace.  This is a man who thinks all people can have the best of medical care while only a handful pays the doctor bills.  This is a man who despite obvious gaffes, miscalculations, and blatant statements of falsehoods, has cast a magical spell over much of the media and helped them to diminish themselves to a point of near-irrelevance.  This is a man who was given an opportunity to accomplish great things and instead, chose to pursue petty conquests for personal gain. 

How this nation weathers this trip is yet to be determined.  How history will reflect this captain is certainly an open question.  How long can the weight of this nation’s responsibilities to those who finance it be supported by empty promises and foolish rhetoric?    Time will tell, my friends; time will tell.