I was moved by President Trump's reference to "American Carnage".
I was moved to take care of the terrible burden I have and was moved to go to the kitchen and clean the dishes in the sink and presto 'Carnage gone'.
While cleaning the dishes I thought of the Carnage I have seen in Vietnam when I entered after the NV Army had liberated the south. Three years later and still seeing elderly Vietnamese picking through the garbage to find a scrap. At night thousands of families appeared at night in the street to vie for space under the building overhang to try and minimize the effects of the monsoon. They were a small part of the tens of thousands that were relocated to 'New Economic Zones'. City dwellers that were sent to rural areas without the equipment or skill to raise crops
How many refugee camps did I see? More than a dozen tent cities with at least 30,000 and dozens of smaller ones. People crawling out of the killing fields of Cambodia. Rural areas that were waiting for electricity. Isolated islands that had tens of thousands of rats. Carnage upon carnage. And how many of those people did I hear complain about being collateral damage? Not one.
I thought of the Carnage I have witnessed not directly related to war. Too much to list. The most shocking was sitting in a traffic jam in Jakarta and looking off the main street to a long street with a canal in the middle and a series of small aluminum sheets above the canal. It took me a while to figure out that it was the sewage system for that part of the city. People walking out to releave themselves with minimal privacy.
I could go on but you know about it, you know about the completely needless Carnage of Iraq.
All that I have witnessed first hand but I have never heard as much sell pity as Trump put into the Inaugural black cloud of Trump. Under President Obama the DJI went from 6700 to 19,900 in the greatest accumulation of capital in the history of Capitalism. In 2013, the first full year of the ACA, the DJI goes up an astounding 4,000 points, and incredible 38%.
Never in history has a group of people accumulated so much wealth. And then they play the victim card, entitled white men have been treated so unfairly.
Paraphrasing JFK
Entitled white Americans don't ask what you can do for the country ask what more the country can do for you.
The torch has been passed to a new group of self congratulatory phony religionists who proudly proclaim that they will not pay any price to advance human rights and commit to bear no burden, avoid all hardship, disappoint all friends, collude with any foe, to undermine liberty and perpetuate their privilege.
Here is JFKs stirring promise to people suffering real carnage:
"To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves . . .because it is right.. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.".
My dishes are clean, the Carnage is gone. My personal circumstances are reduced because of health limitations (not serious but I have to stay in a low gear) but I am grateful for the benefits of living in the richest country in the world and having cheap electricity, clean reasonable housing, great libraries, Internet, safe food supplies at a reasonable cost.
Think of the sacrifice of the men who charged Normandy and compare it to the whiney bleating of the President. The real Carnage that is on display is the Carnage to the dignity of the office he occupies. He is the smallest American.
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noun - the killing of a large number of people
Oxford English Dictionary
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n
1. Massive slaughter, as in war; a massacre.
2. Corpses, especially of those killed in battle.
Houghton Mifflin Dictionary
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1. the flesh of slain animals or humans
2. great and usually bloody slaughter or injury (as in battle)
Mirriam-Webster Dictionary
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noun
1. the slaughter of a great number of people, as in battle; butchery; massacre.
2. Archaic. dead bodies, as of those slain in battle.
Dictionary.com
I'd call it a national embarrassment that anyone would misuse a word that badly in an inaugural address heard and closely examined around the world not just in the present but in posterity. It now seems possible that he did write his own speech--he just doesn't know or care about words and their meaning. But even if he did it would still be meaningless as his frequent lying and juvenile exaggeration have destroyed his credibility.
Great post, grantcart.
Me 
