DUMBFOUNDED word

 

 

I admit.

 

I am rarely dumbfounded.

Rarely speechless.

Rarely totally confounded.

And, yet, last night watching the Republican presidential candidate debate I was both dumbfounded and speechless.

This was a family squabble in which siblings, who obviously don’t like each other and have never forgiven another for some fraternal despicable act conducted in childhood, sniped, snarked and swiped at each other. If there had been food there would have been a food fight.

 

dumbfounded animatedDonald Trump’s ability to shift from a meaningful issue discussion to simplistic second grade empty rhetoric is dumbfounding.

And maybe even more dumbfounding is how his childish simplistic rhetoric seems to be a lighthouse for everyone else to visit the less than professional bottom of the barrel. Trump simply leads the race to the bottom.

 

While we common every day folk may find some appeal in having a president, a leader, who is “like us” in the end we much prefer having someone NOT like us <because most of us realize we are not qualified to do what will be demanded of the position>. Most of us seek to see some characteristics which we could emulate and ‘aspire to be.’ We may realize that behind closed doors presidents call other people wankers or dickwads but in public we see them face the worst of the worst, we see them hear the comments which we read under articles <which reflect the vitriol of mean spirited soulless faceless cowards>, we see them address unrelenting criticism … with calm, hope to be better and measured words & thoughts reflective of one who understands they must unite and not divide and that their role is almost always a thankless one publicly and gratifying only in solitude.

 

On a night in which one of the greatest legal minds in the world, not just the USA, passed away <Supreme Court Justice Scalia> it seems like we saw presidential candidates emptied of mindfulness and, well, their minds in general.

What I could only think was “how can we make America great if the people who are vying to lead us cannot be great themselves?”

 

Scalia, agree with him or not, carried the vestige of greatness wherever he went. He was a great intellectual mind who insured ideas which deserved respect in discussion were discussed with respect.

I imagine he was embarrassed as he looked from heaven. He saw and I saw, and heard, the vestige of a playground brawl … not great leadership debating great ideas or great solutions to great problems.

 

I saw & heard little boys with little minds arguing over little things. The tv ratings may be better because of it but that really isn’t the point.

 

The Republican Party deserves better.

 

The American people deserve better.

 

The President role deserves better.speechless

 

I was dumbfounded by the shallowness in the leadership character displayed on stage. The evening may have been interspersed with some real leadership <Kasich attempted to do so … and Bush on occasion when he wasn’t trying to outTrump Trump> but overall this was grade school boys vying for the most popular girl’s attention.

 

I was dumbfounded.

 

Dumbfounded those presidential candidates would actually believe the way they were acting was reflective of how a president would actually behave or what a President should actually do.

 

They were dumb.

I was confounded.

This is what Trump hath wrought.

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Written by Bruce