Wow. This year is flying by fast. It's already the last Saturdazzle of the month for the 2nd time this year.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, or if you are joining in from my Facebook page, you may be confused by the title of this post. "What?!? Roller talks about Trump all the stinking time. He even had his Dad teach him how to play bridge so he could say No Trump. more often.", you might be thinking to yourself. (You may even be thinking parenthetically, that you're not sure if thoughts should be in quotation marks).
The truth is that in this blog, I have not written a thing about President Trump all year. That isn't to say I haven't had thoughts, I've had thoughts! Here's two I'd like to share today:
1. President Trump is My President.
I don't know where it started, or where I first heard it, but it seems very likely regardless of who is the current president, or who's the governor of your state that you may hear or read someone mention, "He's not my president." or "She's not my governor". This bothers me in many ways, but mainly linguistically.
If I live in Elgin, Illinois, (#Ido), the mayor of that city is my mayor. It doesn't matter, if I don't know his or her name (#IdoIjustlookeditup) or if I voted for him, (#Idid), that's my mayor.
On January 20th 2025 10:00 A.M. central time Joe Biden was my President. No, I didn't vote for him. No, I don't agree with him on a number of issues, but I'm a U.S. citizen as he was in the last hour of his presidency for that hour he was still my president.
In the same way by noon central time Donald Trump had again become my president. I trust Trump about as far as I can throw Mount Rushmore. I didn't vote for him in the 2016, 2020, or 2024 primaries or general elections but yet he's my president.
Saying someone is not your president, when they are is not to me an act of defiance, nor a nod of a disapproval. It's more like saying I'm only part of my country when I agree with their choices. I understand the voting process the way we elect our public officials but then those elected officials work for all of us and represent all of us. This is why they are our elected officials. While it's an essential part of our democracy to speak up when we disagree with our elected officials, disagreeing with them in no way makes them no longer our leaders. It's because they are our leaders that we can ask them to change. I live in the state of Illinois and a Republican presidential candidate has not won the state of Illinois since 1988. Does that mean that President George W. Bush or President Trump aren't the President in Illinois. No! Nor does it matter that I haven't voted for a winning presidential candidate in over 2 decades. The President of the U.S. is my president and this brings me to my second point.
2. President Trump is not my savior, but he's not the devil either.
As stated before, I have not posted on this blog about President Trump all year. This can not be said when it comes to posting my Facebook account. Several times I have written there about our current president. A few weeks nto his most recent term, I asked my FB friends to mention one thing Trump had done in those two weeks which they liked and one thing he had done which they didn't like.
I have 441 FB friends. Two gave me one thing they liked and one thing they didn't like. My submission made for a total of three. 3 out of 442? Wow!
I'm not exactly sure why it was this low. Many people on FB say good things about him and many people say bad things about him. How come so few can mention both the good and the bad?
We are all created in God's image, so we all have good inside of us. We also are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God so we all have bad coming out of us. Finding both good and bad should not be that hard of an exercise. And if it is, then since we are called to pray for our elected officials maybe we should spend more time trying to think about good and bad things that they are doing to aid in our prayers.
One of my FB friends asked why I hadn't done such an exercise when Biden was President. I had in fact done a very similar exercise when Biden was president. But I'll go ahead and conclude this segment by saying one good and one bad thing about both President Trump and former President Biden.
Donald Trump
Good: When he was on The Apprentice, I liked how in the board room segments he would make the contestants take responsibility for their actions. There was one episode where a project manager was talking about how great he ran his team for that week. Trump turned it around on him and asked, Did you win? Which of course he had not, which is why he was in the board room to begin with.
Bad: As a candidate and as president I have never seen him follow his own advice and admit a mistake. This is shown most in his inability to concede the 2020 Presidential Election.
Joe Biden
Good: Biden thought about the good of the country and the good of his party before choosing to drop out of the 2024 election.
Bad: I didn't mind that he pardoned his son Hunter, I just don't like that he did it after saying that he wasn't going to.
Note: The things I mentioned about Trump are not the same things I mentioned on my Facebook Page. Here is what I said on Facebook:
A good thing I think Trump has done is pardon the 23 people who were being prosecuted under the F.A.C.E act Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances. A bad thing Trump had done is the pardoning or commuting the sentence of all 1500 people convicted of crimes during the events at the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021
Coming Soon: Levi A to Z
Sometimes I like to use Team Saturdazzle as a place to start the conversation about topics I'm preparing future posts about.
A to Z challenge Update. I believe I have a topic for the upcoming challenge. I am in the process of preparing posts and making a theme reveal post as well.
Speaking of Alpha and Omegas: I have some future posts featuring a pair of Levi's. This pair is well worn on the pages of my blog. The first is Allen Levi, a member of my Big 5 list of favorite musicians. Actually I have 2 upcoming posts featuring Allen. The second Levi, is Chuck Bartowski, Flynn Rider, Captain Marvel and Kurt Warner rolled into one, Zachary Levi. I watched The Unbreakable Boy earlier today and hope to post a short review before the next Saturdazzle.
There are 24 hours in a day but only 24 minutes left of this particular Saturdazzle. So on that mathematical non sequitur, I bid you farewell.
