Editor, The Times:
When Barack Obama was first elected president of the US of A, great things were expected. The first black president and his lovely wife and children. The nation would heal itself, the many divisions disappearing like mist in the morning. A new day had arrived!
It didn’t turn out quite that way. Perhaps, as commentator Chris Hedges remarked, Obama was still too much of the establishment or there were just too many insurmountable problems built right into the DNA of America – racism, the KKK, etc? Who knows?
However, as Paul Krugman pointed out, all in all with what he had to work with, Obama’s eight years were a success. The Obama Democrats pulled the country back from a depression that could have made the Dirty 30s look like a Sunday picnic! Obamacare, though far from perfect, is better than before. In every category – environmental, economic, etc. – things have gotten better. Again, according to Krugman, the Obama Democrats have been far more positive than negative.
So what I find so puzzling is why Obama was so hated in this country, Canada. It wasn’t just a few racist rednecks either. Writers like Rex Murphy regularly dissed Obama and it wasn’t just Murphy. Macleans, after soft soaping perhaps the worst president in U.S. history (until Donald Trump), George Bush Jr., the scribblers at Macleans regularly went after Obama. During the 2012 U.S. election, Macleans practically ran an election campaign for Rommey and Co.!
Then, of course, there was that gang of neo-cons at the National Post.
Obama, with his triumphs and mistakes, is in the past. No more Obama created ISIS utter nonsense.
Now we have a new phenomena – the Canadian Trump lovers — and there are lots of them!
Sure, the free traders are dubious about Trump. Heck! There’s the one place that Trump is right. Such things as NAFTA and the TPP are schemes for the one to five per cent to put it over on the rest of us once more.
There’s this, “Oh boy! Trump is sure shaking things up, yuk yuk hee hee.” So did Hitler and Mussolini, and that shaking up is something we could have done without.
As Gwynne Dyer put it, “A stopped clock is right twice in 24 hours.” But that doesn’t make a stopped clock called Donald Trump fit to be president of the United States.
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
