Trump is an ongoing embarrassment to America and to democracy

TO THE EDITOR:

I am ashamed of my country. I am ashamed that we allow America to be degraded, humiliated, and embarrassed by our President every day. Trump is like an eighth-grade bully suddenly made principal of a school.

First, he would rename the school after himself. Next, he would begin to degrade and humiliate the female students restricting their rights, calling them pigs, morons, ugly, awful human beings. Then he would organize a group of bullies to beat non-white students or anyone who criticized him.

He would label non-white students or students from other countries as scum, violent, terrorists, criminals in order to create fear and hatred of them and pressure them to leave and find another school.

He would fire half of the teachers and administrators and make the vice principal a white male who would do his bidding no matter how doing so humiliated him. Next, he would restrict anything in the curriculum that told the truth about U.S. history and allow only subjects that praised white history. He would begin weeding out any brown or Black students suspending and expelling them and replacing them with white students.

He would cut science classes and fire all science teachers, cut funding to the arts, and to any subject that addressed research or climate change. He would ban any effort at helping students feel included, find any kind of equity or fairness, and exclude any diversity in the student population. He would tell Black and Hispanic students that their history had no educational value. He would not allow any teacher to mention anything about equity — fairness, justice, or welcoming all students regardless of their race or ethnicity.

He would ban the student newspaper and replace it with his own publication that he could control all content. He would find ways to enrich himself at the expense of the school, disregarding any laws or norms that restrict self-enrichment. He would find ways around any regulation or restriction on his ability to do whatever he desired and degrade anyone who tried to stop him. He would put racists and people who believe in racial supremacy and conspiracy theories in charge of administration.

He would cut support and funding for public education — even his own school, saying public schools teach pornography and groom kids to be homosexual or transgender, and are breeding grounds for Socialists and Communists. He would seek to dismantle the Department of Education and take funding from public schools and give it to rich parents to pay tuition to private schools.

He would seek to take over and be in charge of all other schools in the area threatening them with violence and removing their leadership. He would make vulgarity, arrogance, and demeaning others normal. He normalizes disregard of norms of decency, kindness, integrity, or respecting differences.

This is a nightmare scenario, and it is playing out on a national scale in America with catastrophic consequences.

JOHN S. FLOOD JR.

Morganton