Secrecy leads to distrust, distrust leads to fear, fear leads to paranoia and hate.
I think this is the path we are following.
It began with the failure of Donald Trump to make his tax returns public. He kept making excuses by saying they were "under audit". People did not believe him. They did not trust him.
Then, he began hiring all those "friends" with Russian connections. Manafort and Flynn were in at the beginning. And there were the connections with Roger Stone and others. All the while, Trump had nothing but kind words for Putin.
Then, we had the reports of his business deals with Russia and China and other countries. He refused to make public any financial records. This only magnified the distrust.
When he appointed General Flynn as his National Security adviser, and began to badmouth the intelligence agencies, people began to fear where he was headed? The fear spread to the CIA and the National Security Agency and other parts of the government. All the while, Trump did nothing to quell the concerns. He doubled down.
He began to attack our institutions and nominated people with the power to seriously damage or destroy those institutions. He started policies that were against everything the American people stood for, stopping people at airports and sending them back to their countries of origin. He unilaterally undertook a military operation in Yemen that was, by all accounts, a disaster. A Navy Seal and others were killed in the operation. He tried to pretend it was a success.
Much of the country became paranoid and fearful of the guy in the White House. This was not what America stood for. He had dictatorial and authoritarian tendencies and did not hesitate to put them on display.
Then, his National Security adviser, General Flynn, was caught on tape talking with the Russians about the sanctions that had been placed on them over the recent election, and he was forced to resign. Trump became angry and attacked the "media" and the "fake news".
This is where we are today. Trump does nothing to try and unite the country, quite the opposite. He continues to divide even further by Party affiliation.
Where do we go from here?
