So This is What Winning Feels Like

by Errington C. Thompson, MD –

At a campaign rally several years ago, Donald Trump declared, “We’re going to win so much. You are going to get tired of winning.”

So what does winning in Trump’s America look like? Well, the progressive view of winning would be broad prosperity for all. That is not really what is going on in Trump’s America. Winning seems to be a combination of chiding the dictator of North Korea, more school shootings, and prodding the NFL to enact a liberty-sucking policy against kneeling during the national anthem.

North Korea

North Korea is an odd, small paranoid country. Since the Korean War, the “hermit kingdom” has never really been right. They have always been isolated. They have never been included on the international stage. And they have, with single-minded focus, developed a nuclear program—even while poverty and resulting starvation forced citizens to eat grass!

They have built nuclear weapons in spite of international sanctions. Kim Jong Un, the current leader of North Korea, has engaged in an escalating war of words with Donald Trump and his administration … until, suddenly, a summit was announced, at which the United States would sit down with North Korea and discuss North Korea dismantling its nuclear weapons.

Now, let us think about this. Nuclear weapons are North Korea’s crowning achievement—its only achievement—of the last 50 years … in spite of every respectable country in the world telling them not to, that they cannot, and should not, develop them. But these nuclear weapons are the only reason that North Korea is being talked about by the United States. Without nuclear weapons, North Korea is no more important than Tanzania, New Guinea, or Moldova, places I find hard to locate on map. According to experts, North Korea, or at least its paranoid leadership, truly believes that the United States is plotting its destruction.

North Korea wants to be treated like an important world country. They want economic stability. They want prosperity. They also want assurances that they will not get wiped off the map by the United States.

We, the United States, want North Korea to dismantle their nuclear weapons—the one factor that has brought us to the brink of meeting with them.

How do we negotiate this? Nobody wants nuclear war. So how can we assure a paranoid nation that we truly want to help them feed their people, that we will not send Tomahawk cruise missiles to level their country?

Every expert agrees that Kim Jong Un will not give up his nuclear capability altogether. They also agree that just getting the President of the United States to the negotiating table is a huge, immense gain for Kim’s, and his nation’s, legitimacy after 60 years of isolation.

But if he does not get significant concessions for giving up just the nuclear weapons they’ve already built, he is done as their leader. Into this mix we throw Donald Trump, “master negotiator.”

Maybe, just maybe, it is possible for Donald Trump to think of a scenario that would ease the minds of the paranoid North Korean people. But already, as suddenly as Donald Trump announced that there was going to be a meeting with Kim, the next week he announced the summit was off. A few days later, it was back on again. Is this a super-clever negotiating tactic from the Trump administration? Based on his record, I doubt it. Will the summit even take place? If it does, will it produce anything at all more than a photo op? Who knows.

National Football League

Two years ago, Colin Kaepernick, quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, decided to kneel during the national anthem in order to protest police brutality. (Currently, Kaepernick is out of the NFL; many believe he has been blackballed because of his protest during the national anthem.)

Because our president is in instigator and not one who solves problems, he decided to escalate the tension between the NFL owners and the NFL players with a now characteristic tweet-storm. The NFL owners called a meeting several months ago to discuss the situation. Several players were also invited. What came out of this meeting was a thoughtful, balanced solution where the protest could continue but the NFL would actually facilitate dialogue between the black community and the police. NFL also promised to invest money and resources in the black community.

Unfortunately, this type of thoughtful solution was unacceptable to our president. He continued to pressure the NFL through hateful tweets (his modus operandi). Last week, the NFL owners, without player input, unanimously caved in and agreed to fine any NFL player who kneels during the national anthem.

This action, in my opinion, was cowardly and probably illegal. This is what winning in Trump’s America looks like. Powerful owners telling you what to do and how to act. This is Trump’s America.

Another School Shooting

Another high school shooting. This time it was in South Texas. Ten people were killed, 13 wounded. Once again, we all retreat to our corners and come out flinging the same old clichés.

Somehow, someway, we are going to have to push past the clichés and actually come up with a solution. From my standpoint as a trauma surgeon, this is a health hazard. People are dying. The schoolchildren died not because of some existential threat. Instead, these innocent schoolchildren died because of our easy access to guns.

Just for second let us be honest. High school has been emotionally traumatic for over 100 years. Children form cliques. Children (like adults) bully each other; the ones being bullied retreat into a shell, and sometimes explode in anger.

None of this is new. Has anyone seen the musical play Oliver or the movie A Christmas Carol? Bullying happens in both. What is new is the reaction to being bullied or being an outsider. Instead of fistfights, or keying a car, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold showed America how to fight back against bullying at Columbine high school in 1999. Since that overwhelming tragedy, there have been dozens of others. Yet, as a nation, we have done nothing.

Turning our schools into military fortresses is not the answer. We can do more to combat bullying in our schools, but this is a half-measure. For a parallel example, when the AIDS epidemic hit the United States, at first there was disbelief and finger-pointing, then organization and action. We studied the problem. We learned the facts. Ultimately, we came up with a multifaceted solution in order to combat the disease.

We need to do the same thing here. Just like with HIV, we cannot stop every HIV infection, but we vastly improved the morbidity and mortality from HIV infections. For example, we need to force Congress to begin funding the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence (such studies are legally prohibited under current law!). That will be a long, slow battle. But there are some things that we can do right now:

• Military-style guns should be reserved for gun shows and not be owned by average civilians.
• Bump stocks, high-capacity magazines, should be reserved for the military and shooting ranges only.
• Everybody who owns a gun should have a comprehensive background check. It is time for us to enforce the rights of all citizens over the rights of gun owners.
• Everybody needs easy access to mental health programs.
• We need more mental health professionals—psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers.
• We need more mental health facilities.

The mental health programming can only be done through major national funding. Also, we know that these measures are not going to stop every single gun shooting. But they will stop the vast majority of shootings. They will make our schools safer—and that is our goal.

Our president, who is too busy winning and groveling in front of the NRA, has not proposed any comprehensive legislation. If we want to save our children, if we want to truly win, we are going to need to do this for ourselves. We need to elect officials who will truly make our schools safer. We need to call, write, email, tweet, and Facebook our local, state and national elected officials and demand comprehensive action, today.

Our safety, and our children’s very lives, are at stake!