To the Woodshed


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Andrew Young was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter. He was an active and passionate leader for civil rights and was the first African-American to hold that ambassadorial position. Young created a bit of controversy when he was interviewed by the French newspaper Le Matin de Paris in 1978. While discussing the plight of dissidents in the Soviet Union, he referenced events in the United States, saying, “We still have hundreds of people that I would categorize as political prisoners in our prisons.” That commentary earned Young a visit to the White House woodshed.

President Carter made it clear to Young that he no longer represented just himself or the civil rights movement, nor was he speaking any longer as the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As the Ambassador to the United Nations he now represented the United States of America and everything he said publicly was a statement representing our country, our views, our positions and our values. Ambassador Young never made that kind of mistake again.

Donald J. Trump is the President-elect. He is nearly always short on specifics, long on broad brush generalizations of often unintelligible meaning and he frequently changes his positions, sometimes doing so within a single sentence. Worse, he is an ongoing fountain of ad hominem attacks. Now that he is representing the United States of America to our fellow citizens and to the world, who will take him to the White House woodshed?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

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One Response to To the Woodshed

  1. dominickpalella November 27, 2016 Reply

    President Trump and every one of his hundreds of appointees will represent our country. This includes cabinet members, ambassadors, Department and agency heads and hundreds of secretaries, under secretaries, assistant secretaries, deputy secretaries, etc. They will be his new servants, just as you will be his new subjects. If you don’t like his choices or their conduct, you can complain, protest, sign petitions or march in the streets. Other Presidents didn’t mind this commotion of free speech so much, but this may not be the case with President Trump. If you use his name to express dissident opinions against his sovereign conduct as your supreme leader and commander in chief, this could be interpreted as you being un-American.

    When you accept the power of two corporate funded private political parties to make laws to ensure that one of them will win elective offices 99% of the time, this is the result. Spend the next four years complaining, protesting, and listening to political promises of “change”, or start using some common sense and vet who you vote for. If you keep electing people based on their rhetoric, instead of being honorably committed to represent you, good luck. TrueDemocracyNow.org