Dear Editor,
I don’t have TDS. I have a bad case of ‘Leaderless USA’. For millennia, people have turned to their leaders for inspiration, hope, example, and what constitutes decorum and conduct that is admirable.
The Odyssey takes Ulysses through trials which create a man who learns and becomes better. He returns with ‘gravitas’ … the embodiment of what a GOOD man should be. So that those around him may emulate and be better, too.
Trump? If I choose to be a vulgar, crass, clueless, dishonest and hyperbolic individual whom no one can trust … he’s my man. I can look to him for how to be a carnival barker whom few take seriously. I can look to him to know how to sit in my yard chair, blaming everyone and everything for why my world is not ‘the hottest’ instead of rising to self-responsibility and pragmatism. I can insult whomever without consequence. I can believe that I am the wisest person on the planet, no matter how I am proven wrong. I can publicly broadcast tasteless words, cruelty and insensitivity, without worry. And most of all, I can live, from each day, to the next, without personal growth.
If he were Ulysses, he would be teaching me to be someone who warrants a brand new psychological term for those who just don’t like him. ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’. He has made history, by gosh! A president of the USA who creates a brand new psychological illness term, just for him.
There’s nothing ‘deranged’ about it.
The Odyssey is about using brains over brawn, and becoming a better human being. I just wish Ulysses was the President of the country that is messing with the whole world.
Kari Cowan, Meaford
