This opinion column started with a Letter to the Editor I wrote in November 2020 immediately after the election. 

My Republican friends and neighbors were aghast at the pending destruction of our country that Joe Biden would bring. I attempted to explain that most of us agree on the problems and dangers our country faces, but have different ideas about how to resolve our issues.

Traveling in Mexico recently, I got a steady dose of FOX News – as it was one of the few English-speaking TV channels at my hotel. FOX personalities were pretending to be shocked that far-left radicals were against our country’s deportation of violent Venezuelan gang members.

To be correct, virtually no one is against deporting violent gang members. A large number of Americans don’t trust the Trump Administration to make the effort to identify actual gang members and to prove it in any kind of judicial review.  

What were these so-called criminals doing? What little is known indicates that having a tattoo was the only basis for arresting these Venezuelans.

Our country apprehended them and shipped them off to a notorious prison in El Salvador, essentially making them disappear.  This is what Russia and North Korea do. By any standard, this is wrong in America.

The Russian mafia is well-established in our country and very violent.  How many plane-loads of these Russians have you heard were shipped off to a prison in another country?

Resistance to the elimination of the Department of Education was another focus of criticism on FOX News. The essence of this department is to ensure everyone has access to a good education… meaning education is a human right.  

Trump says he wants to return management of education to the states where more localized management will produce better results.

Education is already mostly run by the states.  Federal government involvement started and continues today because of discriminatory practices by some states, particularly those in the Deep South.  On what basis can we trust that those states won’t revert back to discriminatory practices?

FOX personalities were almost gleeful that thousands of federal government employees are being fired. Again, they blame the far-left for creating a national debt that is about to destroy us.

While the deficit is an issue we need to address, we are not on the brink of insolvency. The U.S. is still the gold standard for governmental debt.  Yet this is the justification for Elon Musk’s unlawful elimination of thousands of jobs and whole departments.

Based on what analysis?  

Thousands of employees were fired for poor performance and have no idea who, if anyone, reviewed their performance. Thousands of employees were told their work was no longer needed, only to be asked to return when someone realized their work actually was needed.

Most Americans are for efficient government. They just don’t trust that this secretive and radical job elimination is a thoughtful process to achieve efficiency. Nor do they see it as a realistic solution to reducing a deficit that has many root causes – including policies from Trump’s first time in office.

Conservative media and blogs talk about “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a mental condition identifiable by resistance to anything Trump wants to do. Many Americans thought Trump’s cabinet nominees were unqualified and political yes-men.  This was a justifiable concern, not a mental syndrome.

Now we know that a top secret national security mission to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen included a magazine editor in the planning group text. How is this possible? By elevating inexperienced security and defense leaders that evidently didn’t even know we created a secure communication channel within the Defense Department.

This is why many Americans didn’t trust such nominees.

Trust comes from truth and transparency. We’ve elected a pathological liar as president. This president and his henchmen aren’t transparent in what they’re doing and resent the idea that our judicial branch of government or Congress might question or oversee what they’re doing. Is it that big of a stretch to consider people are justifiably distrustful of Trump as opposed to having a derangement syndrome?

In our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson very eloquently used the phrase, “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” The truths he was talking about were equality and inalienable rights. Those of us who did not vote for Trump are not bitter or deranged.  We want a safe, strong and prosperous country for all our citizens.

Our self-evident truth is that Donald Trump is untrustworthy and incompetent. His political sound bites are usually a lie and don’t reflect the real situation. His solutions are laughably simplistic if they weren’t so dangerously destructive. He has surrounded himself with devotees instead of competent people.

Maybe the blind faith many have in Trump is the real “derangement syndrome.”