While reading of our current American Chaos in the morning’s paper (yes, actual newsprint), I was reminded of a phrase and a quotation that seem apt considerations for our national dilemma.
The first is the Latin phrase “cui bono”, which means “to whose profit?” or “to whose benefit?” It is most often used today as a forensic question in law enforcement or legal circumstances in which the object is to find out who has the motive for a particular crime or misdeed to have been done. Often, too, it is applied to a situation where there is a hidden motive or where the party responsible for it happening is hidden or not apparent.
So when I think of Donald Trump’s presidency, with all of it’s moral darkness and it’s venal corruption, I wonder, how can this be allowed to happen? I look to his party. Don’t they benefit from being “in power” because he is in power? A few of them do speak up, but often they are headed out of office, and have nothing to loose. But for those who hold positions of influence in the party of the President, we hear mostly silence. Even though they may also find his Presidency abhorrent, they don’t want him removed from office lest it threaten their own power and the profit that comes with it.
And then I came across this quotation by Albert Einstein:
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
There’s no escaping the fact that those of the President’s own party who remain silent, and hide behind that silence while the President sows chaos and harm across the globe in the name of this nation, are as deserving of our disdain as Donald Trump himself. Their silence is their consent.