On Wednesday, the New York Times skirted its normal editorial policy and allowed a senior official in the Trump administration to write an anonymous op-ed essay titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The official explains in their essay that there is a contingent of administration officials who have “vowed to thwart parts” of Trump’s agenda and “his worst inclinations.”
Currently, much of social media is devoting time and effort into trying to figure out just who the anonymous author is, but there is a more important issue that needs to be addressed.
Why hasn’t this person gone to Congress with what they know, informing them that the president is unfit for office.
That Trump is unfit is not a secret to anyone who watches or reads the news on a daily basis. His behavior on Twitter alone reflects lacks basic professionalism, civility and decorum.
This administration official is hiding behind anonymity because their job “would be jeopardized” by the disclosure of their identity. They requested to remain anonymous, and the Times obliged them.
First of all, you are not part of the “resistance” if you are hiding behind anonymity. The biggest tool the resistance has is its voice, and the louder the better.
The cowardice in this act is summed up by the official in their very own fourth paragraph in which they say the resistance they are a part of “is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.”
This administration has put forth dangerous, racist, xenophobic policies that are harmful to the American people. There is nothing safe or prosperous about that. So what you are really saying is you believe in the policies that the president has set forth, but you just don’t like him personally. While you may agree with his policy decisions, the way that he goes about them is a bad look, and that is what you object to. Anonymously or not, that is a dangerous hill to die on.
“That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office,” the official wrote.
Again, the “resistance” as you call it should be making a concerted effort to remove Trump from office. This is not a “wait and see” type of situation. This is a situation that needs an immediate remedy—and that remedy can only be the removal of this cancer from our nation’s highest public office.
You cannot at once call the president “amoral” and declare him to be without “principles” in his decision making but then be hesitant to move on that information.
No, the true intention of this editorial is revealed in the paragraph goes as follows:
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
You are not concerned about this country or the people who live in it; you are offended by a man who doesn’t care what anyone thinks—not even you—and you wrote a long essay to do nothing more than insult him.
You have revealed no new information here. You haven’t opened the eyes of America to anything we all didn’t already know or think on our own. And when you’re inevitably outed, some will look at you as a hero. You are not. You are not someone we should look up to.
In fact, you are functioning much in the same way as the president you attempt to lambast in your piece. You are hurling insults, calling names and making a bunch of negative declarative statements—all without offering any possible solution that would help the American people out of this situation we find ourselves in.
I have solved the mystery of who wrote this op-ed, and if I am wrong, I will gladly apologize.
I believe the author of this op-ed is white and full of privilege, because this essay epitomizes everything that is wrong with our current administration and government.
The privileged white members of this administration are perfectly fine with Trump’s policies that separate children from their families, his xenophobic travel bans, the removal of healthcare coverage from people who need it, and the continued coddling of the gun lobby. The only thing they take issue with is his boorish personality, which they find offensive.
That is the whitest shit ever.
Whiteness wins once again, and everyone else suffers.
Trump won votes based on his offensive attitudes and campaign promises—which white people were totally OK with because they weren’t impacted by them.
This author and those who think like this author are only upset because Trump is allowing everyone in the world to get a glimpse of what is really under the hood in America. It was OK when it was secret and done in privacy by other administrations.
That this president goes on Twitter and television and everywhere else to proudly proclaim his bigotry is something they can’t tolerate because they don’t want to be tainted by it.
It’s all that they care about.
This op-ed is completely disingenuous. It is a lie that perpetuates an ongoing lie—that our government officials have our best interests at heart. They don’t.
This op-ed is sanctimonious in a specifically white way that which holds decorum over principle and intent over effect.
The very fact that the author requested to remain anonymous proves that they place a higher importance on keeping their job than they do on effecting any sort of helpful change.
Everyone in this administration is complicit at this point. If you are not actively working to remove Trump from office, then your op-ed is self-serving at best and an insult to the intelligence of the American people at worse.
You want to be a part of the “resistance”?
Come out of the closet. Call him out openly. Let us know what is really happening behind closed doors in the West Wing.
In the words of the prophet Mo’Nique: name names or keep it on the playground.
Otherwise you are just as full of shit as the man you work for.