Robin SmithWant to know why an unelectable candidate like Donald Trump is gaining such notoriety when he likely only wanted to declare his candidacy as a public relations stunt?
The answer's easy. The U.S. government and the ruling class have, by their actions, demonstrated that laws are arbitrarily enforced to benefit only certain citizens, groups and special interests. The average law-abiding citizen and business have no real voice to protect their rights. As a result, their anger and frustration drive them to support those who dare to speak up, no matter how exaggerated.
Contrast two news stories reported last week by CBS News from local affiliates, one in San Francisco and the other in Detroit:
America watched with disgust and disbelief as Francisco Sanchez, an illegal immigrant deported five separate times with seven felonies under his belt, was charged with shooting and killing a young woman walking with her father on San Francisco's Pier 14, a major tourist area. The local sheriff blamed Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), and ICE blamed the San Francisco Sheriff's Department. Regardless, this illegal immigrant was protected by the intentional refusal to enforce existing laws, the same ones often ignored by Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats nationwide.
Compare this to the Detroit CBS report of a woman, Becky Rehr, who drove to her county sheriff's office to renew her 11-year-old dog's license, having missed the final renewal deadline of May 28 of this year. The penalty for the out-of-date dog license can be a $100 fine and up to 90 days in jail.
As Rehr's 14-year-old daughter waited in their vehicle, her mom, the "criminal," was frisked, fingerprinted and arrested. She was housed in a cell with orange jumpsuit-clad inmates held for any number of crimes committed in Kalamazoo County.
The absurd speaks best for the absurd.
We have federal, state and local officials who, because of their fear of being labeled racist, are abdicating their duty to secure the rights and safety of law-abiding U.S. citizens.
So in the same nation, a mom can be thrown in jail for putting a dog license "on the back burner," while an illegal immigrant felon gets government protection and then commits his most heinous crime.
The entire governing elite - regardless of party - has become a national laughingstock, one that talks about problems but refuses to solve them.
Remember the Obama administration's raid of Memphis-based Gibson Guitar, employing SWAT teams because the company used the "wrong wood" in the manufacture of their guitars? Our government protects certain lumber, yet there's no legal moratorium against harboring criminal illegal immigrants?
Remember when hundreds and thousands of illegal immigrant children were "placed" in cities across America to enter schools under protected status? Yet American moms and dads, working to ensure their kids' vaccination records were up to date, found their children next to vaccination-free students from countries rife with tuberculosis, measles, mumps and other communicable illnesses?
As politics churn on, the ruling class owns the failures of our nation because of its empty talk - day after day, month after month, election after election.
Continue to laugh at Donald Trump and any other outside-the-Beltway candidate who dares to speak truthfully, but know you're likely among those who need to exit the political clown car.
Robin Smith, a former chairwoman of the Tennessee Republican Party, is owner of Rivers Edge Alliance.