This is Viewpoints for Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017

Trusting the federal government?

Our Republican state Legislature announced after Trump’s victory on Nov. 8 not to try to do anything to help our uninsured and bankrupt rural hospitals . Just another excuse not to do anything for our uninsured who probably don’t vote anyway.

If Gov. Nathan Deal and our state Legislature had enrolled our state in Obamacare in the beginning, our uninsured would be fewer and many of them would have better health care. A no brainer. Yet I attended Republican candidate forums in Warner Robins where the candidates came out against the expansion of Medicaid.

One candidate even told me that he didn’t trust the federal government. Those of us on Medicare and enrolled in Social Security and with federal retirement annuities with great health insurance certainly trust the federal government.

Gov. Deal recently contacted FEMA for emergency relief from storm damages so he must trust Uncle Sam. The federal government disburses billions of dollars to state and local governments annually. The feds paid most of the costs of the dredging of Savannah’s river —not our governor.

Those who tell me that the federal government should have a balanced budget like family households make no sense. Medicare pays millions of bills daily in very efficient ways. Our federal government is a model employer that pays liveable wages and excellent retirement benefits. Unlike the low wages of our city and county police forces.

I am a retired federal servant with an excellent retirement annuity and health-care benefits. Houston County would be economically desolate if Robins Air Force Base were closed. Local residential apathy to its many values is the main reason that BRAC could force its closure.

KISS communication

Been a lot of negative comments about President Trump’s inauguration speech. Not “soaring oratory” or “inspirational” or other words to that effect, by comparing it to former presidents. In my opinion, there’s a very simple reason for that. President Trump is not a “politician” like the other presidents to whom he is compared. However, I note that he is almost never compared unfavorably to President Dwight Eisenhower, also not a politician, but a career military man.

In case you haven’t noticed, military and business people, both male and female, tend to be very direct and straight forward in their speech, avoiding flowery rhetoric, symbolism, etc., and focusing on simple, direct, and even blunt speech, to get their point across. Military people are trained in delivering speeches or briefings by using the acronym, KISS: “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” In my master of business administration studies, I learned the same principle.

President Trump graduated with honors from a prestigious military school as a young man and also learned from his successful businessman father. I think it’s quite probable that he learned the KISS principle very early in life. It is widely regarded as the best, most efficient way to communicate accurately and briefly. We should be glad about that. It reduces the chance of confusion and miscommunication.

If you want flowery but vague platitudes to make you feel better, go to church or attend a liberal college philosophy class. If you want to know what’s going on, listen to President Trump.

Not the Christian way

President Trump’s order barring entry into the U.S. from seven predominently Muslim countries has sent shock waves through our country and around the world. This hastily written, poorly thought-through order, is being challenged in the courts for its constitutionality, and questioned by many in Congress and throughout the country.

There were other ways for the president to address concerns for our security. This was not the way. This strikes many of us as patently unAmerican, unfaithful to the ideals of this country — a nation of immigrants, and a place where those fleeing persecution can hope to find refuge. And thankfully, hopefully, this country still is a place where people cannot be discriminated against for their religion.

Moreover, many with expertise in defense and homeland security are saying that this move makes us not more but less safe. It plays right into the narrative of extremists who want people in desperate circumstances to think America is the enemy. It undercuts cooperative efforts to combat extremism with people of good will here and abroad. What’s more, the whole notion of banning refugees and immigrants as preventing terrorism is built on fear-based rhetoric and not on the facts at hand. The experience of resettling refugees (who have been through a strict vetting process of 18 to 24 months, many having waited for years) has been overwhelmingly positive.

And finally, let there be no mistaking — there is nothing Christian about this policy. To hold out “an exception” for persecuted Christians while turning our backs on the others is to mock Christ. Jesus and his followers cannot be bought off so cheaply. This shutting the door to people in desperate circumstances because of where they come from is the opposite of Christianity.

One of the strongest themes in the Old Testament and New Testament is God’s special concern for the marginalised, the poor, “the other.” Jesus taught us that what counts is mercy and compassion, and that we will be judged by whether or not we have seen and responded to Christ in the hungry person, the stanger, the naked one, the imprisoned one.

We must continue to pray for our president, for strength and wisdom in a complex and fearful time. We need him to lead us in the ways that make for peace and justice. We need him to help bring us together. But this policy only further divides us. This only stirs the pot of fear and hatred that are the very source of the problems we face. It appeals to our worst instincts, not our highest values. Let us pray and let us call on President Trump to reconsider.

This story was originally published February 1, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017."