For the last decade or so, transparency in government has been a big deal. Under Obama’s presidency, the White House website released new information nearly ever day. Even in this constant stream of news, Republicans were quick to say that Obama’s presidency was secretive.
Now we are faced with a president who we know almost nothing about. For ages now Trump has been attacking media outlets that disagree with him or report on the stuff that he is actually doing by calling them “fake news.”
He has gone to such great lengths to be obsolete that, last week he even banned certain news agencies who haven’t often reported in his favor. It is depriving U.S. citizens of transparency and blocks real news. Saying all of these seems useless to some extent, Trump isn’t going to listen, he doesn’t care about citizens rights. He will do whatever he pleases anyway. However, I believe that it is important to inform voters that what he is doing is wrong.
I repeat: America has had a decent streak of transparency in government until now. During the campaign Trump was clear about nothing. He had vague statements and few people actually knew anything about his platform. He was quick to contradict himself and, in his opinion, “Everything is negotiable.” Later on in the campaign, he wouldn’t even release his taxes. He was one of the first major party nominee since 1972 not to release his tax returns.
He made promises about building a wall and making Mexico pay for it, but provided no plan for how the wall was going to be built or about how we were going to force Mexico to pay for it. He was a strong force driving the replacement of Obamacare, but didn’t care to explain what he was planning on replacing it with. All in all, he has been clear about nothing other than his transparent racism and bigotry (no matter how hard he tries to hide that it always shines through.)
As a people, knowing what our government is doing is a right. It dates way back to the Consent of the Governed philosophy. How are we, as a people, supposed to consent to being governed if we have no idea about what our government is doing?
It may start like this, but with Trump’s shady ties to Russia and vague statements, America may soon find itself in a whole lot of trouble.
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