By Alvin Leaphart, Jesup, Ga. | My grandmother, Florence Gibbs, a former United States Congressman, taught me “Noblesse oblige,” a French phrase meaning “nobility obliges.” It is the concept that nobility extends beyond mere entitlements and requires the person who holds such status to fulfill social responsibilities, particularly in leadership roles. She fervently believed that this applied to everyone in government, from the bottom to the top.
Leaphart
The Oxford English Dictionary meanwhile says that the term “suggests noble ancestry constrains to honorable behavior; privilege entails to responsibility.”
“Noblesse oblige” is generally used to imply that with wealth, power, and prestige come responsibilities. It also implies that the rich and powerful should set good examples of behavior and to exceed minimal standards of decency.
Donald Trump is rich and has power over ordinary people with whom he deals and is in a position to mistreat and abuse them without recourse. He has the power, because of his wealth, to uplift or destroy.
How he has used his position? Has he used his wealth, power, and prestige, not to uplift, but to humiliate and destroy?
He tried to publicly shame a Miss Universe beauty queen for gaining weight, calling her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” because she is a minority, and Hispanic. After he received some flack for his statements, he has tried to further bring shame upon her by claiming there are videos of her having illicit sex.
Trump developed numerous real estate projects and has stiffed his contractors and employees, some of whom lost their homes and life savings. Trump University was another of his enterprises where students paid tuition but never received viable instruction or training and the University is now defunct, leaving a horde of disillusioned young people who admired and trusted him. From his various defaults there have been 3,500 lawsuits and four bankruptcies, in which he left people who trusted him, some of whom invested their life savings, penniless while he strode by with millions in his pockets saying “It’s just good business.”
Just before he went to Mexico, Trump made all these bravado statements as to what he was going to say and demand. When he got there, he was meek as a lamb and hardly opened his mouth. But, when he got home, on safe ground, surrounded by a protective flock, he was all belligerence as to what he had said and what he was going to do. He cannot face an equal with courage. The only time he has any courage is when he is in a position to browbeat and demean someone he knows is weaker.
Trump is a coward, a bully, a mentally deranged, psychopathic liar, a sociopath — and, a con artist who will sell this country down the drain in a heartbeat, out of fear and greed.
I cannot understand people, especially those who profess to be Christians, who want a callous, dangerous, mentally ill clown with no knowledge of life, except what he sees through a pair of rose colored glasses, and absolutely no knowledge of government or foreign policy to be the President of the United States.
My grandmother, a strong determined, aristocratic woman, would have been aghast at the idea of someone like Trump being the President of the United States or in any other position of power in the country.
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