Stick with a resolution to loathe Trump

Let’s not tire too quickly of our New Year’s resolutions for 2025: Lose 10 pounds. Go to the gym. Loathe Trump.

Don’t be like 94% of Americans who in January put their resolutions aside. Rather, hold on to that despicable feeling because Trump deserves it. He is distrustful and irresponsible, a cheat.  He talks so bad about our country, blames others and threatens cruelty. So much so, that at his inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral, Episcopal Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde of Washington, D.C., pleaded with him to “have mercy.” 

“Millions have put their trust in you. … In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”

I am Episcopalian. Even as I risk being hard-hearted in asking those who hate Trump to keep on with it, I was proud of Budde’s plea. That woman is a realist.

Budde recognizes Trump’s enormous power as POTUS. She knows that people, especially the LGBTQ and undocumented, whom he has threatened, live or die on his word or whim, through police actions and law. If he fails to grant them mercy, there will be abundant suffering in our land and perhaps even the countries of Panama and Greenland.

He says the U.S. will benefit from the vast store of oil under Greenland, but I can’t help wondering what’s really going on? What sleight of hand is this? Who is really benefiting? I know he can’t be trusted. He’s a convicted felon, and while a lot of Black men are, some in the process gained one thing he lacks: humility.

Greenland says they don’t want to be Americans, and who would these days? Singlehandedly, Trump is changing the U.S. character and image as heroes — a role won in World War II — to the world’s tormenter.

The division of the American spirit raised its lethal head again Jan. 20 when Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday, and Inauguration Day both fell on that date.

Black people were especially offended. Their idea was to sit out the inauguration by not turning the channel there and therefore denying Trump the ratings he so loves. Focus on civil rights programs, said the many texts I received from friends who have been hating on Trump since Nov. 5, 2024, and earlier.

Other people went to the annual MLK Holiday luncheon at the Lansing Civic Center. That was their norm, though an electrical fire in the ceiling required a frustrating evacuation.

God interfered with me like that too, somehow switching the car radio — twice — from one NPR station broadcasting King’s speeches to the another that was broadcasting the inauguration live. Still, those who love King can hardly love Trump. Keep that up in 2025.

As a journalist, I need to know, and watch, so when at the gym, I found the screens offering one of two choices: watch the changing of the American guard  or ESPN. That was a dilemma. Football has been a pain since the Lions’ playoff loss.

I was peddling and taking in the Capitol Rotunda scene of President Biden sitting there, showing off his cultivation after 50 years of politics, as Trump trashed him and his administration.

I have never had a moment when I longed for the seventh POTUS, Andrew Jackson, except for more 20-dollar bills where his picture appears. Jackson, a Democrat, was known to be ready to throw down on his opponents, political or otherwise. At that moment, I wanted Jackson in Biden’s chair, so he could jump up and go upside DJT’s head.

Trump’s view, if not his mind, is imbalanced. The Biden-Harris team scored solid accomplishments, not the least with the pandemic. Though people I know who know Trump say he has some grace, he fails to show it to us. Dan Miller, the Lions radio broadcaster with a clear bias, displays more grace. He ends every game broadcast imagining that the opposing teams meet midfield, shake hands and say to each other,

“Job well done.”

“Job better done.”

If Miller was able to sustain that spirit year after year until Dan Campbell arrived, so can a person who loathes Trump.

With a husband like him, no wonder the once and present First Lady Melania looks so sour all the time. Along with a lot of viewers, did she, at his proudest scowling moment, roll her eyes, or give him the side eye? Who knows? Her hat set so low on her forehead the brim shielded most of her face and blocked his kisses. Be like Melania and remember on anniversary after anniversary that DJT is not a loving man.

Now is the time to join the American elite who hold on to their resolutions. That’s just 6%, Forbes magazine reported. Remember your resolution to hold to decent values, which evade Trump and his fault-finding ways and nasty ideas. Go after that new you.

A collective American self-esteem that is based on hating others, finding fault, blaming, kicking people when they are down, and zero tolerance, carries a cost. It’s bad karma. Time will come when we suffer wholesome hate, fault, blaming, and get stomped.

 Holding a standard for leadership can only improve the United States. Remember that DJT is a proven, and convicted, shifty, shady, distrustful bad actor. We deserve better.

(Dedria Humphries Barker is the author of “Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, A Colored Man’s Widow.” Her column appears the last Wednesday of each month.)