What do we really want from our leaders? Maybe we just don’t care what they say or do as long as we agree with them in some way.

Take, for instance, President Trump saying the following about the death of Rob and Michele Reiner. This information is taken from an ABC News update: “Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday morning that Reiner’s death was “reportedly due to the anger he caused by others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction … known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Trump called Reiner “a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star.”

What is “Trump Derangement Syndrome”? Were either one of the Reiners tortured or struggling? Are these secrets that the President has kept close to him and has just now mentioned to us? Are there more of these secrets that Trump is holding on to?

How many of us believe that he feels anyone who doesn’t agree with him has this syndrome? Are we really OK with our President saying these things? Is hate now the norm in this country? Is hate of others OK if the person spouting it is someone who also says a few things we agree with?

If we answer any of those questions with a “yes” then maybe we are as hateful as the President. And for some of us, maybe that’s OK since he has told us what a great job he is doing. I would rather experience the great things happening than being told they are. In any case, however, if the Reiners truly had this syndrome, and were prejudiced against the President, then for all the comments the President has made in the past, he would assuredly have “Biden Derangement Syndrome”. And yes, that would be very sad, too.

Does anyone now feel that America’s actions concerning the Caribbean and Venezuela had anything to do with drugs? They certainly had no connection to fentanyl. The following is from Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on drug trafficking and addiction at the Brookings Institution. “Whatever actions are taken in the Caribbean have no effect on fentanyl,” she said. Cartels operating in the Caribbean region are heavily involved in cocaine trafficking, Felbab-Brown said, but much of that illegal product goes to countries other than the United States.”

Of course, cocaine is a terrible drug, too. It must be stopped or its use slowed down. President Trump says that with every boat that gets hit we save 25,000 American lives. The same article mentioned in the previous paragraph states, “But most experts on criminal cartels and deadly street drugs say military strikes on speedboats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific will also have little or no impact on overdose deaths in the United States.”

So, we are taking a huge chance bombing these boats and killing these people in international waters. Our standing in the world will not only be reduced further, but we may sometime in the future be called a rogue nation. I feel we are seeing some of this already.

So, have we come up with an answer? If we say yes this is a drug issue, then we are wrong. America’s hand was shown as soon as they seized the oil tanker. As for drugs, we need to have much better border security if we are still seeing them in our country. President Trump ran on this so we should have this covered, right?

Now let’s talk about tourism. Read the article at www.cbsnews.com/news/us-tourists-social-media-history-5-years-trump/. “The Trump administration is proposing to ask visitors from several dozen nations that enjoy visa-free travel to the U.S. to submit additional personal information before entering the country, including five years of their social media history, the Department of Homeland Security said in a notice this week.”

The tourism dollars spent in our country in 2024 was $155 billion. If this proposal is committed to that, we should see these dollars increase, right? How do you even find five years of social media? Good luck, tourists. Maybe they will be able to pay a certain amount of money to eliminate the social requirements.

After all, President Trump’s Gold Card that allows people to pay $1 million to get a visa and a possible pathway to citizenship is one way the administration found money for our coffers. This article expresses the possibility for employers in our country. It is at www.forbes.com. “Employers also have the ability to sponsor workers for $2 million with the program’s Gold corporate cards, coming with a 1% annual fee and 5% transfer fee in the event a company wants to change the recipient.”

The most interesting thing here is that companies are simply paying back some of the tax breaks we gave them. We could have just eliminated the tax breaks and saved much more.

By putting all these things together, with some other missteps being made by our government, we see that we need to find the answer to the following: Are government employees, in total, just laying around doing nothing? It certainly looks as if Congress is. It also looks as if many other department officials are, too. At least in those departments that are still functioning.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not laying around that is the problem. Maybe it’s lying that is the biggest problem.

Once we find the true answer to this, we may be able to start the changes necessary to keep our democracy.

Reed Harris is a longtime Rochelle resident and community volunteer.