Another wake-up call for all of us

On Jan. 2, President Trump boasted to reporters: "They say I am the most popular president in the history of the Republican Party."

In his Jan. 1 opinion piece "Trump's reckoning is under way," Eugene Robinson writes: "Anyone who thinks Trump is a master politician is wrong. He is a master illusionist …. Trump is talented at making it appear he has more than he really does - more money, more respect, more support." This observation brought to mind Les Hinton's selection of Tom Bower's 1995 book, "Maxwell: The Final Verdict" as one of the five best books on giants of the press.

According to Bower, Robert Maxwell, who owned the New York Daily News, London Daily Mirror and much, much more, was a crook a blowhard and a boaster - committing crimes even as many suspected there was something very fishy about him. Bower summed up his conclusion about Maxwell's success, a conclusion that is also applicable to the Maxwell-like giants in today's world of business and politics: "(He) prospered because hundreds of otherwise intelligent people willfully suspended any moral judgment and succumbed to their avarice and self-interest."

So what has been wrought by "hundreds of otherwise intelligent people" with the success of Donald Trump, the giant master showman and illusionist, who was elected to the presidency of the United States? Joan Chittister, O.S.B., a Benedictine nun, theologian and author, has an answer worth pondering in her Jan. 2, column in The National Catholic Reporter: "For the first time in modern American history, the presidency, the great stabilizer of American government, is being destabilized by the president himself." It appears to be another wake-up call for all of us.

Frank G. Splitt

Mount Prospect