Oh Don, You’re a Bull in a China Shop
By John Sammon
12-3-2025
Don, Don, Don…
Tsk tsk tsk!
You never seem to think things through you never consider the ramifications of taking an action. I know; you don’t know what the word “ramifications” means, right Don?
It means that when you do something, it causes other things to happen, perhaps things you didn’t plan on happening….often unpleasant things.
Don, you’re a creature of impulse, not careful consideration based on research, a beast of intuition or simply just a whim, not a person who gives any thought to the end result of a decision.
Don, you don’t understand the principle of Murphy’s Law do you? Anything that can go wrong likely will.
Now Don, as your unofficial advisor, you better listen to me. Because you have too many “yes” men and women around you who won’t give you the truth (if they did you’d fly into a rage and fire them).
Let’s start with you’re sending the National Guard into American cities to supposedly oppose crime and rehearse (using cities) for combat operations. It is fair to say Don that only a moron (not a semi moron but a full-fledged moron), would send people to do a job for which they are not trained, and if the truth be known…90 percent of them don’t want to have to do that job.
For example Don, would you take an accountant out of his office, put a baseball uniform on him and place him in left field playing for the New York Yankees? No, that wouldn’t make sense. The accountant probably won’t play ball very well.
People in the National Guard are civilians who hold full-time civilian jobs like a plumber, bank clerk; a restaurant fry cook…or whatever. Many of them are low-income Latinos who need a part time job and salary to survive.
Prior to their deployment in cities they were only part-time soldiers, many attending a meeting one weekend a month, with a two-week training camp in summer. They spend their time in the weekend meeting at a local National Guard Armory building polishing outdated military equipment handed down to them from the full-time U.S. Army, swapping stories and attending a few improvised classroom instructions.
Combat crime?
They are not trained as police officers.
Don, a police officer is trained to combat crime. They attend and graduate from a police academy (a type of college), where they learn skills, everything from chase and pursuit to crowd control.
Your average National Guard soldier has none of these skills. They have civilian jobs and families they don’t want to leave. Sending them to cities to crack down on crime?
They can pick up trash in parks. They can be helpful rescuing stranded people in an earthquake or flood and handing out food parcels from a truck.
This decision of yours Don is pointless….absurd.
Was this decision to send Guard troops to cities, because you want to throw your weight around Don, act like a “big guy?”
Would a normal person make this decision? Place people (Guard troops) in a role for which they are not trained and have no experience? Notice how I use the words “normal person?” Most normal people would say, no, I can’t do that. That’s not going to work.
Don, you’re in over your head. If you don’t change you’re gonna be toast.
Just go ahead and keep doing things without thought. You’re like a bull stumbling in manure and then charging into a china shop.
Don, you do this for four apparent reasons.
1. You’re arrogant; you think you can do anything without paying for it (negative ramifications). Your intuition; you’re always right you’re incapable of being wrong you’re a self-proclaimed genius. No matter what I do it will always turn out good because it’s from me (this has been the downfall of almost every dictator throughout history).
2. You don’t listen to good advice none is offered to you and you would blow your top if it was anyway.
3. You don’t learn Don. You just go ahead and do things without thinking.
4. You believe in your lucky star (common among dictators). If you aren’t lucky and better and smarter than other people, then how come you have all this money, fame and beautiful (you think) orange looks? You have to be lucky. Everything you decide has to come out good. Right Don?
The world doesn’t work that way.
Let’s take Venezuela Don.
You want to start a war with Venezuela.
You think a war with Venezuela will be easy, a cake walk. We’ll just march in, take over and impose a new (puppet) government on the people of Venezuela, a government they resent and are unlikely to support.
This is history repeating itself. Remember the “”shock and awe” tactics that predicted quick victory in Iraq and the sign on the aircraft carrier that George W. Bush posed next to early in the conflict that said, “Mission Accomplished?”
The Iraq War went on for years after that.
Don, Venezuela has extensive jungles (the Amazon Rainforest), the perfect place for a guerrilla insurgency. The U.S. has long had a bad reputation in South America for interfering in the countries down there.
There will be a new row of grave headstones for 18-year-olds in Arlington Cemetery Don. You don’t care. You never served in the military.
Don, listen, try to think. Try to consider the potential down-side of your decisions.
Or if not……
The gods always blind those they wish to destroy.
John Sammon is an author, actor (General Hospital, It Lives Again, Deathsport) and film narrator (Smithsonian Award winner….American Indian Baskets). He is a member of no political party.
Photo – Philosophy Now