“Nice country ya got heah, youse Democrats. Be a shame if somethin’ happened to it.” — Donald Trump

Donald Trump is in effect holding the entire nation hostage and

blaming it on the Democrats. It's no different than kidnapping

for ransom. Lock him up.

“The Democrats are stopping us and they’re stopping a lot of great people from getting paid,” says Donald Trump.

What?

Trump says it’s the fault of Democrats that parts of the government are slowly grinding to a halt, and government workers aren’t getting their salaries. Which means, he’d have you believe that it’s not because he refuses to sign a budget which would authorize their pay.

He blamed the Democrats after he prevented Mick Mulvaney and the rest of his staff “from negotiating on his behalf to compromise on his demand for $5.7 billion for border wall funding,” that would entice him to sign off on the rest of the budget, reports the New York Times.

“He castigated Mr. Mulvaney for proposing a compromise figure between Mr. Trump’s desired $5.7 billion for a wall and the Democrats offer of $1.3 billion for border security, as a way to end the shutdown,” the Times also says.

And he shot down a proposal made by Senator Lindsey Graham, to re-open government temporarily “in an effort to jump-start talks with Democratic lawmakers on funding a border wall. " 

In other words, when Trump says the Democrats are refusing to negotiate, what he really means is that either they capitulate to precisely what he demands, on his terms, without compromise, or he will bankrupt thousands of innocent government workers, and also endanger millions of other innocent Americans, whose lives, and futures, and health are being destroyed by the Trump Shutdown. If need be, he will destroy the nation to get his wall. 

What it boils down to is, “Do what I tell you or somebody’s gonna get hurt."

They used to arrest, try, and imprison criminals who pulled similar stunts. And then throw away the key.

Somehow, Trump’s behavior also brings to mind the 1973 kidnapping of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty’s sixteen year old grandson. The boy was held hostage for five months, while the kidnappers demanded $17 million.

In a typical “look what you made me do” gesture that characterizes thugs like Donald Trump who hold other people hostage, they chopped off one of the boy’s ears and mailed it to a Rome newspaper when Getty refused to pay. It was all Getty’s fault, the crooks said. He should have coughed up exactly what they asked for.

Now the President of the United States is kidnapping our government workers’ paychecks — and with them our national security and our economy — to satisfy his own egotistical demands. 

Sooner or later, the folks who work for the Coast Guard, the people who inspect our food, the air traffic controllers, the people who track hurricanes and blizzards for us, the people who protect us from epidemics, and many others will quit and go to work elsewhere to hold body and soul together.

When that happens, ordinary citizens will begin to die from eating tainted food like lettuce and shell fish. Small businesses will go bankrupt. People will drown because they didn’t know a storm was coming. Airliners full of people will either crash, or will fail to take off, crippling not only the airlines, but all the forms of commerce that depend on airlines. Drug and arms smugglers will have a field day landing contraband on shorelines no longer guarded by the Coast Guard. We will suffer from epidemics of diseases like Ebola as the Centers for Disease Control goes on hiatus. And that would be just the beginning.

In our country we’ve historically detested hostage-takers. And our own government never pays ransom, because we know that if the hostage-takers succeed just once, they'll do it again and again.

That's why we search them out, wherever they are. If they’re at home, we throw them in prison for life. If they’re abroad, we shoot them, bomb them, or spirit them away to places like Guanatanamo and let them rot there.

Now our entire nation is being held hostage by the thug in the White House.

So let me ask you. What should be done about Donald Trump?