It All Boils Down to Legacy
What Will You Leave This World?

This essay reflects the truth. The meaning of life, after we are gone, boils down to our legacy. Another way of writing this is how will people remember us when we are laid to rest? My two dances with death taught me a critical lesson about my life…my clock is ticking. Prior to my traumatic brain injury and prostate cancer, I thought that I knew that reality, but I didn’t. I knew it objectively like I know that the Earth revolves around the Sun. However, now, I get that truth, which was delivered to me on steroids. While I don’t want to do either dance again, I wouldn’t delete either from my life. It is the single most important thing that I will ever learn before I go belly up. Why?

The stark reality that I am not immortal caused me to live. Go to The Last Lecture and watch Randy Pausch wakeup me along with millions of others. I had done both dances and didn’t realize the impact that they had upon me until Pausch’s lecture.

The issue is legacy. How will you be remembered? When I am no longer able to lead Death upon the dance floor of life, I will have things to give my family. Stuff, which I think is priceless, from around the world. While all my stuff isn’t really valuable monetarily, it will be things that will cause my family to remember me. Hopefully, there will be some money to be divided up between them also. However, what is more important is my personal legacy. What my family, my friends, and my students have gained from knowing me over the years is vastly more important than things. They have watched my actions and interplay between people. They can learn through my successes as well as failures. How have I helped each one of them is more critical than any of my treasures that clutter my home or actual money.

Nonetheless, that was just the backstory. Now, we have arrived at the gist of this essay—Donald J. Trump, the clown that is in the White House. I am three years older than Donald the Dumb. While he often says, “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” Neither he nor anyone else believes that they are his greatest assets.

It doesn’t seem that he has done the dance. Therefore, as smart as he is, he doesn’t realize that his clock is ticking. However, according to the Social Security’s life expectancy table, a male born on June 14, 1946, on average, will live for another dozen years. This is based upon national averages. One of the problems with Trump physically is that his Body Mass Index (BMI) is 30.4, which means he is obese. Regardless of predictions from Social Security or his doctor, no one can guess when their time is up in this world.

When that day arrives and Trump is ready to leave this world, it will be too late to think about what he will leave his family, his friends, and America. Whatever the financial benefits that he will leave his family, the vast majority of it will be money that was ill-gotten. However, more to the point, what is his real legacy that he will leave them. How will they remember him? And how will the world remember him?

How have we remembered people like George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Lester Maddox, Bull Connors, Jesse Helms, William Fulbright, John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, etc.? I can’t believe that he isn’t concerned about how he will be remembered. His life revolves around him. I wouldn’t want him as my father. Doesn’t he realize that in a dozen years and probably less for medical reasons, he will be staring death in the face? Does he think that he will be remembered as anything more than our worst president of all time?

Trump has bankrupted six of his companies that he ran. This is the list: Trump Taj Mahal in 1991, Trump Castle Hotel and Casino in 1992, Trump Plaza Casino in 1992, Trump Plaza Hotel in 1992, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts in 2004, and Trump Entertainment Resorts in 2009.

These are some other companies that merely closed: Trump Airlines took off slowly in 1988 and crashed landed in 1992. Trump started Trump Mortgage, LLC lasted as long as his magazine, Trump World, lasted—each 18-months. He had to pay $40,000,000 in civil suits regarding Trump University. Trump steaks didn’t make it nor did Trump Steakhouse in Las Vegas. His steakhouse was forced to close its doors due to over fifty health code violations. GoTrump, which was a travel Internet site, made it for a year.

Would you want him as the CEO of the company for which you work? However, Trump is running America…into the ground.

Trump is going down his elevator, but he is also going down as our worst president.

As he nears three years as our fake president, what has he accomplished? The trade war with the Chinese? Denuclearization of North Korea? The wall? Keeping Iran from developing a nuclear bomb? He shut down the federal government for the longest amount of time in our government’s history for 35-days starting in December of 2018 and got him nowhere. He is trying to ruin Obamacare, he won’t address the issues related to the asylum seekers, he denies climate change, he is changing eighty-four environmental rules, and the list goes on and on.

He’s proud of his accomplishments.

Yo, Donald, we will remember you and so will the world. You have created a vast legacy…of failures. Oops, I forgot one more legacy. In Newsweek’s September 12, 2019 edition, this is the first paragraph. “Adult film star Stormy Daniels has taken a dig at president Donald Trump’s sexual performance—suggesting the businessman ‘maybe’ lasted two minutes in bed.”

This photo is from that edition of Newsweek.

I was told that this was his reaction to Stormy Daniel’s comment.

To avoid being like Donald the Dumb, think about what you will leave the world.