It is difficult to pinpoint the moment or event that caused me to reject Donald Trump as a candidate because it wasn’t a moment during his 2016 campaign. I had long discarded him as a person before he even tried to enter the primaries. Likely, it was the Celebrity Apprentice gig that soured me on him as a person. I had always thought of him as a nasty person, one that had low character and bloviated about business deals and money like rich people tend to do. He had always struck me as someone that did not care for people that were below him, either in wealth or taste, and the more you heard from him the crassness really became evident.
Aside from his TV gig, I remember ESPN did a 30 for 30 about the USFL and there was an interview with him. The clip isn’t really noteworthy in a sense that he did or said something remarkable, it’s noteworthy in the way you see him operate when presented with a quote from someone not praising him. He’s talking about Charlie Steiner, the great sportscaster from ESPN, who went on to call baseball games for the Yankees and Dodgers. Early on, however, he was a part of the USFL television broadcasts. Steiner was talking about how Trump wanted to go from page six to the front page and try to buy his way into the NFL by way of the USFL.
All of it was factual.
Trump took it as Steiner was badmouthing him and Trump’s first line of defense was, “I hope he said that in a friendly way because if he didn’t, I’d love to take him on like I take everybody else on. So I hope he remains loyal, and if he doesn’t let me know and I’ll attack him.” His first reaction to anyone saying a bad thing, or anything that isn’t absolute praise and respect for Donald J Trump, is to badmouth them. They’re worthless to him because they don’t allow him to advance his narrative that he’s the greatest person to ever walk the earth. This is extremely narcissistic, one-sided, and heavily polarizing when injecting this brand into our politics.
Imagine if Barack Obama attacked any and everyone who said unflattering, racist, or seriously questionable things about him. He never would have gotten a single thing accomplished in his eight years in office.
I often pine for the days where politics weren’t as polarized. Almost as soon as the words exit my mouth, I immediately realize they’ve been polarized my entire adult life — going back to GW Bush’s two terms, 9/11 and the Iraq invasion and all of the lies we were inundated with, and before that, Bill Clinton and his intern scandal that was blown out of proportion. Or at least it seemed. If you were an old-school republican back then, you might have thought he should’ve been impeached, which he was, and thrown out of the Presidency, or resigned at least. Things have changed greatly, and that almost seems quaint in a way; the President does something objectively immoral and the people in charge — you know, Congress…Is that still a thing? — decide that something needs to be done. No American law was broken when Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton engaged in a consensual relationship yet there were hearings. Maybe it was a law of God, Ten Commandments, adultery and all that, but no justice was to be served when nothing criminal took place. All of that pearl-clutching really amounted to a lot — a pdf that goes to page 222 — yet 21 years later, it’s as if no one learned anything.
I recently read a piece on Politico about Trump and the Access Hollywood tape that made me think of all this. One of the last lines in it, an excerpt from a forthcoming book about the rise of Trump, reads “Within 48 hours the bleeding had stopped: Republicans ceased their calls for his withdrawal, Pence dutifully returned to the stump and his campaign went on as though nothing had happened.” He blew it off as “locker-room talk” and excused it by bringing up Clinton’s repeated infidelity, his treatment of women, and how Hilary attacked the women to keep them silent and away. Which is all to deflect away from him, of course, so people can justify it and move on. Blame this person, blame that person, he didn’t really mean it, it wasn’t actually him on the recording (even though he admitted it), he was set up by so-and-so and had a flimsy motive, whatever they want to say to themselves so they can just get on with their day and scream MAGA into the void that is the internet.
It was better once, right? We had the 90s, it was good then. There was prosperity, we had growth, and people were happy, at least happier than they were in the next decade. Actually, it probably wasn’t as great as we thought it was at the time. There was quiet racism like enacting laws that punish communities of color disproportionately, and louder racism like with Rodney King and probably OJ, too, the aforementioned Clinton Scandal, Newt Gingrich, the Gulf War, Boris Yeltsin and the fall of Soviet Russia, Columbine, Oklahoma City bombing, World Trade Center bombing, and the list could go on and on. The economy did pretty well so we were making money. Technology was expanding at a ridiculous rate, the internet was exploding and getting into more and more homes, schools, and businesses, but that changed after Y2K and the .com bubble burst. It was so fleeting, people could be worth millions of dollars and lose it in a matter of months. However much money the Dow Jones was making, and they were making it hand over fist, the working class was certainly doing more as productivity rose steadily, however incomes were stagnated.
Somehow, in the middle of all this, the rich people in this country were able to brainwash the middle class into thinking it’s the poor people that are siphoning money from the government when the rich people in the country are the ones that benefit from tax cuts. The super-rich are completely sheltered from most issues that plague the working class.
These are the same people that were able to take advantage of the pillars of democratic ideals like unions and affordable education yet when it came time for their children to tap into these resources, they had the audacity to tell us they’re no good. College tuition skyrocketed to the point where people go into lifelong debt to get a decent-paying job instead of joining a trade union because most of them are not beneficial ever since the rise of right-to-work laws. These same people yell and scream and throw hissy-fits about 47% of America not paying taxes yet these are the very people that get away with not paying taxes. It’s not an odd thing when you consider that the rise of Fox News almost coincides with this narrative. And to think that it was the NFL that gave Rupert Murdoch the opportunity and exposure to inject that into our lives is an interesting footnote in all of this.
Excuse me — but, Lady Liberty needs glasses and so does Mrs. Justice by her side
It’s unprecedentedly sad when we can’t argue about facts. Instead we argue about lies and misinformation being spread by a large group of people, spearheaded by the President of the United States, without repercussions. There are no consequences for someone in the President’s Cabinet touting lies about Pizzagate, or the President retweeting conspiracy theories, or even his son doing the same. It’s a free country with protections for freedom of speech, so these people can say what they please, as long as it doesn’t incite direct violence. When this guy goes on Twitter rants it does everyone a disservice. It accomplishes nothing and only serves to divide the public.
The way Trump speaks, whether in-person or on Twitter, is most foul. It is the lowest you can possibly go. Look at how he talks about U.S.-born women in Congress. He thinks American-born citizens “who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”, even though they were born here. In America, land of the free and home of the brave. When pressed on the tweet and if he should apologize, he said no, they should apologize to America. As wild as those racist comments are, he’s said it before of Colin Kaepernick. Republican members of Congress can’t even be bothered to condemn the President for these statements.
Who does that? Racists.
Racists do that.
Donald Trump is a racist as well as many other things. He fully established his racism when he announced his 2016 Presidential Campaign and said Mexican immigrants coming into the U.S. were criminals and rapists. None of this is new, only the time it has happened. Again. Time and time and time again. Over all of this, the Republican establishment is fully behind him. They’re the ones who have to hold their nose and normalize his behavior after all because none of this is normal. The GOP are the people who let him be on their Presidential ticket and run in their primaries. They are responsible for the last 3 years of racism, sexism, and all the other –isms you can think of.
I remember talking with a co-worker who is no longer with us before the 2012 election about how the previous four years were eye-opening in regards to the racism that popped up in response to Obama’s election to the Presidency. She didn’t think much of it, not because she agreed with it but because, in her words, “I haven’t seen any of that.” Maybe she wasn’t paying much attention, maybe she didn’t notice it because she didn’t experience much growing up, which would make sense with her being a middle-aged white woman surrounded by white people all her life. Maybe she thought I was one of those young people that seeks out race in everything. Who knows, she left shortly after the election and passed a few years after.
Here’s a shocker but I didn’t grow up with a lot of diversity around me. I’m 35, almost 36, come from a community that is 90% white people, had maybe a handful of non-white people in my graduating class, and never had many friendships with people of color. I can remember two off the top of my head. Not by choice but by ability. My life has been almost exclusively sheltered from people that do not look like me. I write this knowing my privilege is great — I didn’t graduate high school but went back four years later to get my GED, went out and got an Associate’s Degree and still was able to obtain a decent-paying job. There’s a lot of people in this country that would be able to do that but most of these people are white.
I wish there was a way for white people to experience life as a person of color. Imagine being told you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you were never given shoes in the first place. Imagine taking a stand for what you believe in and not being able to find work. Imagine being born in a country and having the President of that country tell you that you need to go back to where you came from. Imagine being told that racism is over because we elected a black guy and still having to endure all of this pesky racism.
Imagine the President of the United States not responding to every single perceived slight against them when they have absolutely every right to respond. It is not that difficult to imagine the latter because we had Barack Obama for eight unforgettable years.
Those eight years were unforgettable but not because there was a new tweet-storm from the President to talk about two or three times a week. Not because he cheated on his wife with multiple porn stars and tried to cover it up with hush money. Not because we had audio and video of him bragging about committing sexual assault. Not because he is accused of accepting help from a foreign government to win an election he had no business being involved in. There were other reasons, some of which I’ve already laid out.
But 2009 to 2017 were unforgettable for a number of things. We had really high highs and very low lows. I can still remember the feeling on election night 2008. Obama won by a landslide and there was cause for celebration. We just elected the first black man to the Presidency, something we probably weren’t ready for at the moment. We had no idea what we had actually done. If we had realized it fully, Democrats probably would have showed up at the polling station in 2010. But they didn’t, and Republicans won control of the House, numerous state Congresses, and then did it again in 2014 when Democrats still could not remember to show up and Republicans gained control of the Senate. It is quite possible Democrats did not stand a change in 2010 when Republicans based their entire nationwide campaign on Obama’s first two years. A campaign based on fear and hate, warning their base that Obama is a fascist, a socialist, a racist, wanting to ruin the America we knew. It was the first time I had experienced full-on racism in public. America had truly seen a momentous change in politics, a change we’d see in a million different ways in 10 years.
Obama wanted to work with Republicans. He really wanted to effect positive change in Washington D.C., his entire campaign focused on this. Turns out, the GOP wanted nothing to do with him. The Republicans decided “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” There would be no compromise. There would be only obstruction, all the way up to Obama’s last year in office when Mitch McConnell decided there would be no hearings for the vacant Supreme Court Justice seat because there was an election in November of 2016. Not only is this unforgettable but also unforgivable. Unforgivable because of course it wouldn’t be the same when Trump is in charge, no. No way would McConnell let a vacant Supreme Court seat go unfilled when there is a Republican in the Oval Office.
This is despicable.
This is America.
You say Trump don’t kiss ass like a puppet / ’Cause he runs his campaign with his own cash for the funding / And that’s what you wanted / A fucking loose cannon who’s blunt with his hand on the button / Who doesn’t have to answer to no one… great idea!
The list of things that would end any other political campaigns or tenures, let alone a Presidential one, is endless. It would be updated every week with a list that is longer than you can ever imagine and I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of people say as much. Dan Quayle was deemed unworthy because he couldn’t spell potato, among many other things. He basically was a potato. John Edwards could be a little closer but he only cheated on his dying wife. John Ensign was a little closer comparison and he was a terrible person who ruined at least three lives. There’s plenty of people who have ran for or been in public office and been run out by a fraction of the shitstorms that Trump has subjected himself to, because most of what happens to him is his fault in the first place. Unless you’re a “Trump Guy”, i.e. you’ve said something good, or nice, or have praised him publicly, the only reason he’s talking about you is because you’ve probably said something bad about him and he’s downright mean when he’s talking about you. He’s got some lame nickname for everyone he doesn’t like. You must be loyal to the Trump brand otherwise you’re just someone he will attack, like he threatened to do to Charlie Steiner.
And people buy in. Not a lot, but just enough. Remember, it only took 190,655 votes in four states.
His supporters wear Deplorable hats and Drain The Swamp hats and the old tried-and-true MAGA hat and bumper stickers that say I STAND and they fly Don’t Tread On Me flags next to the American flag and sometimes that weird Confederate one, and Lock Her Up buttons, too. Can’t forget those, they go on the hat, after all. A lot of them have an internet connection so they post and comment on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. They follow the normal white-guy-republican-and-maga-too cocktail of pages and accounts and comment on those. Sometimes they get banned from those pages and platforms, too. Other times, they don’t really say much online. They just play the games, duh. I’m related to a few so I know the different iterations.
How does one actually get up, go out and talk to those folks and try to change their mind? Do you go to the bar and have an educated discussion about politics? I would hope not, at least I don’t want to be there but kudos. Do you know anyone that disagrees with your politics, and if so, would you want to talk about that in a backyard barbeque, or a house party or something? You can certainly try, and I would respect you for it. Lord knows I’ve done this and sometimes it ends well and other times it ends in people not talking for a while. It’s a 50/50 proposition.
Sometimes, well, simply put: you can’t. There’s a small group of people that will never change their mind no matter what “facts” you present them with. This small group, Trump’s base, seems to be about ~30ish percent of voters. You can tell them all about how Robert Mueller said “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so” and here, you can watch him say it but they can’t believe you’re telling them something they’ve never seen or heard before because Fox News never mentioned it. They haven’t heard that Mueller said that the ball is in Congress’ court or anything that doesn’t support their narrative when it’s clearly evident that Russia meddled in our election and is ready to do it again. James Comey warned us about it, publicly, in a Congressional hearing. Or that there’s significant evidence Russia has blackmail on the President.
Fake news.
Imagine it pouring, just raining down on us / Mosh pits outside the Oval Office, someone’s trying to tell us something / maybe this is God just saying we’re responsible, for this monster
There are a few times when people have a moment of clarity, or their come-to-Jesus-moment, or whatever you want to call it and disavow the Trump way of life. It’s only a few and you probably can’t think of five people that have publicly. I only know folks that never did, or currently do. Paul Ryan could only take so much until he reasoned that retirement was the only way out. Think about that, the Republican establishment’s best friend, Paul Ryan, could only take so much before he was like, “Screw it, I’m out. I can’t do it.”
There isn’t much of a middle ground on the President. It seems either you are for him or against him; it is nearly impossible to stay neutral. Ambivalence is nary an adjective used to describe one’s feelings about Trump. Except for very extreme circumstances, the shitstorm will eventually encompass the airwaves around you and hit your eardrums. It will eventually make you form an opinion on something and you’ll either take a stance, one way or another, or shrug and go on with it.
To shrug, or not to shrug. Therein lies the action.
