I still can’t believe I did it. I sat through four days of TV coverage of the Republican National Convention without packing my bags for Kuala Lumpur or calling the suicide prevention hotline. I still haven’t come to grips with the fact that the party of Lincoln nominated a narcissistic buffoon like … like … (I’m having trouble saying it) … Donald Trump for the presidency. May God bless America, we’re really gonna need it.
I actually had a few laughs watching the so-called Republican establishment pussy-foot around endorsing Trump. They all seemed to sink to a “he’s-not-as-bad-as-Hillary” position. Vote for Donald, he won’t mess things up as much as Hillary will, or better yet, he won’t deviate as far from Republican ideals as that lying, cheating, greedy criminal Hillary will. Help us save the world from Hillary Clinton, vote for whatsisname. And how about Ted Cruz, with his trademark evil smirk, refusing to support Trump in his 25 minute, totally inappropriate campaign speech or better yet, Cruz’s wife, Heidi, being escorted out of the hall by security. Talk about sore losers.
Speaking of Hillary, I’ve never heard such hatred as the RNC speakers all had for Hillary Clinton. They couldn’t think of anything good to say about Trump so they laid into Hillary. Rudy Giuliani’s rant painted Hillary as a cross between Charles Manson and Bernie Madoff. And how about Chris Christie playing prosecutor and presenting a fabricated case against Hillary to the delegates, or Newt Gingrich spewing hate like we haven’t seen since he was impeaching Bill Clinton. I don’t know if making serious unsubstantiated claims like those is legal, but I can tell you for sure, it is in the worst possible taste. Those guys were nasty.
I’m not a big fan of Hillary either, but is she really as bad Donald tried to convince us in his latest tirade. He claimed: “Hillary is a world class liar who has perfected the politics of personal profit and even theft, and that she may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States.” Donald added: “She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund—doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, and really, many many others, in exchange for cash, and big-money interests totally own her, and that she will never, ever change, including if she ever becomes president.” Wow, if we are to believe one fraction of Donald’s accusations, Hillary would be in stalks in the town square rather than wading through balloons in a basketball arena. Hillary needs to dust off Richard Nixon’s old “I’m not a crook” speech. Nah, no one will believe her.
Donald Trump’s character, or complete lack thereof, is best illustrated in his long list of scandals. Scandals he conveniently combs over like his bald spot. (On a side note, I have never met a man with a goofy comb over like Trump’s that I liked.) While all of the outrageous charges against Hillary Clinton are suspicions and unproved allegations, Trump’s digressions are fully documented in a long, long list of court cases and legal proceedings. We start with his beauty pageant scandals and his settling charges of sexual misbehavior with various contestants, next comes his settlement of a Justice Department suit charging him with racial housing discrimination in 93 sites around New York, followed by the State of New York’s law suit and two class action suits alleging Trump University bilked students out of $40 million, and who can forget his cash settlement to the harassed and intimidated tenants of one of his buildings on Central Park. Or his four bankruptcies and the collapse of Trump Entertainment in his Atlantic City ventures, or being found guilty of avoiding paying benefits to underpaid, undocumented Polish workers on a New York project, or repeatedly being fined for breaking New Jersey’s casino rules, or his being fined by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations as he attempted to control all of the Atlantic City casino business, or how about the suits he settled with buyers of his Trump SoHo condominiums, or the buyers of Trump International Hotel and Towers in Fort Lauderdale, or his settlement with the prospective buyers losing millions when his Baja Mexico development went under. And, I didn’t even mention the allegations of his mafia ties. Does he sound like the kind of businessman you’d want to do business with, let alone nominate for president? I think not.
Okay, enough about Donald Trump’s lack of moral character, sleazy, greedy business practices, or his goofy comb over. Don’t you wonder what The Donald would have done if Bernie Sanders would have won the Democratic nomination. Trump would have had to attack Bernie’s progressive politics rather than bash his character. Trump doesn’t know enough to go toe-to-toe with a fourth-grader on any aspect of politics, but it would have been fun to see him try? So what about his politics? It must be his politics that have voters overlooking his total lack of character and his really, really shady past.
To start with Donald Trump has yet to offer any real programs other than a ridiculous wall. He’s just running as himself. “Vote for me, I can fix it, whatever it is.” He has, however, very cleverly capitalized on our frustration with our current grid-locked, constipated government and on working-class America’s disdain for the moneyed and powerful Republican establishment of the past. His supporters are, for the most part, poorly educated, white, blue collar, middle-aged men. Men filled with resentment over their own personal disappointments and their total lack of voice in our previous governments. Or to use Donald’s words: “The ignored and forgotten people of America.” He promises to be the voice of the voiceless. Yeah right, a billionaire known for making countless racist and sexual remarks and repeatedly screwing his employees is going to make everything better for our very diverse blue-collar America. Don’t hold your breath.
Donald has convinced some of our fringe, white working class, the Ku Klux Klan (he’s the first candidate to ever garner the support of the KKK) and numerous biker gangs, that our country has grown soft and feeble and that he alone has the strength to Make America Great/Work/Safe Again. Factory closings, contempt for government, jobs moving offshore, cheap immigrant labor (both legal and illegal), political correctness, chronic high unemployment, our inability to curb radical Islamic terrorism, and the violence in our streets are many of the topics discussed and lamented over in blue-collar bars across America. Donald has parroted this all back to the working class as if he feels their pain and shares their concerns and priorities. And can you believe it; he’s convinced them he’s the only guy who can rectify all these ills and bring law and order back to America. He’s our self proclaimed and totally clueless “law-and-order candidate.”
Trump has no real programs to fix any of this—he only offers himself. He says he’s tough when Obama and Clinton are weak. He preaches that he’s successful in business; therefore he’ll be successful dealing with all of these really tough issues as soon as he figures out how. So in place of substance, he echoes our contempt for government and those who lead us now. His ignorance of how our government works is an embarrassment even though he stated in his acceptance speech: “Nobody knows the system better than me.” He must have been referring to beating the system; because he has no idea on how to run it. His immigration plan is incoherent, unachievable and racist. His foreign policy, when he finally gets one, will consist of chest-beating and a lot of “mine’s bigger than yours.” His economic rhetoric is some adolescent gooblygoop about protectionism, our trade deficit, lowering our national debt, and taxing hedge fund managers.
So Donald is a presidential candidate like none we’ve ever had before. How shall we categorize him? He definitely not a fiscal conservative, ala the Koch brothers. They advocate free trade, deregulation, low taxes, balanced budgets, reducing government spending, and minimal government debt. Then he must be a social conservative, ala Pat Robertson. Nope, they resist social changes, oppose abortion, contraception, pornography, feminism, embryonic stem cell research, ignore LGBT issues, and fight for school prayer and teaching intelligent design.
He must be (God forgive me for suggesting it) a liberal Republican. No, there aren’t any of those, and if there were, they’d be championing issues like: a woman’s right to decide, affirmative action, doing away with the death penalty, a government that protects its citizens from the greed of big business, finding alternative sources of energy, dealing with global warming, coming up with some form of gun control, creating free or low-cost government controlled health care, and offering amnesty to those who entered the U.S. illegally. Sound like The Donald? No way in hell.
If he’s none of the above, what the hell is he? I don’t know or care what he is beyond a sleazy, narcissistic misogynist, but I am curious about his supporters. Who in the hell would be taken in by the same propaganda as the KKK and biker gangs? Who else would even want to be in that category? Maybe rednecks? Just to check, I looked up the definition of a redneck. Webster says:
Redneck: a white person who lives in a small town or in the country especially in the southern U.S., who typically has a working-class job, and who is seen by others as being uneducated and having opinions and attitudes that are offensive.
That’s it, I figured it out. It’s their being uneducated and having opinions and offensive attitudes that are the dead giveaways.
I don’t want Donald Trump anywhere in my life let alone the White House. Now if President Hillary will appoint him as a lifetime ambassador to some cesspool place where he can brag about the size of his … er … fingers, make fun of cripples and immigrants, and degrade women, Mexicans and Muslims. Somewhere like the Congo, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, or …
Too Much Tequila, Too Little Sunscreen 