Monday, June 18, 2018

Whither Trump?

I wish I could say that my antipathy toward Donald Trump is because I don't like the man. I don't have to like everyone in politics or in any other field of endeavor. I've known people in my own profession that I didn't particularly "like", but acknowledge their general competence and good intentions. "Like" is a visceral term. Sometimes we don't like someone and can't even explain why.
I don't find that hard here.

I could begin with a lot of things, but it might be useful to review a few of Mr. Trump's forays into racially charged issues.

Mr. Trump has shown the public for over 50 years who he is and continues to do so today. He has spent his entire adult life in the public eye, much of that by his own choice, his own thirst for fame and publicity. He built a brand and a real estate empire as a "playboy" whose name embodied glitz and the finer things in life ("Get your Trump steaks here!"). He chased women throughout those fifty years, married or not. He liked that brand, the playboy with a woman on his arm, the glamour of it all, the appearance it created. It was part of his brand. The beauty pageants, the casinos, the big man about town, the controversies....all nourished and fed his need to be noticed and known.

He also liked to wander into the political and public opinion arena, pontificating on this or that issue. One may remember his insistence that the "Central Park Five" were guilty even after another man plead guilty, DNA evidence found only the confessor's DNA on the woman, and prosecutors dropped the charges. He continued to attack the young men even after they won a wrongful imprisonment settlement from the city of New York. After all, "maybe hate is what we need if we're going to get something done." He continued to defend his belief as recently as 2016. 

But hey, we've all been wrong before and held on to our wrongful beliefs a bit long, right? Life is so much easier when you are never wrong.  It can happen to anyone. Alas, this is not just a one shot deal.

Mr. Trump paid a $250,000 fine after he secretly funded attack ads on the Mohawk Tribe in an attempt to halt their development of a competing casino. In the ads he showed pictures of needles and drugs, asking, "are these the neighbors we want?", smearing the tribe as a bunch of thieves and drug addicts. He paid the fine because he concealed his funding of the ads, violating New York law.  Well, at least he didn't call them rapists and murderers.  He could have at least added that some of them are good people to balance it out. 

He criticized the law signed by President Reagan that allowed Indian gaming, stating that allowing Native Americans into his gaming world would bring out, "the biggest organized problem since Al Capone." When asked to substantiate his charges he told Congress, "well, people talk and have told me that."  Its ok though because he did note that, "no one loves Native Americans more than me."
He does wonder how some Native Americans just don't look Indian to him. Who needs Ancestry DNA? Maybe we can just ask the man if the issue arises. 


I can already hear you out there now..."He's just not politically correct!" "He's changed now!" "The media take his perfectly innocent statements and actions and mischaracterize them!"  or "Maybe he's obnoxious but he's better than Hillary!"  

Sigh.

These brief snippets are direct quotes or from official records.  I never saw where he denied any of them.

Not being politically correct is not a license to smear broad groups of people, casual racism, or using stereotypes. I don't like political correctness either, but I don't understand how someone could read this and not have their stomach churn just a bit.  

I didn't vote for Hillary either and could not support her then or now. But she doesn't get to be the voodoo doll that is waved around to excuse the moral excrement that oozes from this guy.  She won't be president. He is the president. I understand that the choices were lousy and that people voted for who in their  mind was the "lesser of two evils". 

Just don't tell me you don't know who the man is. He's been telling you exactly who he is for a long time.




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