Rightly or Wrongly...


...it is my belief that I spend a lot of time agonizing over decisions that come easily to others. An example would be my last post about homosexuality, something that I struggled with for years before coming down on the side of gay rights. More recently, I have been agonizing over what is a proper attitude toward Trump supporters, my problem being that Trump doesn't just represent a different vision for America than I, Trump represents blatant and unbridled arrogance, narcissism, dishonesty, moral turpitude, and appalling stupidity. How then, am I to respect those who support Trump? The fact is that I can't.

I am so outraged by everything (and I do mean everything) that Donald Trump says and does that there are days when I am too disgusted to even turn on the radio, but I did turn it on earlier this week, only to learn that Trump was in Europe criticizing Britain's prime minister and London's mayor. Such is the man's ego. Then I heard him, yet again, favoring the denial of Russia's murderous and election stealing dictator, Vladimir Putin (with Trump took the unparalleled step of meeting in private for a two-and-a-half hours), concerning American election tampering despite the combined testimony of America's Federal Bureau of Investigation, its Central Intelligence Agency, its Division of Homeland Security, and fourteen other intelligence agencies, and I thought, ENOUGH! From the day he took office, Trump has done everything he can to undermine this nation's trust in ITS OWN GOVERNMENT in favor of a cult of personality, HIS personality. If you can look at this man and think that he represents anything but depraved psychopathy, you are a different cat than I, and I have nothing more to say to you. You might argue, "Let us discuss our differences, and perhaps we will discover that we're more similar than dissimilar." I would respond that you if you can defend Donald Trump, you can defend bestiality, child abuse, dog fighting, raping the elderly, and mugging blind people.

I have tried to hang in there with you; I really have, but if you can honestly believe that Donald Trump is an honorable man who has his country's best interest at heart despite what he has already said and done, you can support Trump no matter what he says and does. During his 2016 campaign, he boasted that he could walk up to a stranger on a crowded Manhattan street and blow the person's brains out without losing the support of the faithful, and he was right. I didn't believe it at the time, but I believe it now. Trusting Donald Trump is a degeneracy, and I feel sorry for you and sorry for our country because you and Trump are doing everything you to stuff us into the sewer.

19 comments:

angela said...

It boggles the mind when not only trump supporters, but those that always defend one political party, or person, over and over again
They are all tarred with the same brush i feel.
They are all liars and cheats, and only after lining their own pockets or boosting their own egos
But some are really right out there in their own little world
And I fear trump is one of them
So coughs up in his own little fantasy world, on which he is the greatest, brightest, most wonderful, that he just cannot fathom that he can be wrong, or misguided or unloved
Denial might be nice for a while in an ordinary person, but for someone with so much power right now it’s just dangerous

Emma Springfield said...

There is no way a person can defend that 'man' that I will accept. He wants to be our dictator in order to benefit himself and will allow his family to benefit too if that happens. I have never seen such a selfish or uncaring person either in real life or even in fiction.

Elephant's Child said...

I noted that while in the United Kingdom in addition to his other obsenities he took time out to promote his golf course in Scotland. The man has about as much shame as he does ethics. Or manners.

kylie said...

You may think less of me after I say this but I really wish someone would take him out

Strayer said...

I could not handle his news conference with Putin. To see him sell out America, beside a Russian president and former KGB agent, was too much for me.

Snowbrush said...

"You may think less of me after I say this but I really wish someone would take him out"

Clearly, if venomous stares could kill or if voodoo really worked, Trump would be dead (by the same token, if prayers worked, no pope would ever die), but given that his vice-president--the man who would take his place--is farther to the neo-right than Trump is, I don't know that it would do any good. It might even do harm because no one can alienate more people faster or send them to the polls in greater numbers to vote for anyone other than Donald Trump than can Donald Trump. He has been a disaster to the country, to the Free World, and even to his own party, but his faithful are so faithful in that they will believe anything he says no matter how obvious a lie it is or how nonsensical it is because they have made him their standard of truth. Their adoration is such that it's as if they signed on to worship Jim Jones or the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or else took a fall with Alice down the rabbit hole. When Trump said he liked the idea of being made president for life, they were right behind him. When he announced his meeting with the North Korean dictator, his followers chanted "Nobel Prize, Nobel Prize." THAT'S how things stand over here, and he so controls his own party that its candidates are afraid to criticize him because they know they will lose their next election--and a big one is coming up in November. It's really the most remarkable thing to go from regarding my fellow humans as flawed but, for the most part, well-meaning to losing all respect for the intelligence and the ethics of millions upon millions of people, nearly all of whom claim to be Christians. I continue to compare Trump to Hitler because of his cruelty, his mean-spirited vindictiveness, his contempt for the institutions of his own country, and because his heroes are dictators.

cont.

Snowbrush said...

Do I think he will amass the power of a Hitler? No. It would take a massive deconstruction of America's institutions of government for him to achieve that, and I don't think it can happen, that is unless he wins another four years in the presidency. If that should occur, it would mean that enough Americans are willing to flush democracy down the toilet that he might actually continue along the track of his self-serving insistence that he is incapable of breaking the law because he is the law, and oh by the way (according to him), even if he should be convicted of breaking the law, he will simply issue himself a pardon! As it is thus far, everything he tries to do to unilaterally overturn one law or another is challenged in court, and he rarely prevails. However, the more time he has in office, the more judges he will be appointing to the bench, and the more control he will have over America's judiciary. He already owns the presidency, and he already owns both Houses of Congress, so if he could own the courts too, I would worry that the government as we know it might collapse, but I simply can't believe it will come to that because while I see daily the harm he is doing, I also see the resolve and hatred that is felt by millions toward him and toward everyone who supports him. When the election comes in November, we will get a taste of just how devoted to the defeat of his party the masses of Americans are. Sadly, the Republicans have been gerrymandering like mad men in order to destroy the voting power of their opponents.

cont.

Snowbrush said...

For the entire eight years that Obama was in office, Trump and the people who voted for Trump, attacked Obama based upon a lie, the lie being that Obama was a closet Muslim who was born in Africa and isn't even an American citizen. For eight years I heard that, it being the worst think they could think to say--which is why they kept saying it day after day after day for eight long years--yet it was so much much bullshit. Now they have a man in office who averages 6.5 falsehoods a day, and they believe everyone of them. His first lie after taking office was to claim that the crowd that showed up for his inauguration was the largest in history. There were cameras everywhere on that day, and they clearly showed that it was a much smaller turnout than those who came to Obama's two inaugurations, but Trump's supporters accepted his word over the evidence of the cameras. The best explanation they could come up with was to say that Hillary Clinton's supporters had conspired to point all the cameras in the wrong direction. This is the degree of gullibility that we're dealing with in America, and even if Trump's party loses the November election and even if he himself loses the presidency in 2020, all of these millions and millions of people who Hilary Clinton referred to as "a basketful of deplorables" will still live here alongside their lying Fox radio (the motto of which is "fair and balanced"), their gutless Republican politicians, their National Rifle Association (which claims that members of the Democratic Party want school shootings to happen because it will give them an excuse to take away everyone's guns so they can turn America into a socialist dictatorship), their millions upon millions of military style assault weapons, and their conspiracy theories whereby Putin is our friend and the institutions of our own government that have long protected us from predators, both within and without, are our enemies. When Donald Trump really wants to insult someone he says that that person has "a very, very low IQ" (Trump loves to speak in superlatives), but when I look at him and his supporters, I think, oh my god, how stupid can people be and still walk the streets without tripping over curbs, falling into gutters, and being run over by cars. I can but think that there is something seriously wrong with these people, not because they have a different view of the role of government but because by believing in Trump, they demonstrate, not just an appalling absence of compassion and fairplay (as illustrated by their support of the longterm separation of the children of illegal immigrants from their parents), but a grievously diminished ability to perceive the obvious and to engage in critical thinking.

PhilipH said...

Most people, commentators, stand-up comedians and others always take a dig at Trump whenever the topic of Trump or politics crops up. He is such a joke as to be unbelievable. A complete laughing stock. His recent visit to the UK was, thankfully, very short. He was shielded from the demonstrators and he avoided London. Tea with HM Queenie was NOT in Buckingham Palace as he and his entourage knew that would have been virtually impossible. The closest demonstrator was some stupid idiot "para-glider" who swooped close to his hotel one day. I say "stupid idiot" because I'm still amazed that he was shot dead! Talk about a lapse of security.

Madeleine Allbright has recently had another book published about Fascism - A Warning, which, although she doesn't say it's about Trump directly, so I've heard, I am pretty sure this book wouldn't have been published if Trump was not in power. Haven't read this book but she sure knows a lot about how Fascists like Hitler, Mussolini and the rest achieved their status.

I think it's awful that this scheming despicable excuse for such high office has gotten this far already. It's very scary. Could be disastrous.

PhilipH said...

Addendum: should have read: "amazed that he was NOT shot dead"...

Snowbrush said...

A usual peaceable commenter to this post also expressed a wish that Trump be killed. Everyday my belief that he is a dictator in the making finds further confirmation. He and Putin talked privately for two and a half hours this week, and Trump won't say what they talked about. In fact, I have never heard him say a single bad word about Putin, although he loves to criticize the leaders of nations that have been our traditional allies since at least World War I. Now, he has now invited Putin to Washington in the fall for another private meeting. He insists that there was no collusion between himself and the Russians before the election, but if this is true, why would he talk with Putin for 150 minutes and be unwilling to say what they talked about, and why is he inviting him to a second meeting, this time in America? Finally, why does none of this phase Republican voters in the least? Trump's approval consistently runs around 90% among Republicans and 42% among the overall population (he won the presidency with 45% of the vote). What all this says about Republicans is that are not only willing, they are eager to turn their nation over to a man who shows every intent of becoming a fascist dictator, yet the supreme irony they are the very people who love nothing more than to wave the American flag, sing the National Anthem, and cheer military veterans, while referring to those who are embarrassed by such displays of nationalistic fervor as "America haters." Come again--who is it who hates America, or at least the values of freedom that have embodied America since its origin?

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read, "Pro-Gun, Pro-Jesus, Pro-Life, Pro-Trump," and I thought that, yes, that sums it up admirably because the four so often do go together. Not always, of course, yet the fact remains that it was the Christian vote that put Trump into office, and it is the Christian community that continues to constitute his unwavering base of support. Yet in all fairness to Jesus, I can't look at these people and think that they are acting in good faith when they use the New Testament to justify torture, endless wars, and separating the children of desperate immigrants from their parents and putting them all in prison.

cont.

Snowbrush said...

The next presidential election will be in 2020 (Trump started campaigning immediately upon becoming president), which is too far out to predict, but if he should be re-elected, I sincerely believe that the very survival of this country will be in jeopardy, and that's assuming that something disastrous doesn't occur before then. I think that a worst case scenario might be that he would concoct some pretense to declare martial law following which he would turn America's military against Americans, and given that the military is strongly pro-Trump, I don't know but what they wouldn't follow his orders. As things now stand, I try to encourage myself with the hope that his party will lose at least one house of Congress this November, and that he will be defeated and that his party will lose the other house of Congress in 2020. It is scant encouragement considering the harm that he and his party can do in two and half more years, but it's all I've got. Yet even if if Democrats take control, the result will likely be constant Republican obstructionism because that's all they know how to do. They can't rule effectively because they are so divided among themselves (their far right being at war with the far-far right), yet if there's one thing they hate worse than one another, it's Democrats.

Also, the wounds left by Trump will take decades to heal if they heal at all, partly because he represents the culmination of a trend that started in the 1990s whereby moderate Republican politicians can no longer win elections because their voters have come to believe that only weak people compromise. This has had the predictable result of so hardening Democratic voters and politicians that in these constant battles over something so seemingly simple as voting to pay the nation's bills, they too have reached the point that they had rather see the country go into default than to give an inch to Republicans (who invariably make their own willingness to vote to pay the bills dependent upon the Democrats willingness to approve things that are loathsome to Democratic voters). It's all so disheartening that I'm finding it harder and harder to even listen to the news because it's all bad all the time when it comes to our elected officials, although I will concede that there are a few--a very few--remaining Republican moderates who have chosen to stand up for what is right. The problem is that they won't be running for re-election because Republican voters won't vote for anyone who doesn't kiss Trump's ass in the way that Trump kisses Putin's ass. There is now enormous rigidity on both sides, a rigidity that has affected both politicians and ordinary citizens, and one result is that both sides have become more and more extreme, not just in their values but in their attitudes toward those who are the other side of the political fence. If anything, I think the anger and mistrust toward their opponents is more pronounced among those who disapprove of Trump. What I wrote in this post about believing that there is something WRONG with Trump supporters--a sickness of the soul if you will, a twisting of the morals, a pathological credulity--was not just hyperbole. I can no longer feel even the most basic level of trust in people who support Trump because I figure that anyone who can support such an obviously wicked, wicked man, might themselves might well be capable of any low act because to me, he is every bit THAT bad, and it's not even a subtle badness. I think that a lot of people--maybe most people--can watch old films of Hitlter's speeches and wonder how anyone could have ever taken him seriously because he is such a joke, such a clown that is laughable, yet that's how Trump is. I watch him, and I think, oh come on guys, you really trust this idiot?! Well, yes, they really trust him. They think he is absolutely brilliant, and that God put him in office to, in Trump's words, "Make America Great Again."

Sue in Italia/In the Land Of Cancer said...

I'm with you Snow. I can't understand why any decent person would support someone who is so obviously evil and self serving.

Anonymous said...

I see that the shrunken heads are out in full force here today, and that includes the blog owner.

While I do not actively support the President nor did I vote, I do applaud his efforts to help get this country back on its feet again.

Some of the insults being thrown here can easily be applied not only to the people throwing them, but to the party that they apparently support.

I don't have the time to go in minute detail about the party you support nor the 1984 aspects of the media that you absorb into your system, but the more you whine and stomp your feet because things didn't go YOUR WAY, the more people are going to say "ENOUGH!" and deliver it back to you the exact same way times ten.

PhilipH said...

And have a nice day to you, No Name 😎

Snowbrush said...

"I can't understand why any decent person would support someone who is so obviously evil and self serving."

You've got me. I guess they like other things about him.

Something I neglected to mention in this post was that a couple of days before Trump stood beside Putin saying how impressed he was impressed by Putin's "strong and powerful denial" that Russia interfered in the last US presidential election, twelve Russians were indicted by the US for doing just that. I personally think it likely that the purpose of that 2.5 hour secret meeting between Trump and Putin was so that Trump could receive Putin's marching orders, there being no way that Trump would be sucking up like this if Putin didn't have something on him.

"I see that the shrunken heads are out in full force here today, and that includes the blog owner."

Thank you for noticing. Prior to shrinking my head, I couldn't make it through narrow door openings (which made it hard to find a place to go potty, especially on airplanes), and my neck was killing me. Others among my readership were having the same problem, so we all had our heads shrunk at the same time in a NYC clinic. Because we qualified for a group discount, we had enough money leftover to spend the weekend partying in lower Manhattan. While on the island, we chartered a bus to Trump Tower where we had our picture made, and some of us got misty-eyed while walking through the very door that Donald Trump walks through. In front of Trump Tower, a man was selling t-shirts that read, "I Shot a Man on 5th Avenue and Got Elected Anyway." Above the caption stood Donald Trump holding a smoking gun. Uncle Sam was dead at his feet.

"While I do not actively support the President nor did I vote"

I'm so disappointed in you! Given that you regarded the country as being in such a horrible shape, why on earth didn't you vote? Furthermore, given that you applaud Trump's efforts, why don't you support him "actively."

P.S. By supporting Trump passively, do you have reference to your thoughts, prayers, and letters of tearful gratitude?

"I do applaud his efforts to help get this country back on its feet again."

We were off our feet? Do you mean in terms of the number of children who went to bed hungry? I hate to say a disparaging word, but I don't think Trump has done much to help those children.

"I don't have the time to go in minute detail about the party you support..."

Damn, what a loss to me that you stay so busy! I worry about your blood pressure, you know, because it's not healthy to spend your days running, running, running. Have you considered hiring an assistant? I really think you should, if only part time. While we're on the subject of partying, in the last presidential election, I voted for the Green Party candidate because Oregon is a blue state, so I decided that, instead of voting for Clinton, I would vote for someone I respected and believed in because I knew it wouldn't enable Trump to carry Oregon.

Joared said...

I’m reluctant to generalize about a person based solely on ttheir political identity. I know people doing that to me because I don’t support our current leader with whatever stereotypical ideas they might have would be making a mistake.

Snowbrush said...

"I’m reluctant to generalize about a person based solely on their political identity."

I believe that who we stand behind says a lot about what our values are, and that this is many times more true of Trump's supporters than of the supporters of previous presidents because Trump is such an extreme and alienating figure. After Trump would come the supporters of Nixon because they stood behind him even when they knew that he had committed felonies. So it will be of Trump's supporters when the Mueller investigation is complete. I'm convinced that no crime that the man has committed or will commit will alienate them. He will just say that it's all a Democratic conspiracy, that the press is an enemy of the people for reporting it, and his supporters will believe him. You've no doubt heard of the Q signs they are holding at his rallies. Trump's supporters are not normal, well-meaning people who simply have different values, Trump's supporters are malicious crazies, and the alarming thing is that there are millions of them.

PhilipH said...

Can't argue with that!

Dangerous person. Vanity personified.