All You Need is Hate
Well, there is only a week to go and the prevalent feeling around the country is one of sheer exhaustion. In seven days, but probably many more, we will find out who will be the next president of the United States. One side is likely to accept defeat with relative equanimity, while shedding bitter tears, the other will react with litigation, political maneuvering by local partisan election officials and domestic violence that could make January 6, 2021 look like the “day of love” that former President Donald Trump insists that it was.
We have now seen Trump as part of the political scene through three presidential election cycles and it doesn’t get any better. Words used to describe him: narcissist, misogynist, racist, pathological liar, authoritarian, rapist, man child, unhinged, etc. no longer have much impact since we have long since accepted these abnormalities as merely “Trump being Trump.” Never did the Founding Fathers envision “convicted felon” to be associated with a presidential candidate.
Regardless of the ultimate result, I am overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness for our country. Trump has run a campaign of hatred culminating in the “rally” in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday where a series of “comedians” openly mocked Puerto Ricans, who the last time I checked are American citizens, and other ethnic groups (including Blacks, Jews and Arabs). Others made crude sexually tinged comments about his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. There is a myth that large numbers of Trump supporters back his policies while abhorring the man. It seems more and more that the man and his embrace of hatred is precisely the point.
Harris may not be the perfect candidate, but she is infinitely better than Trump as she has proven to be a woman of intelligence and career achievement who has stepped in capably for a politically incapacitated Joe Biden after the most disastrous debate performance in presidential election history. What is ignored is that Trump’s two debates have been the second and third worst.
I believe that Biden got a bad deal and is not as mentally impaired as he has been portrayed (and as cruelly parodied by Dana Carvey on SNL). But many, including I, feared that the debate was a prescient view of the next four years and agree that substituting Harris was the right move.
It is almost taken as a given that the Biden years have been an utter disaster, with a virtually unsecured border, escalating wars and inflation run wild. Even Harris carefully distances herself from its accomplishments. But the domestic legislation Biden secured has been the most extensive since the days of LBJ, highlighted by an urgently needed Infrastructure Act that Trump promised but never seriously proposed and the purposely misnamed Inflation Reduction Act that represents the most serious legislative attempt to mitigate climate change ever and that has proven to be an economic boon, particularly to red states. Trump promises to counter such initiatives and send us back to fossil fuel-enabled climate change hell.
While Trump rages about the press and vows to attack them as part of “the enemy within,” he has gotten a virtual free pass, as Michelle Obama noted at the Harris rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Sunday. She pointed out the “double standard” that the media applies to Harris succinctly: “We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs, but for Trump, we expect nothing at all, no understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals.”
I wasted twenty minutes on Sunday reading the seemingly endless interview by Ross Douthat in the New York Times with two former Trump foreign policy officials praising Trump’s America First agenda. No mention of his admiration for dictators such as Victor Orban, his obsequious adoration of Vladimir Putin or his “plan” to settle the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, undoubtedly by selling out a democratic country leaning towards the West to a ruthless dictator. Shame on the Times for providing such a forum and somehow allowing Trump to appear rational and sane.
But it shouldn’t surprise us as the press is showing an increasing reluctance to demonstrate moral courage with no greater example than the recent decisions by the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times not to endorse any Presidential candidate. Coming so close to the voting is a clear boon to Trump and is either a practical attempt to protect their franchises from his criticism or a hedge meant to curry favor with a second Trump administration.
Trump uses his henchman J.D. Vance to convince you that immigration is the cause of all of our problems. He lies about crime and gangs taking over our cities, stealing our jobs and pushing up rents. Trump’s whole strategy thrives on the denigration of the “Other.” His America is a portrait of grievance, strange from a man who was an utter failure as a businessman, relying on Daddy to bail him out of his bankruptcies and using stiffing creditors as a business strategy but is somehow perceived as a brilliant deal maker. His assertion that he represents the working man and woman is an empty promise. He preaches hate, not love, which he only truly applies to himself.
Trump is essentially a carnival barker and a fraud. His economic proposals for a second term are nothing but smoke and mirrors. His reliance on tariffs promise to add immeasurably to inflation and are essentially a sales tax on regular people. His promised tax giveaways to big business are predicted by many leading economists to lead to higher deficits and a decrease in our gross national product. So much for his brilliant business acumen.
God save us from Trump 2.0. Despite his pathological lying you can bet that he will do what he has promised: mass deportations, using the military against U.S. citizens, investigating his political opponents, attacking the press and appointing only loyalists to government jobs. Unlike the rest of his false agenda, in these matters you can take his word for it.
