If You're So Smart...

A white colleague is critical of Trump supporters.  All of them, even though some their individual reasons for voting for Trump were very separate from him as an inept and generally bad person (in any way people want to judge others).  Regardless of his policies and tenuous ties to the GOP, he thinks it should be apparent by voting for an obviously stupid, rudderless, petulant, and immature person as president is really poor judgment, and that people should see that.

Well, everybody doesn't see that.  Not everybody has learned gobs of perspective at college.  Not everybody has traveled to and spend significant time seeing a few cosmopolitan parts of the country, much less lived in another country entirely.  Not everybody reads a lot of books and is able to understand other viewpoints and ways of living/behaving that may be different and still OK.  Not everybody lives in a multi-cultural environment and sees the whole thing -- the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Not everyone has had the benefit if seeing young immigrants struggle to learn English and succeed in America.  Not everybody has been in their houses, seen their effort to survive and still make it.  Not everyone has the benefit of friends and workmates of different persuasions, and has experienced, second hand, some of the things they've experienced.  

OF COURSE, anyone who has had some or most of those experiences, and has been blessed with a critical, open or intelligent mind could never vote for someone who has shown such irresponsible behavior as a public figure.  But clearly there are enough people without that level of discernment.  The long term fix for that is to make it possible for way more people to have some of those experience, like college, overseas experience, and life in multi-cultural worlds (a eventuality that our changing demographics will help with).  How to make them broad readers, curious, open minded?  A tough task, but it's possible that public education could make that one of its priorities for real.

You said "If [Trump] wins the election it will mean that America stands for what he stands for."  There is a certain portion of voters -- I hope a small minority -- for whom that is true.  There are many more voters who disagree with much of what he stands for but will still vote for him because they've come to hate Clinton with irrational zest (flaws, yes, but several orders of magnitude less than what most Republicans (and even non-Republicans) believe because of the relentless attack she's been under, all because Republicans have known since she was FLOTUS that she would be a legitimate contender for the White House). They've utterly convinced themselves and many others, through the sheer volume of vitriolic rhetoric, that she's Satan.  [I think it's easy for them to go there because there is enough carelessness on her part to open that door a crack, and of course they exploit that doubt to the nth degree.]  Anyway, there are also many voters who don't agree with him who will vote for him anyway for personal financial reasons, for political and SCOTUS reasons, and even just anti-Establishment motivations.  And there are those voters who will vote for Clinton.

So in a very real sense, equating what he stands for (as evidenced by his actions and frequent unscripted blathering, not the teleprompter-Trump) to America at large is false.  And in another real sense, as the President, he would be the face of America to the world, and would indeed represent what America stands for to many here and abroad.

And with all that said, I don't think I contradict you.  Niels Bohr said "The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth."

The Radicalization of Radicals

Oh boy, are there a lot of different types out there.  Maybe you've met someone or worked with someone who seems to be spring loaded to take offense.  What do you think of them?  How do you think they got that way?  A psychologist would say it's a combination of personality type, physiological situation (anxiety level) which could be caused by any number of things including hormone levels, neurotransmitter levels, brain structure and function, etc.).  How do you treat them? Do you provoke them on purpose?  Do you treat them gently?  Do you treat them like everyone else, even though you know they're different?

There are all types, and there is going to be a certain percentage who are prone to violence after continually feeling oppressed, denigrated, unfairly treated, etc.  What's more likely to make that less?  Fostering an environment of equity, fairness, appreciation, love, acceptance or treating people with increasing hostility of any sort?  What makes a society safer: creating a world with more people who have had enough and won't take it any more, or one that people feel there are avenues for their tough lives?

No Need For Your Words, I'll Just Watch You Be

If you're still listening to what people have to say about who they are or what they'll do or what they believe, you've got a lot to learn about people.

First, before you even need to say a word, just show me your record.  What have you done?  What are you doing?  How did you vote?  What causes do you give to and how much of your time, advocacy and fortune?  Who do you help who can not pay you back?  Who are your honest, close friends?

Are any of those actions or situations unusual?  Here's a chance to explain yourself, but mostly, I'll just listen to disinterested people who know you best.  If more than a few are questionable, you really don't need to speak.  Your character speaks loudly and clearly through your actions.  You're planning to change?  Once you've said those few words, you don't need to say it again.  Just change, and we'll watch what you do.  If you're avoiding transparency, that tells me everything I need to know.

Enough said.

A Call to Educate Yourself

White people, can you for a minute, for a day, for as long as you can take it, stop trying to opine.  Can you suspend your need to be heard, express, influence, impose, or otherwise reinforce your viewpoint for long enough to really understand the other point.  Can you interrupt your reflex to respond, retort, interject or rebuff?  And just listen and really hear and really feel the other side?  What would it take for you to willingly immerse yourself in an attempt to imagine yourself having been raised in another cultural experience, utterly foreign, often painful or degrading, destitute or denigrating?  As a member of an oppressed minority from childhood, on the receiving end of racism?

Every childhood, home, family, cultural and economic experience is different, and all come with their ups and downs.  But to be able to talk as an educated person about something, you need to deeply grok all 3, 4, ...n sides of the issue.

Old white man and lady, it's easier than ever to explore these experiences.  Books are immediately available on your computer, kindle, iPad.  Movies are there for you.  You could probably even get a virtual reality experience if you looked for it.  You could chat with a willing black person.  If you told them you really want to understand the big deal of Black Lives Matter, and mean it, they might help you. But without bringing an open mind (is is still capable of letting something new in, or are you done?), it would be for nothing.  You'd stay unchanged.

Why would you want to spend your limited time and intellectual effort learning about Black Lives Matter, yes, I hear you.

1. Treatment of minorities, especially African and Native American is a metastatic cancer that we want to move into remission.  It has flared up and down, but has always been part of us, and though we can't change our past, living as a healthy country going forward requires we bring as much of our resources to bear to fight it as possible.  Especially the dominant power, which, today, is whitey.  The cancer is not blacks fighting back against the system, the cancer is the systemic discrimination, manufactured and delivered by mostly whites.  
2. It is the predominant social issue of our time, and it hurts all of us from the President and tip-top CEOs to the aborted fetus and high school dropout headed to prison.  It costs billions, it diminishes the greatness of our people, and undermines the American character (and consequent reputation) both in and outside our borders.  It diminishes the perpetrators equal to their transgressions because it damns their souls, their psyches, identities.  
3. You can be part of our national healing. It is possible. We can get better and use the experience of our past sins to live healthier in the future.  
4. Be on the side of the underdog, the bullied. Stand up in defense of good cops who break the code of silence by strengthening the defense from the bullied. Racist cops hurt their victims most, and their good-cop partners almost as much. Bad cops exponentially multiply the problem and get good cops killed. 
5. If your idea of adventure is picking a new shade of paint for the bathroom, don't you think God put you here for something more important than that?  If your adventures have always been for you and selfish, why not take one of them into the realm of helping others for no other reason than that you can and it matters outside yourself. Accumulate a legacy worth emulating, and leave your heirs something to be proud of instead of liquidate.

How long would it take to actually learn something substantial about a topic? A couple 40 hour weeks?  100 hours?  I challenge you to intentionally open your mind, allow your inbred beliefs to sit down and shut up for the duration as you drink of the foreign experience. What would your hero, idol, Jesus, do?

True Believers and Trumpets

When I read True Believer, I took it as an analysis of historical mass movements.  Not as a cautionary tale of modern America.  I thought the fringe would remain there on the strength of a strong majority of regular people.

Here's where my credulity is tested.  These things are so clear, and yet people I know (though none who I regard as well balanced or particularly thoughtful people, but regular people) would allow him to represent the best of America.*

1.  He doesn't say it like it is.  (He's mostly wrong, so more accurately, he says it like it's not.)  He doesn't just say what he believes.  (He doesn't really believe in things except for a moment, but that's not really a belief.).  He does make things up on the spot, and say what's on his mind.  He reacts like a kid, putting people on an enemy's list based on criticism of him.

2.  He's has a genius, but it's a middle school bully level genius.  His skill is an innate awareness of someone's greed/fear/bigotry buttons, probably because they are only very shallowly buried under his gigantic id/ego (yeah, his id and ego in the colloquial sense have sort of mutated together). He's not a business genius.  He's not good with words.  He's not good with ideas or systems.  He doesn't really know stuff.  He's honed his skills at manipulating the basest instincts in himself and others (greed, fear & insecurity, bigotry).  That's provides the bedrock of his business dealings.  He's not a negotiator, he's a wheeler-dealer, and if you don't know the difference, so are you.  Read this: his ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal had a moral epiphany and rebuked his work.

3.  He's not good with people.  He doesn't have friends, confidants, or relationships like you or I might.  Everyone in his life are just work implements.  And you could say that we're all like that and our close friends and family are just tools to give us love and to love, but he doesn't feel love like that.  His wives are accouterments, his kids are ornaments.  His friends are henchmen and there to give him the attention and validation he so clearly needs.  He engages in petty feuds with people.  Do you?  And what do you feel about yourself when you're over it - proud of yourself?  I wouldn't either, but I don't engage in that.

4.  He is an outsider.  But can you think of another outsider who's as much of an idiot as he is?  Vanilla Ice comes to mind (no offense, Vanilla, but I read Ice by Ice while standing in a library somewhere and I couldn't believe a book that bad could actually be published.  I couldn't put it down, the train-wreck of words was uniquely horrendous.  It reads like a Trump Rant, but I was younger then and could tolerate the grotesque much better than I do now.)  Can you think of one other business leader who is that full of himself and that shallow a person?  Gates. Welch. Musk. Virgin. OK, Fiorina is a distant second.  Oh, and Palin.  But she's a semi-insider.**

5. This one is particularly pernicious because it seems to make sense but it does not: "Someone who has [raised some good kids/ built a real estate empire/ been successful in business (very debatable)] must have something healthy at the core.  Oh my God, no.  He didn't raise his kids.  Do you seriously believe their testimony in an interview or at the podium when they're trying to get him elected?  Of course you don't.  Either way, it's a false argument.  If you find yourself believing this, you really do need to take some basic psychology.  Why people stay with abusive spouses, why people fall for get-rich schemes, why people burn crosses in other people's front yards.  There are unhealthy psychological complexes that induce people to believe and do things that are not only false, but against their long-term self interest, and unless you want to be one of them, please educate yourselves!  Listening to the Evangelicals rationalize supporting him (who, by their own definition, is the antithesis of living a moral life) is surreal.

6. He's not maligned by the mainstream media, nor the erudite print media, nor the public media, nor the foreign press.  There are opinionated people who are out to do him harm, but there are other, often non-establishment Republicans, and others who have never been political, who see him for what he is.  His sophomoric deflections fool no one with any time understanding the world.  But if you are unable to detect bias and lack of bias, and you're willing to believe a candidate who has given virtually no evidence to support his veracity over every media source out there, there really is no hope, except that you're in the minority.

7.  He will shake things up and we need that.  I agree.  But not without a plan to put it back together.  And when you shake things up good, you better have some seriously sophisticated plans to rebuild.  If you're going to take apart a complex machine, without any knowledge of how it all works together, you're not fixing anything.  Breaking things doesn't fix them!

All the major reasons people give for supporting Trump are weak, if not utterly false.  And yet, here he is.  With more being caught up in the excitement at the expense of a commitment to integrity.  Ouch.


*[I totally understand a Never Hillary attitude.  I get that.  I wouldn't vote for Hillary because she's a complete politico, and is too far gone to be a real person.  She sees honesty and transparency as a weakness, probably based on her history of having been elected and appointed to offices without exercising a real commitment to honesty, transparency or authenticity. But she knows things, and her lies are understandable adult lies (if not less egregious): she's trying to protect her political career, whereas Trump is just boasting, trying to make you think he knows something he doesn't, or habit.]

**[I totally understand why you'd want an outsider to be in the White House.  I think everyone is sick of the establishment's inability to think for themselves.  But let's at least get someone (anyone) who CAN ACTUALLY THINK.  Trump is incapable of sitting down and thinking, analyzing, restating a complex thought or argument, working through any sort of rigorous logic, even when logic needs to be infused with the reality of human problems which must understand and accommodate the irrationality of human behavior as part of their process, but at least coherent.]

What Does Trump Believe About...

Trump is "Success Driven" and "Goal Oriented."  He doesn't believe in things like you might think of someone who has spent time pondering, analyzing, troubling over things, researching things he doesn't understand, and then thinking some more in order to understand an issue and take a stance.  That's clear from his lack of depth in any given topic.  You don't NEED all that thinking to make a buck or a billion in America.  (Though it does come in handy when you want to steer a prudent course for a big nation.)

Clearly from his interviews and speeches, he's not that kind of person.  He's like a lot of other people who may expend their blood, sweat and tears on the matter at hand, and not on high-falutin' or abstract ideas that don't immediately apply to today's profit.  He doesn't know things.  He sort of feels and sees the outer shape of things makes a gut judgment.  But, a gut gets its judgment from experience in that area.  I don't need to talk about his experience in statesmanship.  His behavior and words are clear.

Politicians, even the best of them, color their remarks about beliefs depending on who they are talking to, and someone who hasn't ever committed to something long term, like marriage, business commitments, etc., don't even care.  It's not about what they believe.  But someone who is averse to knowing real things and making that knowledge part of their repertoire is not a person who should be making decisions about important things.  Not for someone who is a professional in public service.  Someone who makes up stuff, blathers incoherently from topic to topic and fears actually committing to a single piece of substantial policy is not the person to lead policy execution.

This is a person who is not a leader, and someone who follows such a leader . . . I just gotta wonder about your integrity.  You can still be my friend, but I'll always wonder about that severe gullibility, brought on probably by a deep need to believe in something!  Instead of fall for a charlatan, why not seek out someone worthy to support, or better yet, become someone who is willing to lead something local (or bigger) that accomplishes that which you are hoping your false god can?  Rather than put your hope in an empty vessel, find the real deal and elevate them to prominence and influence.

I wrote this before reading the article in The New Yorker featuring the comments from the ghostwriter of The Art of the Deal.  It fully confirms my own observations of him as a person.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all