I haven’t made any political statements on my main page in awhile.
After this post, it may be awhile before I make another one. I’m sure many of
you are relieved about that. With Inauguration Day fast approaching, I feel
compelled to speak. This is a post aimed at my conservative friends, my
Republican friends, my friends who supported Donald Trump in the presidential
election of 2016…
The first thing I want to say is that I’m not looking to
start a fight here. I don’t think that any of you are unintelligent, deluded,
or misinformed. If you are one of my friends on Facebook, and if you are still reading
this, than know that I hold only the utmost respect for you. We all had the
same resources to draw from, we all looked at the arguments all sides made in
favor of their respective candidates, and on Election Day 2016, we all made
what we felt were the best decisions we could for our country and for our
families and for the future based on our various ideological beliefs. If you
supported and/or voted for Donald Trump, I know that you had your reasons, and
I see no need to rehash what those were. Most of you intelligently and
eloquently stated your case on your various social media outlets. Now I most
likely didn’t agree with your reasons and I might even have debated with you
over those reasons, but please understand that any decisions you made in the
voting booth last November do not diminish the feelings of love and friendship
I have for you. Hopefully we’re all on the same page so far.
When it first became clear that Donald Trump was going to be
our next president, I will freely admit that my response to this was extreme. I
was shocked, angered, and then seriously depressed about the outcome. If
anything I posted during that emotional time offended any of you, than all I
can do is apologize. I also want to thank those of you who reached out to me to
see if I was alright after the election. I was not alright. To be honest, I’m
still not alright about the results of the election, but at least I’ve given
myself some time to look at the situation in a more practical, less emotional,
light.
And the conclusion I’ve come to is that I can’t support
Donald Trump as our president. I can’t give him a chance. I can’t hope he’s not
as dangerous as I think he is. And I can’t just accept the situation and move
on with my life, because every instinct I have tells me that making this man
the 45th president of the United States was a tragic mistake.
And it’s not just about the political and ideological
differences that I have with the man. True, if any of the Republican candidates
had won the election I would have been upset and I would have felt that they
were taking the country in the wrong direction, but my issues with him go far
beyond that. I couldn’t support Trump as president even if he were still a
Democrat.
There are two major things about Donald Trump being our
president that give me pause outside of the political disagreements we have.
They are things that I hope you have thought of, and that should give you pause
as well.
Number one is that, to my mind, there has been ample
evidence made available from several reputable sources that our American
election was tampered with by the Russian government under the direction of
Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin is not a good man. He is not a good leader, and
he is not a friend of the United States. I could present a list of all of the
despicable atrocities that Mr. Putin is responsible for, but we all have the
internet. If Vladimir Putin altered events to tip the election in favor of
Donald Trump, and I truly believe that he did, that is bad for all of us.
Really, really, bad.
But let’s say that you don’t believe that Russia tampered
with our election. I’ll disagree with you, but I’ll grant that maybe you have
some good reason for that opinion or maybe you even have some information that
I don’t. So let’s put that little chestnut aside for now. My second reason for
refusing to support our incoming president is, to my mind, even more troubling.
Simply put, Donald Trump is unstable. Donald Trump is 70
years old, but has been in the public eye since he was in his early 20s. We
have had ample time to observe his public persona and to get to know who he is.
The kind of person he is. Trump has always been a classic narcissistic
personality and he is certainly a demagogue, but that’s only the tip of the
iceberg. I submit to you that Donald Trump has serious emotional and mental
difficulties. Difficulties which should render him unfit to serve in the
capacity of President of the United States. Look at any of his speeches or his
social media output. Hell, just take a random cross section of his tweets over
the past two years. He is erratic, emotionally immature, and half the time I’m
not sure if he’s simply lying or if he actually believes the contradictory
statements that are coming out of his mouth. He is incredibly thin-skinned and
can’t abide even the slightest hint of criticism. He seems more upset about
Alec Baldwin’s parody of him on Saturday Night Live than he does about serous
world events like the tragedy in Aleppo. I could go on and on, but again, you
all have the internet.
Now at this point in my diatribe you may be thinking, “but
Hilary Clinton would have been worse!” Again, I strongly disagree with that
statement, but we will never know because she lost and at this point it is
incredibly unlikely that she will ever be the president. Politically I believe
that Hillary Clinton is finished, and any of you that had serious concerns
about her can now breathe a sigh of relief. Arguing over who would have been a
better president now is like closing the barn door after the horse has run
away. It’s an exercise in futility.
So we have to deal with the facts that are in front of us. A
dangerous and inexperienced man has taken the rains of power. Sure, he’s going
to be surrounded by more experienced politicians and advisors, but nothing in
his public behavior over the past forty plus years or so indicates that he will
listen to them. This is not a president that the GOP can easily control. I
suspect most of them already know this and are seriously concerned about this
monster that they helped to create.
So at some point in the next four years, when something goes
wrong, be it an act of God like an ecological or environmental disaster or a
terrorist attack, a mass shooting, or some other serious international
incident, Donald Trump will be the person who has to react to it. His reaction
will be the important one, the one that affects things, that sets them in
motion. I don’t believe that he will react in an appropriate manner. Further, I
believe that there will come a point where he will need to be removed from
office. And the ironic thing is that it will be the Republicans who will have
to remove him.
Listen people, I hope I’m wrong. I would be so relieved if
it turned out that Donald Trump wasn’t the dangerous lunatic that he appears to
be. If he somehow brought about a new golden age to the country than I would
happily eat my words. That would be better for everyone. But I don’t think I’m
wrong about him. And, in your heart of hearts, I don’t think any of you believe
it either.
So, until Donald Trump proves me wrong, I choose to be
cautiously pessimistic. I’m going to watch my back, and I’m going to watch the
backs of the people I care about. I will, in a peaceful and non-violent way,
resist Donald Trump and everything he stands for with all of the resources that
I have at my disposal. I will do this until such a time as he is no longer in a
position to do permanent harm to this country that I love.
I suggest you all do the same.
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