Descent into madness

Few matters would return me to this blog.

One of them, God help us all, is Donald Trump.

The hypocrite behind the Teleprompter®™. The snake in the tall grass, the lipsticked pig, acting presidential, for Tuesday, anyway.

In writing, I revive the delusion that I can influence anyone who reads this. You have been few but faithful, and I'm guessing you stood in the choir with me, or are too polite to call me a misinformed ass.

Speaking of misinformed ass, Donald Trump. Don't let him become president.

I'm harboring my delusion once more that you might be among the few who (1) read this, and (2) might be voting for Trump.

Don't do it, I'm begging.

When last I wrote, months ago, I also drew Trump at the podium, a windmill of Trumpian bluster who morphed into the Nazi swastika.

That was back when Trump was mostly a sick joke.

Now he's a nightmare of ridiculous proportion.

(Although he still lends credence to my fervent hope he is playing a vast practical joke, set to implode the Republic party on the convention floor by exposing himself as a closet Clinton fan.)

The nation under Mitt Romney as president would have been tolerable. He revealed himself as an elitist snob at the worst time for his campaign against incumbent Barack Obama last election, but he had the chops to be president.

Trump is anything but presidential.

Except for the frown he makes during one-on-one interviews, when he says he's the least racist person that ever lived. The frown is presidential. It reminds me of what John Steinbeck said of a character in The Winter of our Discontent (ironic title), "pulling a frog face."

And Trump owns a lot of suits and ties. So there's that.

Make America great again? For whom? From whom? Trump has insulted and dumped on and denounced whole groups of Americans for pander and sport.

Women. Muslims. Mexicans. War heroes. People with disabilities. Iowa. He calls people names, referring to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas," then repeats the names, louder, when someone points out it's offensive.

He divides people and derides them, and invites followers to join in. To echo his own superlative rhetoric, he is the least presidential person in the history of the country.

Trump wants to be president of some of the United States — that which is rich and white and male, mostly. The beautiful people he doesn't make fun of.

Trump vows to build a wall against Mexico, and get Mexico to pay for it. He broadly brushes immigrants from Mexico as killers and rapists, conceding some of them might be good people, he doesn't know.

Then he says the Hispanics love him. Last week, at a rally, he congratulated "my African American," pointing to a man in the audience.

I picture him, his arm clutched close around "my African American's" neck, telling his smirking cronies, "Isn't he the greatest?" Then giving his African American a playful slap on the cheek.

Last week, Trump said the judge in a class-action suit against his Trump University is biased against him because the judge is Mexican (then "of Mexican heritage" when Trump repeatedly was told the judge is American, born in Indiana), and Trump wants to build that wall.

Next he said any Muslim judge would be biased against him, presumably because Trump blustered infamously about vowing to keep Muslims out of the country.

By extension, anyone Trump has denounced would be ineligible to preside in any lawsuit against him — and serve in any position in Trump's government? — because he would automatically be unfair to Trump, the xenophobe.

I guess that's going to make it easy for him to run the country.

Don't let Trump run the country.

If you can stomach the TV news lately, you get the nightly dollop of smiling Trump spokespeople spinning his spew into golden denial, of playing "I know you are, but what am I?" for the cable news circuit.

Trump is the bully who grabs your wrist, slaps your face with your own hand, and says, "Why you hitting yourself?! Quit hitting yourself! What's the matter with you?!"

He lies then denies it, even when shown the evidence.

Trump is a racist panderer, telling anyone what he wants to hear. He told California farmers last week there is no drought.

I get it. Government doesn't work. Federal government overreaches, the economy slogs along, too many people don't have good jobs, while politicians and banks run the country in spite of us. Society's a mess, problems abound.

I get that we're desperate for a solution.

Donald Trump, the divider, is not it. He is a new, bigger problem. His mission has been to lie openly and abashedly, to make you afraid and make you hate, to make himself king.

The solution is harder than that, and won't be found with this election alone. It will be found in the hard work of us taking responsibility for our role as citizens.

I get that Hillary Clinton is establishment, is Bill Clinton reincarnate, in too deep perhaps, bringing to the candidacy all the baggage of the Clinton presidency. I'm not sure I get all the vitriol against her; I think someone traveling a similar long road in government service accrues battle scars, makes colossal mistakes, gets off track from the ideal, if any ideal existed.

I think the hate for Clinton is more perception than proof, much of it manufactured and allowed to tendril like kudzu over everything, in the same way that unalloyed and instantaneous hatred for President Obama was made to fester.

But Hillary Clinton does not corral Americans with labels, and encourage others to denounce them.

Nor does Bernie Sanders, who if anything hates only what Trump represents, the privileged class who dance through loopholes like lariats at a Wild West show, and tell everyone else to make do with what little they don't own.

 

Opponents stuck "socialist" on Sanders like a "kick me!" sign from the start, and his ideas for free education seem wonderfully unworkable. But here's the thing: He's promoting ideas for America, one America, not for some of America.

Now I see Republican leaders one by one endorse Trump as their party's candidate, saying he says some things they can get behind, that this odd, angry, bamboozling bluster is just the Candidate Trump, to get votes, and the President Trump will be different. Which is the rationalization of the temporarily insane.

To support Trump, be you Republican official or average voter, is to support his racist, abusive rants, is to support putting whole peoples in a lower class with impunity.

No amount of lipstick can pretty this pig. No argument will explain away your support for this guy.

Don't let Trump be president. These are united states.