I have read the thoughtful letter by Janine Moniot a number of times and it is filled with a sincere sentiment to offer an olive branch. I also found it naïve to believe that Trump voters voted on economic issues, or that Trump was simply using “campaign rhetoric.”
It is simply illogical to believe that any conscious person would vote economic issues when the person in question has filed multiple bankruptcies and is charged with fraud and racketeering — has 4,000 lawsuits against him, 75 of which involve serious breaches of the law. No, to suggest this logic and then simultaneously pass off his behavior as “campaign rhetoric” is dangerous and puerile. Study history; demagogues do not use rhetoric casually.
In the past three weeks, violence has erupted all over the United States. Hate crimes are on the rise. Since Trump’s rise to power, hate groups have risen 14% in the U.S. with a 42% rise in anti-Muslim hate groups. Right here in Ramona, students raced up and down the hallways of Ramona High School with American flags screaming “Trump Train” and yelling at Latino kids that they were “Going back to Mexico.” Other students at RHS have been called nigg*rs. Let’s be honest; this behavior is taught in the home. Kids don’t wake up one day and suddenly become bigots and racists. They don’t learn this from “the Internet.”
Economic issues? These are the same people who railed against the Federal Reserve and a policy of Quantitative Easing but suddenly get a bad case of fiscal amnesia over a 2,000-mile border wall and promises of bridges.
Do you honestly believe a group of people that, for the past eight years, have questioned whether the sitting president was born in America and have called him and his family “monkeys,” “gorillas,” “apes” and “chimpanzees” voted based on economic issues? These are people who revel in being called “deplorables,” and screamed “lock her up” like banshees at the Republican National Convention this summer. No, these people did not vote based on “economic” issues.
Let’s call this what it is: hate. I have not spoken to a single Trump supporter who, at the mere mention of Hillary Clinton, did not go into a mouth-foaming tirade about “I hate her so much.” This behavior is unpatriotic. To vote “against” someone by voting in someone just as bad or worse is acting on the drug of partisanship and not rational thinking. And this goes for both sides, left or right. This is the reason 42 percent of us sat this one out — we deserve better.
There has been a lot of criticism of the protests going on throughout the country these past three weeks. These have been, for the most part, extremely peaceful demonstrations. There is a hypocritical amnesia about how in 2008 there were protests where people carried signs depicting the president-elect as an African medicine man and a monkey. Has anyone complained about the fact that the Ku Klux Klan is holding parades in honor of the new president-elect? The KKK? And this is 2016!
Trump received two newspapers’ endorsem*nts in the country and one of them was from the “Crusader,” the official newspaper of Ku Klux Klan. Sixty-eight major newspapers across the country did not endorse ANY candidate. Not one single conservative publication in the United States endorsed him — not one.
He has already brought in White Nationalists and anti-Semitics to his “team.” He has brought in a man who claims that “grabbing a woman’s genitals does not constitute sexual assault.” Let’s not play games about what is going on here. We need to be vigilant and deeply honest about exactly what is occurring.
Honestly, forget the fact that this person gloated about having sex with married women, gloated about his celebrity status giving him the right to grab a woman’s body, gloated about being a sexual predator, is charged with raping a 13-year-old, who called women fat pigs, dogs, slobs, disgusting animals and suggested that one of the debate moderators was menstruating. Forget that the person represents the despicable, name-calling school-yard bully that, just a few years ago, the entire country was collectively denouncing. Or that he called Mexicans rapists, or said a military veteran was not a hero because he was “captured,” or that he mocked a disabled reporter, or called for a ban on an entire religion, or that he talked about the size of his penis on national TV, or that he incited violence at his rallies, or that he offered to pay people’s legal fees if they inflicted harm on protestors, or that he praised dictators like Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, or that he Tweets disgusting, vile and childish comments like a 12-ear-old Twitter troll, or that he retweets White Nationalists and anti-Semitics, or threatens to prosecute journalists, or threatens to jail his political opponents, or threatens to jail women who have filed lawsuits against him for (allegedly) sexually abusing them, or repeats tabloid conspiracy theories, or called for an adversarial foreign government to commit espionage against the United States. Yeah, just “forget” all of that. It was just “campaign rhetoric.”
The 2016 election was a referendum on simple human decency, and America failed the test. The fact that 88% of so-called “Christians” and Evangelicals voted for a man who has, repeatedly, acted like the most un-Christian man on the planet exposes their shameless hypocrisy. They seriously need go back and read “Two Corinthians.” These people need to do some soul-searching. The mental gymnastics and, more critically, the “moral gymnastics” these people have to do to justify their behavior is something I just cannot fathom.
For the first time in her 86 years on this planet, my mother did not cast a vote for president this cycle. Sadly, she lived long enough to see a man run for POTUS who screamed an obscenity at the top of his lungs in front of children. She, along with 42 percent of the country, found neither candidate suitable for the office. If you take that 42 percent, and add the 27 percent that went to the winner of the popular vote, a full 69 percent of the country did not vote for Trump. He received less than 26 percent of the vote. That means three out of four of us were seriously disgusted with him. There is no plurality here, no referendum, no mandate.
It is comforting to know that three quarters of the U.S. population rejected this man. The mantle goes to the 74% of us to hold these people accountable, not the other way around. History has not been kind to countries that democratically elected demagogues. Be vigilant.
Doug Sooley is a Ramona resident and a registered Independent.
