Listening to Donald Trump and, most importantly, watching his fans standing behind him, I've drifted away from the odious image I have heard from my friends toward a more benign view of the man. He doesn't strike me as really hideous so much as very simple, and his fans are, well, just really knuckleheads.
When you think of the really nasty, pathologic leaders visited upon the face of the earth, you think of Hitler, whose pathology was so manifest, the shrieking hate spraying out from his lips. That guy, like his admirers, Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, among others, were real haters. They put their hate down in writing and broadcast it unequivocally.
Trump could have used the fact his own daughter converted to Judiasm to marry a Jew as an argument about his own tolerance, but he did not. He instead insisted he is the least anti Semitic person on earth and you have to take him at his word there.
Even his anti Muslim rhetoric lacks the sort of animus we would expect in a real hater. He does not say Muslims are evil or conniving or that they should be expunged from our society.
The trouble is, his is incapable of drawing well crafted distinctions. He says there are bad people out there and some of these are Muslims and some of these Muslims are motivated by what they think is their Muslim faith to want to do us harm.
If you pinned him down, and I haven't seen anyone do this, I suspect he would say the problem is not Islam, nor even the majority of the billions of Muslims on earth but a small radical fringe--those who follow what he calls "radical Islamic extremists" and we ought to be focusing on these.
Those two bozos standing behind Trump's left shoulder at Melbourne do not understand fine distinctions. They just want something to cheer about. They lost interest in what he was saying by minute 50 and one realized he was on national TV and started calling his friends on his cell phone and waving at the camera, behind Trump, making hand signs with his fingers. He did everything but hold up rabbit ears behind Trump's head. He was 20 something, with the mental age of a 10 year old, to look at him. That's where so many of Trump's fans seem to be.
Trump's problem is, he hasn't the foggiest idea of how to do what he wants to do. He wants to stop attacks by radical Islamists on America. His first attempt, to simply exclude Muslims from entering the United States, is an approach which got the brain dead throngs cheering. But, of course, this simple minded solution won't work any better than declaring the United States a bomb free zone, putting up signs outside every elementary school and airport. No bombs allowed.
What he has said is it is possible to be too magnanimous and to allow "the wrong people" or "bad people" across our borders as we attempt to help the huddled masses. He is correct that the flood of Middle Eastern men into Germany was followed by Middle Eastern Men groping women in German cities, and this was not a random sort of malfeasance, but was born of a culture in which women unaccompanied by protecting male relatives are considered whores and fair game.
Trump points to the one Mexican who rapes an American woman and says this one event justifies excluding all Mexicans from American soil. He did not say this man was also a Catholic. So are we excluding all Catholic Mexicans? Because, you know how they are. And, of course, that sort of thinking is what devolves into bigotry. One guilty person is identified as a member of a feared group and thus all members of the group are tarred with the same brush.
Trump is not a Hitler spewing hate; he's more like the frightened grandmother, who fears people not from her own group. She is not so much a hater, as an individual possessed by fear.
Wouldn't we all love to have a machine which could identify radical Islamists intent on blowing up Americans? We could have everyone coming in from an international flight step through the machine, as we do for the scanners now, and when the terrorist steps in, the machine would detect the malevolent thoughts emanating from his brain and the doors would snap shut and we would extract him in a can and send him off to some place, not in the United States, hopefully not Gitmo. Somewhere safely away from us. Maybe Somalia.
Would we not like a similar machine for the Mexican border, which would detect rapists and people intent on overstaying their visas?
The problem with human beings is they are deceptive. Say what you will about those 19 terrorists on 9/11--they were cunning. And effective.
But the problem is our Presidents tend to be not cunning. And they are not effective.
George W was simply not very bright. His response to 9/11 was to send in the troops, and it didn't much matter to him if they did any good. He simply wanted a good show for the folks back home. And he provided part of the theatrics by flying his own plane onto the aircraft carrier where they hung up that "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Trump will eventually face the same problem: Either he'll replace Obamacare with something better or he will not. Either he'll bring back coal mining jobs and factory jobs or he will not. Either he'll prevent the next terrorist attack or not. Either he'll stop the flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border or he will not.
Right now, it's all wishful thinking. Those miners are going to mine CLEAN COAL. Oh, now why didn't we think of that before? All that dirty coal polluting our skies and air. Why didn't we just go for the clean stuff?
Right now, it doesn't look as if Trump actually has engineered solutions to any of these problems. He's got his staff writing memos about rounding up immigrants. Meanwhile, cities are declaring themselves sanctuary cities. Sounds like a plan.
Ronald Reagan managed to fool most of the people all the time--and they named an airport after him and still revere him today, even though he was a dismal failure as a President, tripling the national debt by cutting taxes and increasing spending, putting 280 marines in a building in Lebanon and they were blown to smithereens by a truck bomber, over seeing the Challenger explosion. He couldn't get the government to do much of anything right, but he could sure play the part of the guy who would drain the Washington swamp.
Trump does not have script writers Reagan had. But he does not burn with the black venom of a Hitler. He is the worried, panicky old woman from Queens, who sees the world as a threatening and dangerous place and who sees no point in drawing distinctions between those who mean us harm and those who are simply different.
When you think of the really nasty, pathologic leaders visited upon the face of the earth, you think of Hitler, whose pathology was so manifest, the shrieking hate spraying out from his lips. That guy, like his admirers, Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, among others, were real haters. They put their hate down in writing and broadcast it unequivocally.
Trump is not like them.
In fact, I was impressed by his handling of the professional Jew who attempted to ask him a question during his press conference. Trump did not indulge him; he treated him as he would any other reporter who offended him. The man promised a simple, friendly question and instead launched into a prolonged statement about a rise in anti-Semitism which Trump took as an attack on himself because so many have said Trump's intolerance of one religious group, the Muslims, unleashes intolerance against all minority religious groups.
Trump could have used the fact his own daughter converted to Judiasm to marry a Jew as an argument about his own tolerance, but he did not. He instead insisted he is the least anti Semitic person on earth and you have to take him at his word there.
Even his anti Muslim rhetoric lacks the sort of animus we would expect in a real hater. He does not say Muslims are evil or conniving or that they should be expunged from our society.
The trouble is, his is incapable of drawing well crafted distinctions. He says there are bad people out there and some of these are Muslims and some of these Muslims are motivated by what they think is their Muslim faith to want to do us harm.
If you pinned him down, and I haven't seen anyone do this, I suspect he would say the problem is not Islam, nor even the majority of the billions of Muslims on earth but a small radical fringe--those who follow what he calls "radical Islamic extremists" and we ought to be focusing on these.
Those two bozos standing behind Trump's left shoulder at Melbourne do not understand fine distinctions. They just want something to cheer about. They lost interest in what he was saying by minute 50 and one realized he was on national TV and started calling his friends on his cell phone and waving at the camera, behind Trump, making hand signs with his fingers. He did everything but hold up rabbit ears behind Trump's head. He was 20 something, with the mental age of a 10 year old, to look at him. That's where so many of Trump's fans seem to be.
Trump's problem is, he hasn't the foggiest idea of how to do what he wants to do. He wants to stop attacks by radical Islamists on America. His first attempt, to simply exclude Muslims from entering the United States, is an approach which got the brain dead throngs cheering. But, of course, this simple minded solution won't work any better than declaring the United States a bomb free zone, putting up signs outside every elementary school and airport. No bombs allowed.
What he has said is it is possible to be too magnanimous and to allow "the wrong people" or "bad people" across our borders as we attempt to help the huddled masses. He is correct that the flood of Middle Eastern men into Germany was followed by Middle Eastern Men groping women in German cities, and this was not a random sort of malfeasance, but was born of a culture in which women unaccompanied by protecting male relatives are considered whores and fair game.
Trump points to the one Mexican who rapes an American woman and says this one event justifies excluding all Mexicans from American soil. He did not say this man was also a Catholic. So are we excluding all Catholic Mexicans? Because, you know how they are. And, of course, that sort of thinking is what devolves into bigotry. One guilty person is identified as a member of a feared group and thus all members of the group are tarred with the same brush.
Trump is not a Hitler spewing hate; he's more like the frightened grandmother, who fears people not from her own group. She is not so much a hater, as an individual possessed by fear.
Wouldn't we all love to have a machine which could identify radical Islamists intent on blowing up Americans? We could have everyone coming in from an international flight step through the machine, as we do for the scanners now, and when the terrorist steps in, the machine would detect the malevolent thoughts emanating from his brain and the doors would snap shut and we would extract him in a can and send him off to some place, not in the United States, hopefully not Gitmo. Somewhere safely away from us. Maybe Somalia.
Would we not like a similar machine for the Mexican border, which would detect rapists and people intent on overstaying their visas?
The problem with human beings is they are deceptive. Say what you will about those 19 terrorists on 9/11--they were cunning. And effective.
But the problem is our Presidents tend to be not cunning. And they are not effective.
George W was simply not very bright. His response to 9/11 was to send in the troops, and it didn't much matter to him if they did any good. He simply wanted a good show for the folks back home. And he provided part of the theatrics by flying his own plane onto the aircraft carrier where they hung up that "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Trump will eventually face the same problem: Either he'll replace Obamacare with something better or he will not. Either he'll bring back coal mining jobs and factory jobs or he will not. Either he'll prevent the next terrorist attack or not. Either he'll stop the flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border or he will not.
Right now, it's all wishful thinking. Those miners are going to mine CLEAN COAL. Oh, now why didn't we think of that before? All that dirty coal polluting our skies and air. Why didn't we just go for the clean stuff?
Right now, it doesn't look as if Trump actually has engineered solutions to any of these problems. He's got his staff writing memos about rounding up immigrants. Meanwhile, cities are declaring themselves sanctuary cities. Sounds like a plan.
Ronald Reagan managed to fool most of the people all the time--and they named an airport after him and still revere him today, even though he was a dismal failure as a President, tripling the national debt by cutting taxes and increasing spending, putting 280 marines in a building in Lebanon and they were blown to smithereens by a truck bomber, over seeing the Challenger explosion. He couldn't get the government to do much of anything right, but he could sure play the part of the guy who would drain the Washington swamp.
Trump does not have script writers Reagan had. But he does not burn with the black venom of a Hitler. He is the worried, panicky old woman from Queens, who sees the world as a threatening and dangerous place and who sees no point in drawing distinctions between those who mean us harm and those who are simply different.
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