REFLECTIONS ON TRUMP

“The orange man went down.”

--A text from a good friend following

Trump’s guilty verdict in New York.

“The real verdict is going to be November

5th by the people.”

--Donald Trump

When I was growing up, a person had to be 21 to vote. My first opportunity was on June 6, 1968. It was the California presidential primary. I voted for the winner, Robert Kennedy, whom I felt was the most likely candidate to get us out of Vietnam. Later that night, RFK was assassinated. My choice in the national election was Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, versus Richard Nixon. I chose not to vote. One-third of the Americans killed in combat in Vietnam died during Nixon’s presidency.

In the next election, I voted for George McGovern who lost in a landslide. Since then, as an independent, I’ve voted in every election—some Democrats, some Republicans, even a couple of third-party candidates. One of the latter was Jill Stein in 2016. All I knew about Jill Stein was she was not Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. That was good enough for my vote.

One day in 1974 I was visiting one of my philosophy professors at her home in Berkeley when she said something that stuck with me. I don’t recall her exact words, but something to the effect that a person can be a great leader without being likable. She might have been referring to Nixon, I don’t know. All I know is that her words came to mind shortly before the 2020 election when I decided to vote for Donald Trump.

Some of my best friends like Donald Trump. Some of my best friends despise him. A few months before the election I wrote a letter to two of my friends in the latter category. I had been friends with Chris and Patrick for over fifty years, ever since our involvement in the antiwar movement. Here is some of what I wrote:

The reason I am open to the option of voting for Trump is based on a distinction between the man’s image and his policies. Granted, his image is formed in large part by ridiculous tweets and statements often consisting of untruths, half-truths, and complete exaggerations. If Trump’s policies were reflected in his image, the choice would be clear: I would not vote. I certainly wouldn’t vote for Joe Biden, an empty suit who, back in the 70s resisted busing because he did not want his children to be subjected to “a racial jungle,” and was later responsible for the crime bill in 1994. As Vox.com (hardly a right-wing media outlet) reporter German Lopez wrote:

“If you ask some criminal justice reform activists, the 1994 crime law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, which was meant to reverse decades of rising crime, was one of the key contributors to mass incarceration in the 1990s. They say it led to more prison sentences, more prison cells, and more aggressive policing — especially hurting black and brown Americans, who are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated.”

Contrast that with the First Step Act which Trump signed into law in 2018. The Washington Post reported that “Justice Department officials on Friday announced that 3,100 inmates are being released from federal prisons across the country because of a change in how their good-behavior time is calculated — a significant step, they said, in the implementation of a new criminal justice reform law.” The article went on to say that it also “shortens sentences for some inmates — partly through a change in the credit they are given for good behavior — and increases job training and other programs. It also requires the new risk assessment system, which officials said Friday will allow inmates to complete in-prison programs and, for some, receive “earned time” credits to get out earlier.”

The second consideration in my choice of Trump is that he is not a chicken hawk. A chicken hawk is someone like Dick Cheney, who deliberately avoids military service but goes on to achieve a position of political power and has no qualms about sending America’s sons and daughters off to war. Or someone like Joe Biden, a healthy young football star in high school who claims he had the opportunity to play in college yet avoided the draft based on having suffered from asthma as a teenager. In his third decade as senator, Biden voted in favor of the Bush/Cheney war in Iraq.

Donald Trump avoided military service with a dubious “bone spurs” diagnosis from the family doctor. But as a private citizen, he opposed the Iraq invasion, and he is the only president in recent memory to oppose America’s endless wars—which is doubtless among the reasons neocons like Bill Kristol became Biden supporters.

Then there’s China. There’s no need to review the various threats the Chinese Communist Party poses to America. Suffice it to say Trump is the only president to do something about it.

Finally, Trump has repeatedly been accused of racism. Instead of me defending the president against that charge, consider the words of Jack Brewer, an Afro-American man who spoke at the Republican convention. Here are excerpts from Mr. Brewer’s speech:

“I’m Jack Brewer, a former three-time NFL team captain, college professor, coach, husband, son, and father. I’m also a lifelong Democrat. But I support Donald Trump. Let me be clear. I didn’t come here for the popularity or the praise, the likes or the retweets. I’m here as a servant to God, a servant to the people of our nation, and a servant to our president.

“I grew up in Grapevine, Texas, a town where my great grandfather was the first black man to settle as a sharecropper in 1896. My early high school experience included fighting with skinheads and being a witness in an attempted murder trial after my friend shot a skinhead in self-defense. I remember my dad’s bravery when he stood up against a KKK rally in my town. In my house, my father taught me to back down from no one. I know what racism looks like. I’ve seen it firsthand. And America, it has no resemblance to President Trump. And I’m fed up with the way he’s portrayed in the media, who refuse to acknowledge what he’s done for the black community.

“We are not as divided as our politics suggest. At some point, for the sake of our children, the policies must take priority over the personalities. So, because you have an issue with President Trump’s tone, you’re going to allow Biden and Harris to deny under-served black and brown children school choice?

“Are we so offended by the president’s campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again,’ that we’re going to ignore that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have collectively been responsible for locking up countless black men for nonviolent crimes? Are you going to allow the media to lie to you by falsely claiming that he said there are very fine white supremacists in Charlottesville? He didn’t say that. It’s a lie. And ignore the so-called Black Lives Matter organization that openly, on their website, called for the destruction of the nuclear family? My fellow Americans, our families need each other. We need black fathers in the homes with their wives and children. The future of our communities depends on it. I’m blessed to be able to run inner-city youth programs and to also teach in prisons across America. The inmates in my federal prison program receive days off their sentence just for attending my class. And that’s thanks to President Donald Trump in his First Step Back. President Trump cared about these Americans and their families, even when so many others had left them behind and had written them off. I’m forever grateful to President Trump for that. He endures relentless attacks, as do so many of us like myself who support him.”

***************

I would, of course, prefer a candidate who holds Trump’s positions on criminal justice reform, China, school choice, and endless wars but does not pander to his base by calling kneeling NFL players sons-of-bitches who have no right to play. I hate the fact that this draft dodger belittled John McCain when he said, “I like people that weren’t captured.” Trump’s predecessor was incapable of uttering such a callous remark. But what exactly did Obama and his VP, Joe Biden, do for black prison inmates, or to improve the economic well-being of black families?

I have to take issue with Jack Brewer's statement that we are not as divided as our politics suggest. We most certainly are. After receiving my letter four years ago, Chris and I went back and forth for a while on the subject of Donald Trump, and then it was back to normal. Conversely, Patrick blew me off entirely from that point on. When I mentioned that to Chris, he asked if he should talk to Patrick about it. Hell no! I said. To my way of thinking, true friendship is unconditional. Patrick has demonstrated he wasn’t a true friend in the first place.

The three of us participated in many rallies and protest marches. It was common for speakers to end their speeches with a four-word slogan: Power to the people! That is what I still stand for and what I base my choice of a presidential candidate on. Not power to the party or power to the elite. Only….

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

I will vote for the person whose policies adhere to that slogan. And if he happens to be a so-called “convicted felon,” so be it.

I invite you to comment.