If You Voted for Donald Trump...

Back in the early throes of the 2016 election process, when Donald Trump threw his hat in the ring as a Republican candidate for president, I chuckled to myself.  Yeah, right...  I live in the Indianapolis area.  Just a couple of years before that, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced that they had secured Donald Trump to drive the pace car for the Indy 500-mile race.  Some 500 fans started a petition to have him removed from that honor.  Why?  The fans reasoned that Mr. Trump had nothing to do with Indiana, with racing, with history, or anything else other than being rich.  The petition gained momentum and came to the attention of the big wigs at the Speedway.  They were in a tough spot.  They had already talked to Trump about it, so it would have been embarrassing to shut him down due to fan unrest.  Word got back to Trump, somehow, and suddenly he had "something come up" that caused him to cancel his planned appearance at the race.  He sent his regrets, saved face, and everyone was happy.  Including me.  If he isn't qualified to drive a pace car for a stupid race, what makes him--or anyone--think he is qualified to lead the most powerful nation on the planet?  Like the fans signing the race petition, I reasoned that he has nothing to do with politics, no experience in government, nothing to do with history, or anything else other than being rich.  (Have we heard this before?)  Thus, I considered his candidacy to be a colossal joke, knowing that the Republicans would get him under control for the sake of their political party.  

To be honest, I have never liked Donald Trump as a person.  In all of his pre-political public appearances, I saw him as an arrogant narcissist, so full of himself that he couldn't see beyond his vain orange comb-over.  So he has money.  Whoop-de-doo!  So do other people, but they don't make such outlandish public asses of themselves as he did.  In his private life, he has been investigated, litigated, bankrupted numerous times, and involved with shady charities and "universities" that didn't produce a thing.  He is on his third wife, the current one being a former immigrant model of which there are naked pictures all around.  It seemed to me that he had lied, cheated, and maybe even stolen his way to success, and I am not impressed with his money.   This was all before his candidacy.  After he declared for office, I just knew he wouldn't get past the primaries.  On the Republican side, there were six or seven (I forget which) serious candidates for office.  On the Democratic side, only two--both of whom were more qualified for the presidency than any of the others.

And then things got insane.  Through the course of the campaign process, he insulted just about everyone he could insult.  He made fun of another candidate's wife's looks.  He ridiculed a reporter with a physical handicap.  He called Mexicans druggies and rapists.  He used horrible, demeaning words in reference to female reporters and his female political opponent.  He insulted another politician who had been a prisoner of war in the service of our country.  He said he would deport all Muslims from America.  He decried companies that outsource their labor to other countries, yet his own clothing line carries tags saying "Made in Mexico" or "Made in China".  He uses tax loopholes to pay no taxes.  He has blatantly lied about his life, his qualifications, and other people.  He kicked women with crying babies out of his rallies.  He suggested violence, and even (to some opinions) incited it.  He said he would build a wall at the Mexican border of the US to keep illegal aliens out, and said that he would make Mexico pay for it.  As the days went on, he got more and more outrageous.  At the Republican Convention, his wife spoke--his third wife--his immigrant wife.  Her speech, which she claimed to have written herself, contained whole verbatim paragraphs of a speech given by First Lady Michelle Obama at the Democratic Convention years before.  (There was no denying it.  There is video of both speeches.  The plagiarism was word-for-word.)  Imagine my incredulity when, in spite of all of this, Donald Trump gained the nomination as the Republican Party's candidate for President of the United States!

Then things got worse.  More lies.  More insults.  More stupid campaign rhetoric.  More implicit faith on my part that this man would be stopped at the voting booth.  But then the unthinkable happened:  Ol' "Grab-'Em-By-The-Pussy" Trump actually won the election!  As in Mr. President-Elect.  As in Commander-in-Chief.  As in the person parents point to in order to inspire their children: "Someday, Johnny, you too could be President just like him."  Unbelievable!  Terrifying!  Absurd!  When I went to bed on Election night, I was disheartened by the fact that my candidate, Hillary Clinton, was running behind in spite of polls that said she would win.  And when I got up this morning, I was crushed with the news that she had, indeed, lost the election.  Clearly, we have lost our marbles as a nation.  I'm embarrassed.  I'm ashamed.  I'm shocked.  And I'm afraid.  But there it is.

With this one election, some things have changed.  If you voted for Donald Trump, you have reduced your own rights and have altered American values, probably for good.  If you voted for Donald Trump, your candidate won the election.  Congratulations!  Throughout the campaign, I watched his fanatic followers exhibit the worst kind of behavior, American against American, that hasn't been seen in this country for 50 years.

If you voted for Donald Trump, you:

*Have shown that racism, sexism, disrespect, and homophobia still exist in this country because you voted for a man who displayed them all and encouraged them in his rallies.

*Have lost the right to complain about the "dumbing down" of America--the lowering of standards.  You swallowed his rhetoric without fact-checking or doing your homework.  You gullibly accepted whatever came out of his mouth as the truth.

*Have lost touch with what truth really is.

*Have lost the ability to hold anyone in leadership to a higher standard.  You can't object if your child's teacher used to be a stripper because the First Lady of the U.S. has nude pictures on the Internet.  You can't pretend that people who are arrested for drunk driving should be severely punished because a former elected Republican President had been arrested for DUI in his earlier life, yet he got elected anyway.

*Can't brag about how Donald Trump represents American "family values", because he doesn't, and you've overlooked that.  He's been married three times to trophy wives; has been accused of inappropriate behavior with women; and was heard on an open microphone to say that he just grabs women "by the pussy" because "when you're a star, they let you".  He publicly encouraged his followers to tell his opponents to "go f**ck themselves".  He lied every day of his campaign

*Have no leg to stand on when confronted with the dozens and dozens of hypocrisies that have occurred in and around the man you voted for.  You saw them; you heard them; but you voted for him anyway.

*Cannot complain about how things go in government for the next four years.  The Republicans dominate the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Executive Branch, so I hope you get what you voted for--whatever that is.

I have to admit that I am shaken.  I've always been one of those who believed in our government system as a well-oiled machine that worked.  I'm naive, of course, but I've had faith in the whole notion of "my country, right or wrong".  I knew what America stands for--or thought I did.  Perhaps I knew what I stand for, and thought America did, too.  It's a shock to find out otherwise.  If the majority of Americans can vote for the likes of Donald Trump to be our leader in the free world, then I simply don't know what we're about anymore.

I came from a non-political family.  That is to say that the adults didn't talk politics around us kids.  I was aware that my grandparents could be considered Democrat because FDR took the nation through the Depression and they were able to save their farm.  I did learn, however, all through the petulant 60s and part of the 70s--from my military father--that the Commander-in-Chief is the boss, not because of who he is, but rather what he is.  My faith in America's election process and the common sense of almost half of the nation that voted for Mr. Trump has been shaken.  I have no respect for the man, but he is now the President of the country I love.  "Hail to the Chief" may choke in my throat, yet I will carry on in the legal avenues provided to me as a citizen.  We, as Americans, obviously have taken too much for granted.  I wish I had my younger years as a non-political animal to do over.  I think maybe I've lived too long.

God bless America.  We have some serious work to do!