For the last four years or so, I've done my best to avoid getting into social media spats over politics. That was made easy since the last presidential election, as I either de-friended or have been de-friended by most of the social media "friends" with whom I've had shall we say, heated political disagreements.
Like banging my head against the wall, it felt so good when it stopped.
I didn't jettison all of my friends with alternative visions of the universe.
Yet for my part, since the 2020 election, I've kept political commentary to the minimum on my own posts (saving it for this blog), and have bent over backwards to avoid commenting on others' posts when they rubbed me the wrong way.
But one post the other day was particularly aggravating, and I simply could not help myself. The post was, as are so many of them are, not original, but the repost of a meme. The meme said: "Run on your record. Not your race. Not your gender." signed: "America."
As you can see it was not explicitly addressed to any particular candidate, but you can probably guess who the intended target was. Taking advantage of the ambiguity, this was my response:
Oh I don't know, if you have a record that includes dozens of criminal indictments, thirty some felony convictions, two impeachments, trying to overthrow the United States government because of not liking the outcome of an election, having Orban, Kim and Putin as BFFs AND total incompetence in handling the one real challenge (COVID) of his administration, what else does he have to run on besides being an old white guy?
I had a flash of Deja vu when I read the comments from total strangers to my response which were posted within minutes of my comment. I learned that I'm drinking the Kool Aid, that I'm delusional, that I don't have an open mind and that I need to stop paying attention to the "mainstream media."
What they don't know about me (as I said they're perfect strangers so how could they?), is that I stopped drinking Kool-Aid when I was about seven, never really liked the stuff. For much of my adult life and then some I've prided myself on having an open mind, seeking out sources of information from all sides of the political spectrum, especially those with whom I disagreed. After all what can you learn if you just read things that confirm your own biases? Yes, I do get information from the dreaded "mainstream media" as well as from other sources, including Fox "News".
Until eight years ago, I considered myself to be politically moderate, even right-of-center on certain issues.
What they also don't know about me is that no, my opinion of Donald Trump has not been shaped by the MSM or any other political commentary, but rather by observing and listening to the man himself. I've been following Trump's career for the past oh, forty years or so and can honestly say that for all that time, I never found him to be anything more than an attention grabbing, self-serving crook, a conman and a grifter. And that was back when he called himself a "liberal, very pro-choice Democrat." Needless to say, my opinion of the exPOTUS has not improved in the last eight years.
As for the delusional part, well in some circumstances, I have to plead guilty as charged. But judging by the words of my comment published in its entirety above, one would be hard pressed to deny anything I wrote; yes friends, Donald Trump is responsible for all that, and so much more.
Fittingly, none of the responses to my comment tried to deny any of what I said. Instead, they dwelled upon what a great president their man was, how the country was so much better off under Trump and what a disaster it has become under Biden. According to them, Trump may have done some bad things, but nothing that the Democrats haven't done.
Well, I beg to differ.
If you've been reading this blog for the past eight or so years, you've heard it all before so I'm not going to rehash it here. In a remarkable bit of self-restraint, I let it go with my original comment, choosing not to get into arguments over politics with complete strangers.
I did type out a response to my friend, an actual friend by the way, who made the original post. Basically, she pointed out the predictable: prices are too high, too many immigrants, two wars waging in Europe and the Middle East, and more.
How much those things are attributable to the current administration is very debatable, which is what I wrote. But I never posted it, seeing no point in arguing with my friend either, since she's as set in her opinions on the subject as I am in mine.
However debatable though, hers are valid concerns and if the Democrats are going to have any chance of winning in November, they're going to have to address them honestly.
As far as I'm concerned, they can dump on Trump all they want but they're also going to have to give up demonizing Trump supporters as Hillary Clinton did with her infamous "basket of deplorables" comment eight years ago. That alone I believe, is what doomed her campaign more than anything else.
Interestingly enough, I listened to an interview with Tim Walz a couple weeks ago. He spoke passionately about all the folks we still see wearing the red baseball caps at Trump rallies and how they're not all that different from folks like us who turn our noses up at them. The Democrats aren't going to reach all of them, probably not even most of them, but the truth is, deep down, most of these folks have by and large the same needs, the same hopes and dreams for themselves and their families as the vast majority of Americans. (Yes there are the dyed-in-the-wool racists too who I'd say comprise a small minority of the MAGA crowd.)
I was so impressed by Walz and especially his comments about unifying the country, that I became convinced Kamela Harris should choose him as her running mate. Two days later, she did.
Trump was clearly aggravated when President Biden announced that he would not seek reelection and would throw all his support to his vice president. So too were Trump supporters who like their man, were beginning to see a slam dunk victory in November, especially after (for Biden) the disastrous debate performance, the assassination attempt against Trump, and the rousing, bullshit laden RNC in Milwaukee.
In stark contrast, those of us who wouldn't vote for Trump if our lives depended upon it, were in a state of depression at the thought of the man who waged an insurrection against the United States government on January 6, 2021, returning to office. So, the timing for Biden's announcement, coming just days after the MAGA Convention, could not have been better for the Democrats and anybody who thinks a redo of the Trump presidency is the last thing this country needs.
I'm not often right but I made the right call two posts ago when I said that there were only two legitimate options for the Democrats. Either Joe Biden would have to voluntarily withdraw from the race and get behind Kamala Harris (and no one else), or stay in the race and deal with the ever-growing scrutiny of his mental and physical condition. In either case, the Democrats, if they wanted any chance of beating Trump, would have to be all-in in supporting their candidate, whomever that may be.
Well, much to Donald Trump's dismay, they chose option A, and it seems to be working out pretty well for them, up until now at least.
The double whammy was Harris's pick of Walz, who couldn't be farther from the MAGA concept of the wealthy, elitist, Ivy League educated coastal Democrat who has zero connection to or appreciation of Average Americans and their values.
For the record, both Trump (Penn) and his running mate J.D.Vance (Yale) are in fact, Ivy Leaguers while Harris and Walz both are not.
That little tidbit in a normal world would be quite irrelevant, as all four have advanced degrees from respected universities. But if the Trumplicans are going to paint a picture of themselves as being more in touch with the lives of average Americans, as you can see, that simply isn't so.
Harris and Walz would do well to remind folks of that. But it's also important that both candidates don't spend all their time reminding us that they're not Trump and Vance, we already know that. As I said, they're going to need to get substantive and address those bread and butter issues mentioned by my friend in her response to my comment on her post.
Because at some point, as everyone keeps reminding us, the honeymoon will eventually be over with the Harris/Walz ticket and the voters who will determine the outcome of this election, will be a relatively small number of people in a handful of states who will show up to vote, based upon whether or not they feel Harris and Walz are worth the effort. The Democratic candidates need to do everything in their power to reach out to these folks, even some of the ones in the red caps.
Trump of course will always be Trump, a man who cannot resist the impulse to be a jackass and a bully, no matter the cost to himself. While his base has shown they will support him no matter what he does, his Achilles heel is that he will never lift a finger to reach out to anybody who doesn't already adore him. His choice of running mate proves that in spades. That weakness provides the Democrats with a tremendous opening, if only they'll take the opportunity to run with it.
Well, so far so good.
So, what was it about my friend's post that irked me so?
Well, you may recall four or five of my posts which address the issue of "colorblindness" that seems to be an obsession with the MAGA right. They just love to brag about how they don't notice race and how inspired they are by the line of the "I Have a Dream" speech where Martin Luther King dreams of a day when: "his children would be judged by their character rather than the color of their skin." When you're reading a rant about race by a MAGA writer, you can set your watch by when that line will come up.
They called her a "DEI" hire, implying that she was picked not because of her qualifications but because of her race and her gender. Never mind that she served as Vice President of the United States for four years, a senator from the largest state in the country before that, and the top law enforcement official of that state before that. Before that she was a prosecutor.
And remind me, what exactly were Donald Trump's qualifications before he was elected president in 2016? Oh yeah, he was a talk show host and a businessman who went bankrupt a half-dozen times.
So, if anyone is running on race and gender in this election, it is the Trumplicans.
That point was made crystal clear during last week's Democratic National Convention here in Chicago, where the milestone of Harris possibly becoming the first woman president of the United States was not lost on many of the speakers, but practically ignored by the candidate herself.
Meanwhile the exPOTUS is working overtime to portray Kamala Harris with references filled with piggish male chauvinist stereotypes of women, portraying her as weak, frivolous and stupid, someone who will not garner the respect, nor inspire fear in the minds of our adversaries.
Well, anyone who has ever seen her in action, such as when she grilled the likes of former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh. understands that Harris, a former prosecutor, senator and vice president, is as serious, intelligent and tough as they come.
On the other hand, her current opponent, the exPOTUS, extremely vulnerable to attention and flattery, has proven himself to be easily manipulated by our adversaries. His shameful performance in Helsinki with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, is the most but certainly not the unique example of this.
Of course none of this should come as a surprise, Donald Trump is a master of projection, casting his own faults onto his opponents, only more so with those he truly fears.
From his unhinged rants on Kamala Harris, we can gather a few things. He's really scared of her and he's the unserious, weak and stupid one.
And how.
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