Trump?

I am still trying to wrap my head around the possibility of a Donald Trump candidacy or worse, a Trump presidency.  I add this brain warp to the realization there are also people who support Cruz, Christie, Palin, and Huckabee and their ilk.  How in the world can the political party most known for high educational attainment and successful business practices have degenerated into such a quagmire of quacks and snake oil salespeople?  Perhaps I have lost my mind.  I prefer to think that those who support these folks are not using theirs.  This political season represents the largest step backward in the history of American thought.

Personal passion, fear, and anger rule the lives of too many.  Self-image is grounded in false beliefs.  While thoughtful commentators point out that Trump is a racist, a sexist and a bigot, Trump supporters have grown in number.  Why?  I believe it is because his supporters are racist, sexist, and bigots.  When his supporters say they support him because he tells it like it is what they are really saying is he tells it like they are.

How did this happen?  How could the land of the free and the home of the brave become rooted in this anger, this fear, this willingness to offend and attack everyone who does not fit the proposed model American?  How can Trump’s theme to make America great again happen in a nation with a proud history of the extension of human civil liberties to African Americans, women, belief systems other than Christian, sexual orientation other than heterosexual, and races other than Anglo?  Listening to Trump convinces me he wants to make America more like 1950 than 2016.  And that is very dangerous.

I think it happened because the Tea Party, reality shows, fear, anger, Fox “News”, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, Limbaugh, et. al., are all anti-intellectual, anti-pragmatism, anti-secularism, anti-reason, anti-science, and anti-progress unless we are talking about the oil industry.  Thus Donald Trump, Cruz, Christie, Huckabee, Palin, etc., are perceived as viable options for the leaders of the most enlightened, powerful nation on the planet.  The ultra-conservative opinion shapers have for years been lambasting Obama, spreading false rumors, heightening fear, and stoking the anger.  The Republican Party is now reaping what these Neanderthals have been planting:  Donald Trump, a man with no experience in government at all, who has never held even a city council seat, never stood for an election for dog catcher, much less a governor, a senator or a representative is being seriously considered for the Presidency of these United States.  He is a naive rookie when it comes to politics, Washington and foreign policy, and that will be disastrous.  He mostly inherited his millions.  Many of his business ventures have failed.  He was great on “reality” TV when he got to say, “You’re fired!”, but that is not a pre-requisite skill for a President.  He is a racist.  He is a sexist.  He is a bigot.  His ideas are scary as hell:  A wall?  No Muslims in the US?  Kill the families of terrorists?  These are not strategies to return America to greatness.  These are strategies to send us back to the ideological Stone Age and away from our current greatness.  Sadly, that is part of his appeal to folks who do not know and do not understand the American political system or the grounding principles in our Constitution.  And it is part of the appeal to Americans who are also racist, sexist, bigots.  Trump is getting the Archie Bunker vote and the right wing media has helped develop more Archie Bunkers.

It is as though the Republican establishment is now awakening to the Frankenstein they have created.  For every fear tactic, for every stance that was anti-Obama even when the ideas were good if not great, for every threat to shut down the government and attack the resources that help the most needy Americans, for every position that was made for purely political reasons rather than what was best for the country, for every false rumor regarding guns and socialism and a world view the end result is an angry, fearful electorate.  That segment is giving us Donald Trump.

Can he be stopped on his road the Republican nomination?  I do not think so.  There is no viable candidate to take his place.  Cruz in many ways scares me more than Trump, and Rubio has all the charisma of Mr. Rogers.  Republicans are now Trumped.

It is my hope that three changes emerge from this.  First that the right-wing of the Republican Party begins to face the same scrutiny by mainstream Republicans that they use on Democrats.  These folks have been lying, exaggerating and spreading fear and anger for years.  Just as only Nixon could go to China, the only group that can stop this gaggle is fellow, thoughtful Republicans.

Secondly, we stop glorifying a past that in many ways is very embarrassing.  People owned people in this country.  Women could not vote or own property and their preferred position was barefoot and pregnant.  Bathrooms were segregated.   Schools were segregated.  Churches were segregated.  We had a poll tax to stop the poor from voting.  We did not serve children with special needs.  We did not inspect our food or our water.  We did not ensure that the workplace was safe.  We did not, could not, imagine Blacks, Hispanics, women, Muslims, atheists, etc. ascending to leadership roles.  Those were not the good old days.  If you think they were you obviously did a good job of picking your parents (Please read “I am So Smart” on this blog.”)

I saw a frightful video yesterday where student journalists stopped other students on the Texas Tech campus and asked them who won the Civil War.  Only one knew.  The others either did not know what the Civil War was, who fought or who won.  I am tempted to make jokes about TT, but I believe the same would be true on any college campus in Texas and elsewhere.  We have become totally ignorant of the social sciences (history, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, psychology.)  Our conservative leaders have promoted the end of understanding the social sciences because if we understand those sciences we might abandon fear, bigotry and sexism.  We have standardized all the social studies tests so that only a certain array of facts must be known to pass the test and the elimination of actual learning in these areas that occurs with classroom dialog, exploration, and analysis, has left us with students who do not know or understand what the American Civil War was all about.  They do not get that it was principally about life-style and slavery.  It was also about federal oversight of state’s rights.  Both issues were settled after a terrible blood bath where everyone who died was an American.  Students do not know that the economic policies of Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush are identical:  what is good for business is good for the USA.  Each of these presidents led us to the brink of economic disaster because those policies do not work. 

I could go on and on.  The point is the third change that must begin to happen if this country is to remain great is that we must teach our students to think, not to pass tests.  They must understand governmental decision making, historical trends and philosophies, the differences in cultures, and the economic impact of each of the philosophies out there.   Those who do not want their children to learn such things promote anti-intellectual schools.  If students are only told of one way to think then they are not capable of thinking.  In Texas we actually have a Lt. Governor who waged war on a state curriculum because one lesson asked students to look at the Boston Tea Party from the British point of view.  This man is clearly not about learning, thinking, problem solving.  The result is non-intellectual students who have no clue about our history and how it relates to the current Presidential Race.  Our kids become Archie Bunker, uneducated, anti-reasoning bigots.

That, in my opinion, is how the Republican Party will end up nominating Donald Trump.  Reasonable, thoughtful conservatives should be scared to death.  I am.