Clinton and Trump: Down to the Wire

The 2016 Presidential election ends next week.  None too soon for me.  I am sick of watching our nation tear itself apart over the most outlandish campaigns and candidates of the modern era.  This is one for the books and that book becomes the only one I would support burning.

We have a choice between a man who does not believe he can do anything wrong, say anything wrong or ever lose, and a woman who is very scared that someone might find out she did something wrong.  The man harkens back to a time as the model for future greatness that was a terrible time for anyone other than Anglo Americans with steady income and no disabilities.  The women dreams of a future time free of discrimination and rife with opportunity.  Their separate visions of the future are telling, and the model they would use to move toward their vision is equally telling.

Even when Trump was way behind in the polls his response was the polls are wrong.  Even when it appeared clear Clinton would win, he said if Clinton won the election must be rigged.  The man cannot fathom failure or misstep.  There is no compromise in him because he has never had to compromise.  He has never been put in a position other than the boss.  At the risk of being drafted, where he surely would not have been the boss, he dodged.  He does not want to be President as much as he believes he should be the boss of the USA.  He can insult anyone he wants because he is the boss.  He can assume any political or economic position he wants because he is the boss.  His model for male/female relationships was formed in the 1950’s when a woman’s place was in the home or on her back.

Clinton on the other hand has been shaped by the expansion of civil liberties in the 1960’s.  Women, children, minorities have all been the focus of her life’s work and work she has.  She is a Washington insider which may sound like a curse to many and a blessing to some.  She knows how to get things done.  But she carries baggage.  It is not the baggage of discrimination or misogyny, it is the baggage of mistrust arising from her emails, her handling of Benghazi while Secretary of State, and a bunch of random quotes taken out of context from speeches made years ago.  The American people are having a hard time forgiving her for lack of transparency while she claims to be the most transparent candidate. 

The main difference in the shortcomings of the two candidates is that Trump’s shortcomings are revealed via the words out of his own mouth and his own behaviors, while Clinton’s shortcomings are part of the narrative of the Republican Party who argues she is hiding something.  After months and months of hearings and investigations no agency has found any evidence that merits the prosecution of Clinton.  And yet the narrative has become so strong as to be believed by many.

I am oh so worried about this election, not because of whomever the winner is, but because this election will more than anything in recent history reveal America’s core values.  A Trump victory will send a loud and clear message regarding civil rights, inequality of wealth, consumer oriented protection agencies like OSHA, Office of Civil Rights, FDA, etc.  Those agencies will be abandoned while taxes on the wealthy will decrease.  Trump has said he will end the “monopoly” of public education.  Holy Cow.  It will also say that what Trump has said and done is forgivable, and perhaps worse, supportable.

The mere fact that the candidates appear to be running neck-and-neck down to the wire is as discouraging a piece of news as I have heard in a long time.  It should never have been close.  It should never have been Trump.  The fact that it is both is the scariest thing I can think of on Halloween.

Politically Correct is Morally Correct

It has been difficult for me to understand much of what is happening politically and socially in our nation right now.  In so many ways I am naive.  But with the latest discussion regarding Trump’s comments about women some of the fog in my mind has cleared.

My childhood included seeing three restrooms and two water fountains everywhere I went:  Men, women and colored, White and Colored.  I grew up in the Ozzie and Harriet world.  I grew up when every elected official south of the Mason Dixon line was a Democrat.  I grew up when smoking was cool.  My family did not own a TV until I was 8 years old and the shows were all black and white.  I grew up when the CEO and Congress were all men, almost all white men.  I grew up seeing the riots in Watts and at the Democratic convention in Chicago.  I grew up when there was both a draft and a war and women were not part of the effort except in voluntary support roles.  I grew up at a time when the locker room talk among high school boys and those men who did not mature beyond high school was similar to Trump’s comments.  I grew up at a time it was just assumed that women and Blacks were somehow inferior to white males.  I grew up in a time when people with special needs were ignored and kept at home.  I grew up in a time when being homosexual was a deep, dark secret.  I grew up in a time where using slang words for Muslims, Blacks and women was OK.  It was politically correct to use discriminatory language for any group that was perceived to be sub-white male:  wet-backs, niggers, fags, retards, pussies, camel jocks, and on and on.

I am naive in that I thought as a nation, as a pool of human beings, we had progressed beyond the acceptance of such nonsense in the 1950’s through the confrontation of such nonsense in the 1960’s to a world of accepting diversity, to a world where we all recognize that every race, every ethnic group, both genders, and people of various sexual preferences have the potential to make major, positive contributions to our world.  Contributions that are not grounded in characteristics determined at birth and religious belief or absence thereof, and determined by zip code.  More than that, I thought we had reached a time when we recognized the inherent worth of humanity.  I have been foolishly wrong.

I get it now when Trump says “Make America Great Again.”  He wants to return to the time when white men ruled and there was no such thing as being politically correct.  He can wave his arm and make derogatory remarks about all women and individual women and that should be OK.  He can wave his arm and make generalized statements regarding immigrants to this country.  He can mock people with special needs.  He can wave his arm and make generalized statements about any group that in his 1950’s mind merits a slang term. 

Political correctness, that is eliminating bias and discrimination from our speech and our behavior, is in fact moral correctness.  If one believes we can prejudge entire groups of human beings and lump them under some derogatory heading, then one feels freed from both political correctness and moral correctness.  And people who still harbor those old 1950’s notions that were part of our heritage at the time have not matured socially or morally.  Women did not earn the right to vote until 1920, and even then the vote was very close.  It was not until 1900 that women throughout the nation could own property separate from their husbands.  Blacks earned the right to vote in 1870, 50 years before women.  It has always been assumed in this nation that white males, especially white males who own property, have the right to vote and control.  Political correctness is our effort to express our moral correctness.  Any effort to return to the days of discriminatory language and behavior is, by definition morally wrong.

I hear pundits including women saying ignore Trump’s comments in all these areas.  Boys will be boys.  Poppycock and balderdash.  To forgive Trump is to sink to a moral depth we should have escaped by now.  To forgive Trump is to return to the time where discrimination was politically acceptable.  Such a regression is immoral.  It represents a culture and belief system that is immoral.  It represents our bigoted childhood which we should have abandoned long ago.  It should never, ever be the model we wish to re-establish.  It is wrong.

So, if it bothers you that I carefully edit my language to exclude discriminatory nouns and adjectives it is because I believe human beings regardless of characteristics deserve our respect.  Anything we say or do that implies some humans are inferior to or subordinate to other human beings is morally wrong.  Political correctness is moral correctness.  Abandoning that is not returning to a time of greatness.  It is sinking to a depth of moral morass from which we should have escaped to higher ground long ago.