We will get what we deserve

I find it both laughable and unsettling when I scroll through Twitter and see the AI-generated images (popular on the Right) of Donald Trump with huge muscles and movie star good looks, wielding a machine gun, riding a lion, or decked out in a Superman cape. 

Donald Trump is no Superman. It is pretty obvious by now that he is a petty little man who has never been loved by anyone. I do not say this mockingly but instead with much pity. Donald Trump has never known one second of what it feels like to be loved simply for being himself. When I let myself imagine what that absence might do to a person, it gives me real pain.

In Donald Trump’s case, this lack of love was combined with an abusive and impossible-to-please father, a self-involved mother, and an enormous fortune. His bluster and fake tough guy persona are efforts to impress and hide the needy child at his core. If you have ever seen the animated movie Spirited Away, then you know that Donald Trump is much more like the oversized destructive baby named Boh than like Superman. He demands attention and revels in chaos.

The past nine years, ever since that ridiculous ride down that ridiculous golden escalator, have left me increasingly saddened by my fellow Americans. So many good people seem to have adopted a petulant huckster as their hero. And no matter what he says or does, his idolators lap it up. I have never seen a more obvious example of the old adage about it being easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled.

Donald Trump has never cared about anyone other than Donald Trump. He does not care about the people who work for him. He does not care about the people who voted for him. And he certainly doesn’t care about doing what is right for the American people. He uses people until they are squeezed dry and then he throws them away. There is nothing heroic about his narcissistic behavior. Nothing.

Compare Donald Trump to Jimmy Carter. Carter attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis during World War II, ready to serve the country wherever he was needed. He graduated in 1946 and was stationed on submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He then did graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the nation’s second nuclear submarine.

Donald Trump avoided serving in the armed forces during Vietnam by getting a doctor to attest to the “fact” that he had bone spurs in his feet. (Funny how those bone spurs never seemed to bother Donny one day of his entire adult life since…).

Jimmy Carter married Roslyn Smith in 1946 and they remained married for more than 70 years, clearly still in love right up until she died in 2023. Donald Trump has had numerous wives and numerous affairs and treats women like he treats everything else in the world—like objects to be used until he is done with them.

President, Jimmy Carter locked himself away at Camp David with Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat and refused to let them leave until they had signed an historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. He used the power of the United States to champion human rights throughout the world. He created the Department of Energy to focus on making America more energy independent. He doubled the size of the national park system and tripled America’s designated wilderness areas.

Donald Trump in his first term gave the top 1% a massive tax cut (increasing the national debt by TRILLIONS of dollars), weakened environmental protections for America’s land, air, and water, weakened relationships with long-time allies around the globe, and praised Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban, and Kim Jung Un. He also promised to repeal and replace Obamacare and to create and pass a much-needed infrastructure package to rebuild America’s aging highways, ports, airports, and bridges. Needless to say, he reneged on both of these promises.

(Obamacare is still the law of the land and Joe Biden finally did in fact pass an infrastructure bill.)

After losing the election of 1980 Jimmy Carter went on to live another 44 years. He spent those years working to make the world a better place. His Carter Foundation eradicated a terrible disease called river blindness in many countries. He worked to shine a light on unfree and unfair elections around the world. And he helped build houses with Habitat For Humanity.

When Donald Trump lost the election of 2020 he lied about it. He whined and moaned for four solid  years about the unfairness of it all. In other words, he remained true to the petulant, spoiled, insecure brat at his core. 

And now here it is, almost January 20, 2025 and Donald Trump is about to be sworn in again as President of the United States of America. At this point all I can say is that we get what we deserve. We have voted for a proven failure to lead our country. There is something rotten at the core of America these days. Rather than choosing to be led by people like Jimmy Carter, we are opting for Baby Boh.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

I’ll tell you some of what I predict will go wrong. These are in no particular order:

Most cabinet picks and other high positions will be approved by the Senate. Trump will have the Supreme Court, Senate, and a closely-divided House all in Republican control. And still he will not act on his “concept of a plan” for healthcare. Too many people benefit from the ACA for him to really mess with it.

He will push all of his people to ramp up deportations and the actual results will not come even close to his promise to deport millions of people. It will become clear that behind the scenes Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and many wealthy GOP donors are lobbying Trump to be very selective in his deportations so that the building trades don’t grind to a halt.

Likewise, wealthy GOP donors and some Senators will push Trump hard to scale his tariff plan waaayyyyyyy back.

If Trump ignores their pleas and institutes widespread tariffs, prices (and inflation) will rise, unemployment will rise, and China and Russia will strengthen their alliance while the US loses even more global influence. The European Union will put some real distance between the US and EU and the US will be bargaining from an increasingly weak position.

The quality of the air and water in America will decrease as Trump loosens environmental regulations.

Trust in vaccines will plummet even further as RFK, Ladapo, Joe Rogan, and other fully unqualified people steer public health policy and discussions. Deaths of children from previously-controlled diseases will spike.

Likewise, maternal mortality rates will rise.

On the world stage, Vladimir Putin will feel emboldened to do whatever he wants to do—this will mean harsher crackdowns on any perceived dissent within Russia and more overt meddling in other countries.

Same is true for Netanyahu in Israel (if he manages to stay out of jail). He may feel empowered to annex parts of the West Bank and starve Gaza.

Christian Nationalists in the US will push as hard as they can to get Christianity into schools and other publicly-funded realms.

The Justice Department will see mass resignations as Trump uses it to punish anyone he sees as an enemy.

Trump will leave office on January 20, 2029 with approval ratings around 23% and will be widely viewed as the worst two-term President in our long history.

Vote Like Somebody's Life Depends On It

 

It is not hyperbole to say that November’s Presidential Election in the United States is the most consequential election we have had in many years. Some people might argue that 2016 was more consequential, but I disagree. In 2016, we could still hope that maybe the Office of the President would work some magic on Donald Trump---that he would come to understand the importance of empathy and kindness and compromise and expertise and actual leadership.

 

Sadly, rather than the Office magically changing Donald Trump for the better, his presence has tainted the Office and done actual long-term damage to the country. He has shown himself to be singularly unqualified to be President. To him, everything is about raw power. To Donald Trump, you do something simply because you can, not because it is right thing to do. He is a crude, small person with mean instincts, little curiosity, and no heart.

 

Now that we have all seen who he is, with no room left for interpretation or spin, this November’s election has become a referendum on the soul of America. It will answer the question: What kind of a country are we?

 

To choose four more years of uninformed and destructive policies, belittling language, craven kissing up to dictators, personal enrichment, and the politics of chaos would tell me that America is dead. We would no longer be the country I was proud to represent as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Yemen.

 

If you have watched the past four years and you are satisfied with the job Donald Trump has done, then I cannot change your mind. All I can ask of you is that you stay home on Election Day.

 

If, however, you are eligible to vote and are thinking about voting for someone other than Joe Biden or Donald Trump—or not voting at all---please read the next few paragraphs.

 

Please.

 

Because the future of our country is at stake. If you are thinking about not voting, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE think again. There are many people whose lives will be worse if Donald Trump wins. And by “worse” I don’t mean that their taxes might be a little higher or that there might be some policy changes that make life a little bit harder for them. I mean worse as in they will feel unsafe. I know many Trump fans like to make fun of people’s feelings, but by “unsafe” I mean truly at risk for maltreatment and harm. They will feel like the country they live in actively dislikes them and wants to hurt them. And they would be right.

 

It is no exaggeration to say that we are on the brink of fascism in this country. Donald Trump is a wannabe strongman who thinks the way to be a good leader is to force your will on anyone who will not do what you want them to do. He is ignorant of American history, has no idea what the Constitution actually says, and seems to believe a President should be able to do whatever he wants to do.

 

This is why he sides with bad cops when they abuse their power. You can hear the wheels turning in his head—“If those people had just done what they were told to do, they’d be fine.” This is the argument of people who can expect to be treated fairly by the system. Many people in the United States today have no expectation of fairness from the system—and they are smart to feel this way. The deck is stacked in this country against the poor, against the gay, against the person with an accent, against people with dark skin, against anyone who makes the white power structure feel threatened.

 

If you are thinking of not voting, please reconsider and think about the people who need your support and your protection. With the small effort it would take to go and vote for Joe Biden, you can help protect people who, through no fault of their own, are at risk in a second Trump term. You don’t even have to go anywhere to vote. You can do it from home with a mail-in ballot. PLEASE think about this as you decide whether to vote.

 

If you are thinking about voting for someone other than Joe Biden or Donald Trump---especially if you live in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, or Iowa---PLEASE hear me out. I have to be blunt because this really matters: your philosophical purity is less important than your Black neighbor’s life. It really is. So please consider voting for Joe Biden instead of anyone else. I know it feels wrong and maybe even painful to vote for someone as corporatist and middle-of-the-road as Joe Biden, but, if you are white and leaning third party, please understand that this particular election IS NOT ABOUT YOU.

 

This is the election where you get to prove that other people’s lives matter by voting as if their lives depend on it. Because they just might.

Electoral Fraud

Donald Trump has recently brought up the threat of electoral fraud leading to his defeat in November’s election. His repeated comments are interpreted by many in the fact-based world in several ways:

•     He is trying to scare his supporters into turning out on Election Day to cast their votes for him.

•     He knows he will lose and he is making excuses in advance.

•   He is sending a signal to his followers that they should refuse to accept the results of November’s vote and instead participate in some sort of revolt.

I think there is a likelier true fourth explanation: he believes what he is saying.

Donald Trump is not a person who has spent much time studying the deeper currents of electoral politics in the United States. He has a notoriously short attention span and shockingly thin skin. If the current polls are an accurate reflection of voter preference, it is an existential threat to Donald Trump’s dreadfully under-developed self. To keep his hyper-exaggerated ego inflated, Trump must dismiss the polls as wrong or crooked.

The same is true for the vote totals in November. If he losses in November, it can only mean one thing---the totals are fraudulent and the Presidency has been stolen.

To people out here in Factland, the idea of massive electoral fraud at a national scale is unsupported by ANY evidence.

But to Donald Trump the idea that he might not be liked by voters is equally unsupported by ANY evidence.

Three or four or five times a week he is the star attraction at rallies with thousands of enraptured supporters who cheer his every word. It is clear to him that The People love him. What he does not get is that people love him, but The People do not. He believes only what he sees and feels rather than what is happening away from his tiny, tightly controlled universe.

He is just like Kim Jong-un in that over time he has surrounded himself only with people who tell him how beloved he is, how great, how amazing, how revolutionary, how huge! Other voices with other opinions have a hard time making their way in. When an occasional alternative view makes it to Mr. Trump’s ears, he immediately and reflexively dismisses the source as somehow hateful or biased.

He believes his own good press and dismisses everything else as wrong. Of course he would say that electoral fraud would be the only way he could lose in November. At his center, Donald Trump is a small person who has never learned to think or feel outside of his own under-developed intellect and over-indulged id. 

GOP Primary Voters---You're Fired!

There are some Republicans who believe that John McCain and Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama because they were not conservative enough. This group of GOP voters pinned all of their hopes on Ted Cruz this time around. Without harping on Cruz or his fans, let me just say that we all saw how that turned out.

I disagree strongly with the above-mentioned conservatives’ analysis of the elections of 2008 and 2012. McCain and Romney did not lose because they were not conservative enough. McCain lost because he showed godawful judgment in wanting to place Sarah Palin one old-man-heartbeat away from the nuclear launch codes. He also lost because Americans were sick and tired of George Bush and wanted a change. Mitt Romney lost because he was simply not likable, though he could never get himself to this conclusion.

Heading into this year’s long primary season I was a bit concerned. You see, I am a latte-drinking, quinoa eating, NPR listening, NY Times reading, climate change believing liberal and I know how rarely a two-term president is followed by someone from the same party. I figured the Democrats would nominate Hillary Clinton and I knew she had very high negatives.

I saw the Republicans had a few candidates who were somewhat likeable. They had Jeb Bush. They had Marco Rubio. They had John Kasich. It seemed like even odds to me that the Republicans would win the White House. It was certainly within their grasp.

GOP primary voters had just one job to do and the Presidency of the United States of America could be theirs. All they had to do was nominate someone less unlikeable than Hillary Clinton. That's it. That is all they had to do. One thing. One job…and they chose Donald Trump.

Republican voters---you’re fired.