The overwhelming consensus among my Canadian acquaintances is that Donald Trump is so stupid, so arrogant, so remorselessly duplicitous that they could never bring themselves to vote for him. Their fervently held position, to me at least, is rooted in a failure both to understand the sheer stupidity of many of the policies of his political opponents as well as the extent to which the media, in its unconscionable BIAS, has done everything in its power to discredit him.
At a recent press conference ostensibly scheduled to discuss Trump’s forging of an agreement between Israel and both The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was clearly appalled that the vast majority of questions directed at her were off-topic and designed to distract attention from the president’s achievement.
In a N.Y. Times article of Sept. 20, Michael Crowley mocks the “grandiose” signing ceremony conducted in front of the White House as well as the “slick” 30 second ad produced by Republicans to portray Trump as a “peacemaker.” Citing the scourge of the Covid pandemic as well as the recent racial unrest in America, Crowley actually implies that at this particular moment in history, nobody gives a damn about peace in the Middle East. Bias if not Hatred screams out from every sentence of the article, its thesis apparently being that any attempt by Republican’s to highlight an achievement by the President is somehow sleazy. Imagine the never-ending blizzard of accolades had Barack Obama forged such a deal!
And of course the myth persists that Trump somehow stole the last election. In the continuing saga of his so-called Russian collusion, the stories of those who would impeach him have suspiciously changed, information that ought to have been preserved has suspiciously been deleted and both the motives and integrity of perhaps the key figure in his investigation would hardly seem to be above reproach.
In a recent video Mike Huckabee revealed that the CIA task force investigating Trump had been assembled by Director John Brennan early in 2016, well before he was even elected, indeed well before the FBI was officially [July 31] told to look into the charges. Hardly exercising his authority with impartiality, Brennan made it perfectly clear that he loathed Trump and would do everything in his power to see he never became president. Forgoing protocol, he stacked the task force with those whom he knew shared his bias. Now under investigation himself, his history would hardly suggest one worthy of the public trust. In 2014 when the CIA was being investigated by the Senate for possibly using torture in its operations, Brennan responded to the charge that he had hacked into Senate computers with a fervid “nothing could be further from the truth.” When it was discovered he had brazenly lied, the Washington Post demanded Obama fire him. Such is the character and ostensible bias of one of the central figures in the effort to discredit the legitimacy of the president’s election.
As I have said repeatedly, Trump is hardly above reproach. But I would suggest his transgressions are as much a matter of style as of substance. His reference to certain countries as “shit holes” was appallingly insensitive but we all know what he meant! At the same time his infamous 2005 statement to Billy Bush about grabbing women by the “pussies” was male arrogance at its worst, yet Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was his Press Secretary for more than two years, says he always treated the women in his circle with respect and understanding. As to the charge that he referred to his nation’s wounded warriors as “suckers,” Sanders insists that that is a vile fabrication and that Trump often telephoned or visited military families who had lost loved ones, expressing his admiration and sympathy while never attempting to profit from his actions by involving the press. And in spite of the never ending charges to the contrary, the many Blacks he has worked with and supported insist he is Not a Racist.
Donald Trump is far from perfect. But a sanctimonious self-righteousness, a brazen refusal to acknowledge certain inarguable historical and biological facts, a narrow-minded unwillingness to listen to other points of view, indeed an ugly, fascistic tendency to silence [i.e., cancel] those points of view, characterize the vast majority of those on the Left. They are hardly entitled to bask in their sense of moral superiority.
Life itself is far from perfect. Often, indeed almost constantly, we must choose between the lesser of two evils. For those of a “conservative” perspective, the integrity of Ideas utterly supersedes the vagaries of Personality and the Values and Principles which Donald Trump represents, however obnoxiously, however carelessly, demonstrably supersede the mindless, sentimental claptrap spewed by geniuses such as Kamala Harris.
When asked what he would do should the results of the upcoming election prove ambiguous, Trump has refused to comment. It has led to the accusation that he intends to somehow hijack the election, whatever the will of the people. The extent of his monomania I can only surmise. However the multitude of American “conservatives” whom I revere are fundamentally committed to the Institutions of their Democracy and the Rule of Law and will not, I am certain, allow those values to be undermined by the Ego of a single individual. But does the Left have any respect for those Institutions and that Rule? Isn’t B.L.M. committed to the demise of the American System. Hasn’t Ocasio-Cortez and her Squad expressed its support for that project? Does that significant portion of the “protest movement” given to spewing obscenities, terrorizing innocent bystanders and burning down buildings seem particularly concerned with the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution? Do the repeated exhortations to “burn it all down” cited in my last Blog suggest an “intellectual” community that has any respect for the rational principle of “due process?”
Is it Trump and the “silent majority” that supports him that represent a dire threat to Democracy, or is it those who have been relentlessly beating that drum, often exaggerating, frequently lying, while openly asserting their disdain for America itself, that ought to concern us?