Letter 2 America for June 23, 2016

Dear America,

I had dinner with my son last night, and as must be a part of every conversation, Donald Trump--and with him, the fear that he might become president--was a part of ours.  At one point, my son said that the fact that Trump has such ardent supporters, and so many of them, made him ashamed of our country.  Frankly, I am also ashamed that so many Americans could be co-opted by a sharper like him making promises to them that all their fears will be addressed and everyone will get well financially.  For me, it isn't a moral question...well, it is, but that isn't my point right now.  My point is that he has appealed to the greed and xenophobia of modern Americans with a promise to make them richer than they have ever been, and to isolate them from the evil in the world by building a wall along the Rio Grande while prohibiting all Muslims from immigrating to this country.  My guess is that it is only a matter of time until he proposes to put all Muslims already here in camps as we did the Japanese during World War II.  What he has said so far--his rhetorical past--seems likely to me to be prelude. 

But beyond the menace to human dignity and liberty that he constitutes is the hypocrisy that he has virtually institutionalized.  I mentioned this when the NY Times article about his business practices regarding his casinos came out, but it bears reiteration.  Trump declared bankruptcy five times after issuing what amounted to junk bonds so he could pay himself huge bonuses.  In other words, he deliberately took money from people who invested in his companies in good faith and put it in his own pocket rather than spending it for the purpose of making his casino enterprises sound, which was his stated purpose.  He stole that money, but since he did it legally, he explains it by saying that the casinos were a "cash cow" for him.  That's a mighty polite way of admitting that you are a scammer, and so far, no one but the NY Times has even mentioned it to the best of my knowledge.  And then there are the other accusations that are flying around, like the one that has him importing Polish labor on a promise to pay the workers a given wage, and then paying them far less and telling them that they could take it or take nothing.  And all the while that no one is taking notice of his slimy practices, he is unctuously calling Hillary Clinton "Crooked Hillary," and suggesting that the Clinton foundation, which has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to cure malaria and participate in other humanitarian efforts, is a money making scam undertaken by the Clintons for the purpose of self-enrichment.  It reminds me of when Richard Nixon got caught off guard during his final interview and excused his Watergate activities by saying, "if The President does it, it's legal."  The unmitigated casuistry of Trump's calumniation of the Clintons doesn't seem to bother anyone.  Why is that?

That's where the shame comes in.  A large segment of the American electorate isn't asking Trump to explain himself on these points.  They blithely follow him wherever he leads, even if his leadership is despicable...without question.  I just don't understand why someone isn't publicly pillorying him for being a smarmy robber baron...and bragging about it as if that's a good thing.  So, while I don't condone calling people who see politics differently from the way you do stupid, there is something really dubious about the willingness of so many Americans to walk down Trump's primrose path toward hell with him.  He lies like the rug he wears, which is not very well and not convincingly at all, but he is succeeding somehow.  Now I ask you, what does that say about the people with whom he is succeeding, and by extension, the rest of us Americans?

I still believe that there is enough sagacity in the American electorate that Trump will be sufficiently sullied by his own conduct and polemics, crude as they are, and that his candidacy will ultimately be rejected by the majority of our people.  I can't believe that a suede shoe salesman like Donald Trump could sell one wall to so many people...like W.C. Fields with the Brooklyn Bridge.  I actually feel fairly confident about that.  Enough of us Americans will see the light long before November, and Trump will go down in flames.  But what if I'm wrong?  And consider this.  Trump is a walking ego, so even if he loses the election, he will make excuses and claim that his loss was a function of nefarious conduct on the part of his foes.  That is significant if you consider the fact that he is actually turning a profit on this election by renting space and airplanes to his campaign, which means that the campaign is paying Trump to run, because all that rent and those usage fees go straight into his corporate business accounts.  No doubt, he considers that some kind of an accomplishment, just as he certainly did the applause he got when he came down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy.  Trump is a walking ego, and this whole fiasco is nothing less than one long stroke of his ego.  As the Russians say, even when he loses, "he gets out of the water dry."  He gains financially, he puts Republican presidential nominee on his resume, and he isn't even breaking a sweat.  He's playing golf at his new Scottish golf resort this extended weekend.

You're being played America.  Wake up from, to coin a phrase, this long, national nightmare.

Your friend,

Mike