I have never been very political on this blog, or much on my facebook page. I have a wide array of acquaintances and family members of all political stripes, and I want it to stay that way–I want to be able to read differing opinions in my feed and not just have my own ideas reinforced.
But Donald Trump changes that. Here are the reasons I find him reprehensible, and, if you’re still reading this, why I think you should vote against him. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for in his place, because I’m not pleased with any of his opponents. In the Ohio primary in March, I voted as a Republican for the first time so that I could vote against Trump by voting for John Kasich–a man who, as governor, has made cuts and systemic changes to the educational system in Ohio that have hindered public education from pre-K through college. I will vote for Hillary Clinton, because that is the best way to keep Trump out of office. When no candidate appeals immediately, it is necessary to vote strategically.
I understand that no candidate will ever completely align with me on every point, but Trump offends me in nearly every aspect of my being.
He is a bully. He understands only power, and even his conception of power is limited to the idea that only he has power and that all others will yield to his authority. He throws his weight (money, fame, charisma) around to accomplish whatever makes him feel better in the moment, at the expense of others. His sole purpose for running for President seems to be to poke his finger in the eye of all of those who have stood in his way. He uses the bully’s tactics of intimidation, name-calling, and denial of his previous actions, constantly belittling those who do not support him.
He is willfully ignorant. He acts like a man who has never read a book, nor paused to reflect or consider ideas. He has been unable or unwilling to do serious preparation for the presidential debates thus far, so how can we expect him to engage in the sustained intellectual effort that is required for effective presidential leadership? His policy suggestions, where they exist, are no more nuanced nor achievable than a candidate for elementary school student council promising that Coca-Cola will run through the drinking fountains.
He is capricious. He woke up one morning and decided that 2016 was the year he would buy the Presidency, since he was bored with reality TV. He leaves marriages when a woman no longer amuses him. He is unable to follow through with the script of a speech, seemingly speaking ideas that come into his mind without considering them. Who is to say that in 2018 or 2019 he might not just stop doing the job?
He is immoral. If my Christian friends are still reading this, I’m sorry, but we just don’t have a Christian candidate in this race, and even though Trump has tried to pander to the Christian right, he is not a part of it. Nor is he a part of the Christian left. The only God he worships is Donald Trump, which is probably true of many politicians. He is a greedy, sociopathic, adulterous man with no clear grounding in any moral system beyond “the ends justify the means.”
I have heard and read my fellow Christians citing Romans 13 as evidence that God is sending us, in Trump, the leader that he has chosen for us. Paul does indeed call Christians to submit to the authorities, but Trump is not the authority yet, and we cannot simply give in to a man who has called for open discrimination by the government against members of any faith, because that is a slippery slope. Legislating a religion does not convert people to that religion. The freedoms that Christians enjoy in this country are likely to come under attack in a Trump Presidency, and once they are limited for one group, they can be limited for others as well.
He is disrespectful. The office of President demands a strong leader, but not at the expense of the dignity that is to be gained, for the officeholder and for the country that person leads, by a fundamental respect for all, shown in word and deed. He has said things about women, minorities, the disabled, veterans, and his political opponents that would have many people fired from their jobs if said in the workplace, and yet he acts this way during the extended job interview that is the campaign. He has single-handedly lowered the level of discourse in Presidential campaigning to a place where it is impossible to even discuss issues or policy.
He is inexperienced. He has never held elected office, and doesn’t even seem to understand how government works, or what his Constitutional powers would be (or how they would be limited). Compare him to someone who has served in two branches of the Federal government and who has been around government her entire life. If you required brain surgery, would you choose a board-certified medical school graduate who has made a few mistakes or a CEO who would be cutting for the first time on you?
I know many people hate Hillary Clinton. I will be the first to admit that I would rather have a different alternative in this campaign, but if she is elected, she will be as good at her job as she can. She is as much of a fighter as Trump is, and she has forty-five years of experience in politics. In a perfect world, she would have been able to run in her own right in the 1970s and 1980s instead of having to play the Stepford Wife to a womanizer. Please be sure that you are not hating Hillary Clinton because of her husband, who she stood by (for whatever reason), through the nightmare of adultery and scandal. Please be sure that you are not hating Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. A woman can lead her country–Margaret Thatcher, and Angela Merkel have proved that.
This all boils down to my children. The winner of this election will be the first president that they will remember. A two-term president will set up the foreign policy that will be in place when my son is of military age. My daughter will be able to observe either a strong, powerful woman as the leader of her country, or a man who clearly hates women and treats them as objects. They will both learn things about how to lead and how to act by watching the winner of this election. They will live–longer than my wife or I–with the consequences of the decisions undertaken in the next four to eight years, whether those are Supreme Court appointments, foreign policy decisions, tax-code rewrites, trade deals, changes to federal college funding, environmental regulations, or entitlement spending. Disastrous decisions now could ruin their lives and turn the nation that bore them into a banana republic, a dystopia, or a dictatorship. Are they to have meaningful, fulfilling lives and careers, or will they be ground between the gears of an economy that wants them to be the equivalent of Uber drivers? Will they be able to know their cousins in Germany? Will they have access to high-quality, affordable higher education? Will they be able to see qualified physicians when they are sick? My mind runs quickly to the worst-case scenario, but that appears to be where the culture dwells–movies of societal collapse, mass destruction, and apocalypse, zombie and otherwise, have loomed large in our popular culture the last fifteen years or so, and now we appear poised to bring it about politically.
I am frightened, but not too frightened to speak out. In this small, limited way, I am taking my stand against those who would create an explicitly unjust society in my native land–the country that has given me so much, that has made the world a better place by its might and by its example. America is great–not perfect, of course. If America has to be made great again, it will be because of the damage done to it by a Trump Administration.