The Monkey Is On You

When all the rationalization has died down, when the alleged importance of Benghazi and death panels have been forgotten about, one truth will remain to haunt you: you have voted for a monkey. When Hillary has received her just desserts, either in this life or the next, there will still be the undeniable evidence of what you have done.

You cannot evade responsibility for this, it is on your shoulders. Sure, you hated Hillary, you hate the corrupt government we have had for many decades. You hated the trade deals that sent jobs to other countries and left large factories abandoned and cities gutted of their economic hearts. You witnessed wars that were supported by both parties that did no American any good, and you have seen our society’s morals disintegrate.

You have seen everything your father, grandfather, and great grandfather fought for trampled underfoot by forces that have no interest in you or the things you valued, and so you decided to do something—anything—in order to shake things up. The problem is you did not react in a mature fashion, you reacted like a six-year old throwing a tantrum. And you justified it because there were a lot of others doing the same. It felt good to be in with a group of children who were throwing their food around the lunchroom, not caring about the poorly-paid lunch ladies who would have to pick up after you.

You cannot say this was a rational decision based on the long-term interests of not just your segment of society but of Americans as a whole. You know deep in your hearts and cannot deny that the administration you elected is going to dismantle every safety net program that helps the poor, the sick, the elderly, all of those who realistically are not capable of taking care of themselves. You know that the environment of this and every other country is going to be raped for whatever short-term economic interests can be harvested from it, taking from your children and the children of others what we all hold so very dear. Whatever platitudes Donald Trump spoke regarding unfair trade deals, you know—must know—that he is one of them and not one of us. The evidence is overwhelming that when the opportunity to make a buck by manufacturing product overseas, Trump never hesitated. For him to argue against unfair trade deals on the campaign trail did not make him the champion of the working people, it made him a hypocrite. It made him a politician. You should have run away as quickly as possible.

Sure, he said things other politicians would never say, but that was not because he was honest and principled, it was because he had no boundaries and no shame. It was nice to hear him say many of those things most politicians keep quiet about because both sides are complicit, but you had to realize there was no honesty behind anything he said. What he said that pleased you one night, he would say the opposite the next night in another city. He would say anything, literally anything, in order to see what resonated with the audience.

But you heard what you wanted to hear and you put the best possible spin on the rest. You projected your hopes and your fears on him, in the same way liberals did with Hillary Clinton.

They—Clinton supporters—saw only what they wanted to see. But you knew better. You saw the liar behind Clinton’s façade, you knew better than those liberals who voted for a fraud. Only you were no better. You simply voted for a fraud that spoke your language. You believed because you wanted to believe. You believed despite all the warning signs. You chose to ignore or interpret those instances when he made fun of the disabled and the former prisoners of war. You are responsible, no one else.

But the responsibility most heavily and undeniably weighing on your shoulders, is that you have permitted the final veil of decency and maturity to be stripped from the political process. Sure, it was more or less a charade, but there was still a standard candidates needed to adhere to. Yes, it was a weapon the media used to keep politicians in line with or else ruin their careers if deemed necessary, but it is a basic element necessary for a civilized nation, and you tore it away. You threw away basic human decency, manners, self-respect, every standard your parents tried to instill in you, because you enjoyed the way the monkey made monkeys of those you disliked. You stooped to a level so low it’s debatable whether our nation will ever recover.

This is the role model you hold up for your children. They are watching you and modeling themselves after the way you behave. This is what you tell them is acceptable behavior. And this is where you will have to start lying to them and becoming a hypocrite—the very thing you despise—because you will try to tell them it is okay for some people to behave like this but not others. You will try to explain that it is okay in certain situations or for certain reasons to abandon good manners and basic respect for others but not in others. And every time you point at a person behaving badly you don’t approve of, they will think it is because they are not of the same color or share the same political beliefs as their daddy and mommy. Morality will mean nothing to them. Fairness will mean nothing to them. They will accept hypocrisy just as you have.

I know why you did it. I know that the hypocrisy involved in politics had gotten to the point where it needed to be exposed. But it needed to be exposed by a man of principle and integrity, not by a monkey. There are men out there like that, you should have found one. And if there was no one out there of real integrity and honesty who supported your principles, then it is time to seriously start questioning your principles. Perhaps, just perhaps, your principles cannot be championed by a man of integrity who speaks truthfully. Perhaps they can only be uttered by a fuzzy-thinking narcissistic primate who cares more about establishing himself as the alpha-monkey than he does about dealing realistically with the issues our society faces.

Let me speak to you in a language you understand: responsibility. Donald Trump has none, you know that and I know that. He has never been responsible to anyone in his life, he is driven only by ego and a desire for wealth. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share it with me and I will give it consideration. It is not because I disagree with his politics (I still don’t know where he stands on most issues) but because every bit of evidence I have seen thus far indicates that he is completely uninterested in standing for anything. All I ask is that before you blame me for my biases you first look into your own motivations.

Responsibility. Hopefully, you and I share a deep appreciation for the word and the idea. It is a burden adults are willing to bear, it is what makes us adults rather than children. If you have voted for Donald Trump, you are responsible for what you have done. You cannot blame Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama. You cannot blame Rachel Maddow or Oprah Winfrey. You did it. You.

As my mother used to say and I’m sure yours too, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. In that spirit, let me say that if you have nobody nice to vote for, don’t vote. You have four years to explain why you thought voting for a draft-dodging, tax-evading, cripple-mocking, egotistical, vulgar, immoral, money junky who has never shown the slightest interest in the well-being of others. I would like to hear an honest explanation that does not involve blaming others, I really would.

P.S. I didn’t vote for Hillary. 

We Are All Responsible For Donald Trump

A lot of people are angry over the election of Donald Trump. Millions are fearful and depressed. Others are actually over the moon with excitement that their chosen candidate has won. Some, who voted for Trump in a “let’s see what happens” mode, are waiting to see what is behind curtain number three. Many are already experiencing buyer’s remorse, which is typical of any voter after an election. One is never so optimistic as when buying a lottery ticket or voting. We have to be irrationally optimistic, we’d never do it otherwise.

What very few of us seem to be is reflective. Donald Trump has brought out the reflexive in all of us, we’ve taken our cue from him, so that we merely respond to stimuli rather than question how best to respond. It’s hard, when your initial impression is revulsion, to want to probe the matter further. It’s not our natural response to sniff the curdled milk a second time to figure out what made it go bad.

So instead we now live in a world we’ve suddenly come to realize we don’t understand. The world we thought we knew has hit an iceberg and sunk in front of our eyes. And yet our response to the tragedy is to stay aboard the Titanic, or else to build a ship of identical design. It’s not the ship that’s to blame, or those who were piloting it, it is the iceberg’s fault, that giant orange iceberg.

Denial is a natural response to an unpleasant reversal of fortune. When we choose denial, we shut down our intellects, from whence comes the unpleasant facts, and rely instead on emotions. Hence all the anger, the fear, the sadness. Hence all the irrational beliefs and unfounded accusations. We are like a sleeper who, while still in a dreaming state, hears his alarm clock and attempts to weave the sound into the pattern of his dreams because he does not want to go to work.

It’s time to wake up. We need to come to grips with the reality of President Trump. We have to understand it so that it will never happen again. And the first step in doing so will be to admit that Trump is not the true problem here but merely the most obvious and obnoxious symptom. Trump is the logical end of the path we have been travelling. We need to stop, look around, assess what we’re doing and where we’re going. Because when you hit the road marker that is Trump, that’s like a blinking sign that says the road’s coming to an end in 500 feet. Best hit the brakes and not worry for the moment whether or not you’ll spill your coffee or be late for an engagement.

I’m not just talking to liberals and leftists, but those who voted for Donald Trump. You too are fueled by emotions, in your case anger and hatred. If that were not the case someone would have put forth a rational reason for voting for a half-baked narcissistic sociopath, and so far I have not heard one. “Benghazi” is not a thoughtful, unemotional argument.

We have done it. We, Democrats and Republicans, and everyone on either side and those unfortunates in the middle, we have created a society in which Donald Trump was able to succeed. Not even Sodom or Gomorrah would have tolerated a man who builds gambling dens by evicting widows from their houses. We have created a society that equates the net worth of a man with his value to society. We worship wealth and fame above all else, or at least have permitted the culture we live in to create such norms.

This is not a good man, Donald Trump is not a Godly man. You conservative Christians know deep in your hearts that Trump does not represent Christian ideals. Wisdom, charity, brotherly love, a life of service, humility, faith, none of these words could ever be used to describe the person you voted for. To suggest that you voted for him because you are a Christian dirties the word and insults the One for whom your religion was named.

People who worried about a corrupt government know he is no moral beacon. You have sought to evict people who enrich themselves on the taxpayer’s dollar but have replaced them with a man whose only goal in his entire life has been enriching himself. You know that to be true.

You who call yourselves patriotic Americans, do you honestly believe I am to look at Trump and see that he was cut from the same stock as Washington and Lincoln? Whereas these men were scholars and thinkers and gentlemen, you have voted for a howler monkey in a suit and red trucker’s cap. If you voted for Donald Trump and have any degree of self-respect, you must be feeling a little cheap and sleazy. Don’t try to hide it, denial only makes things worse.

This is not to slam you. I do not make light of your legitimate concerns. But if because you are lonely you take up with a gold-digging, abusing, cheating, shrew of a woman, I would feel compelled to tell you you are being taken advantage of. Though it may seem to you cruel for me to point out the truth, it must be done or she will lead you into greater misfortunes than befell you before you met her. And Trump is not what you want him to be, need him to be. He is a self-serving egomaniac who needs constant attention. Look through my eyes for one moment and tell me if you cannot see it. I say this not to mock you but as a friend who wants what’s best for you.

Sane societies do not elect psychological case studies such as Donald Trump president. Healthy nations never permit a howler monkey near a microphone, let alone the nation’s nuclear codes. The response to Trump so far, by those who see his flaws, has been an emotional but ultimately impotent attack on the man himself. But if we wish to insure we never again let such an incompetent guide our nation, we have to re-evaluate every single aspect of our culture if we are to come to grips with what is wrong with us. We must question what kind of media we have, one that made him a star before enabling his rise to the presidency. We need to question the churches we go to that somehow see this man as compatible with Christianity. We need to question our nation’s morals and norms if we want to understand why we accepted someone who utterly lacks such standards.

We must ask ourselves many, many questions, and we must do so dispassionately. We must do so without attempting to find easy answers. We must do so without pointing the finger, but rather through personal reflection, asking ourselves how we helped create a society that has sunk so low, so lacking in morality, decency, respect for one another, and even simple good taste.

We must question the music and entertainment industries, must question the examples we set for our children and our neighbors’ children. We must question how we treat those we work for and those who work for us. We must question our relationship to our government. We must ask ourselves what kind of world we want for our children and then ask how we can best meet those aspirations while leaving room for the desires of those who want something different for their descendants.

We must ask ourselves all these questions and more, and we must do so HUMBLY the way an alcoholic must question his life after getting into a car accident while under the influence. Because we have screwed up, we have screwed up very badly. This is a moment for reflection, America. Do not abandon reason for emotion.