To any Trump-supporter who feels his/her opinions can withstand a bit of critical thinking:
If you fit the mold of the reality-show president’s base, it seems you have no trouble at all drawing a line in the sand on what’s acceptable behavior from people you don’t know — political rivals, folks with different beliefs and lifestyles, immigrants, educated people, uppity women…
And I assume that, because you value authority so highly, you let your kids and others in your own families know where their line is. Right?
So where do you draw the line on the behavior of the man you helped put in charge of the sacred trust that is our democracy? In whose hands rest the integrity of our precious democratic institutions; our reputation as a (mostly) honorable, generous, visionary world leader; accountability by corporations for the safety and reliability of things we consume; the habitability of our natural environment for generations to come; and the aspirations of a generation of young people hungry for decent, positive role models?
You are witnessing…no, you are condoning…this man’s systematic desecration and dismantling of one democratic institution, one piece of the moral bedrock of our country, after another. Blatant nepotism and cronyism, self-enrichment, elections tampering, abuse of power, obstruction of justice, benign acceptance of interference by our nation’s adversaries…not to mention adolescent judgement, petty vindictiveness, pathological lying…and other daily — sometimes hourly — offenses of both commission and omission. All to compensate for his wild insecurity and feed an insatiable ego.
Donald Trump has accomplished very little in his fools-gold lifetime without lying, cheating and intimidation. And you expected somehow he'd rise to the occasion to lead our country competently? Nope, he's done the only thing he knows how to do; he's dragged the office of the Presidency and our country down to his pathetic level.
And all you can do is put on your little red caps and shout for more of the same. What are you thinking? Or have you decided that somehow thinking about the behavior of a man who demands blind allegiance is now blasphemous?
(I’ve heard some of you say that, even if we abhor the man, we still must respect the office of the presidency. How utterly absurd. That’s like saying you’ll overlook your doctor’s incompetence because he’s a doctor.)
You are not president Trump’s children; you are not his subjects. In this democracy you are his constituents, the touchstone of his authority. In this democracy we elect representatives to oversee and maintain limits on that authority.
By not asserting this responsibility, you belittle both yourself and our country.
Nor is Donald Trump your goon, some hit man you hired to exact revenge on all your countrymen you complain have somehow discredited you. To protect you from all those thieving rapists swarming into our country just to impregnate your women, steal your stuff and use up all the resources you thought were yours alone to over-consume.
You, your fears and your sense of entitlement — yes, that’s exactly what it is — are what have opened the door to a despot’s plundering our country. You are what has kept him in power for three years, flaunting the boundaries the Constitution sets down for just such abuses, edging ever-closer to the status he knows better than to proclaim in so many words, but so desperately craves (Supreme Leader for Life).
If you can’t…or won’t…say where that line between right and wrong, integrity and corruption, democracy and oligarchy lies, you dishonor the very “American Values” and “Christian Values” you claim to be defending, and you spit in the faces all those soldiers and other brave defenders of freedom you claim so ardently to support.
