the billy pulpit

I saw a photo of Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell the other day. I’ve made no secret on this blog of my feelings toward Trump, but this particular posting was stimulated by the smirk on McConnell’s face. I’m sure that others might interpret his underlying emotions differently than me and might characterize his expression as a smile for the cameras, but to me it looks like a smirk.

Anyhow, I’ve been watching with considerable interest the posturing and repositioning going on in the Republican Party of late. A parade of party wonks is trooping to Trump tower, looking for Himself to throw them a bone when just a few weeks ago they were doing everything to distance themselves from what was believed to be the Great Trump Train Wreck of 2016.  Which, we all now know, turned out to be tragically incorrect, but now that he’s the President Elect, they’re rewriting history to make it seem as if they supported this buffoon from the beginning. Rubio, Ryan, even Romney are now (at least in public) talking about how they can’t wait to “Make America Great Again,” with Trump at the helm. Turns my stomach.

And as I’ve also said in previous posts, Trump shows no signs of any real attempt to heal the divisiveness he and his team created in the country by pandering to the fears and prejudices of disaffected voters. Rather, he’s still up to his odious Twitter wars, his one and only foray into the public spotlight since the election was to take credit for “saving jobs” at a Carrier plant in Indiana (by giving a huge tax break to Carrier which will be paid for by the people of Indiana, by the way), and using the announcement to stage what looked exactly like a typical Trump campaign rally, where he was surrounded by fawning Bubbas who screamed “Lock her up!” at every opportunity. Bunch of morons. Rather than looking Presidential, he looked like a strutting schoolyard bully, bragging about winning the election.

Hardly a step to reunite a divided country.

But the real point is that he (and the Republican party wonks in the House and Senate) are talking about the “mandate” that was given them by the voters. At last count, Hillary was closing in on 3 million more votes in the election than Trump got. Yes, he won the election; I’m not here suggesting otherwise. But a mandate? First of all, a mandate is given by the electorate, not taken. That means that the voters have agreed so strongly with a particular political position that an overwhelming majority of them voted for it. A mandate means that there is strong support across the country for the candidate’s platform. So when the party that actually got nearly 3 million fewer votes is calling that a “mandate,” they are simply delusional. Wisdom, or at the very least pragmatism, would dictate that even if a quirk in the system allowed a person to be elected without winning the popular vote (the electoral college actually makes the final decision), the party of that person should do everything possible to ensure the actual will of the populace would be driving their agenda.

Instead, McConnell has a smirk on his face that says he’s just won the lottery and can’t help but gloat. You do that when you have a mandate. Not when your party actually lost the popular vote by a margin of nearly 3 million voters.

I simply do not understand those who voted for Trump. Again, I am differentiating those who voted against Hillary; many of them they simply refused to consider a vote for her so they would have voted for anyone BUT her. Trump being the Republican nominee was just too bad; he wound up getting their vote no matter how poorly qualified he is.

I’m thinking of those who actively supported Trump (and there are millions). I just do not understand them. A recent poll showed that if it was reported that Trump was lying about something, they would believe his assertion that he wasn’t lying rather than the media reports showing he did. In some circumstances I can understand that; not all news stories are accurate. But those tend to be the “fringe” sources like Breitbart (not really news at all) or Fox (not known for objectivity in reporting, despite their “Fair and Balanced” tagline). But my observations of even Fox as a news source indicates a strong bias in what they report rather than outright lying. So while I don’t agree with their editorial slant and selective reporting, I don’t think “lying” accurately depicts Fox. Therefore Trump’s early assertion that he could “shoot someone in the middle of Times Square” and his followers would believe him when he said he didn’t, turns out to be fairly accurate.

Next, Trump claims he convinced Carrier to stay in Indiana (rather than move a factory to Mexico), saving something like 1300 jobs. In actual fact, Carrier was never going to move that many jobs to Mexico; they had announce that around 300 of the jobs were always going to stay. Secondly, the CEO just announced that many of those “saved” jobs were actually going to be lost anyway, as they were going to automate the functions with robotics to “become more competitive,” and yet Trump is taking credit for a non-victory.

Then, Trump tweeted that Boeing’s cost projections for a new Air Force One (currently on order) was too much money and should be cancelled. Let’s take a look at that; on the surface a $4 billion price tag seems steep. But first of all, that’s not the cost of the airplane; that’s projected costs over 12 years for the development and outfitting of the plane. Second, it’s not for one airplane, but two. Third, the bulk of the costs aren’t for building the aircraft, but for making it a virtual “flying White House” with all the government-mandated communications, security and redundancy features it requires. And fourth, the expenditure is a tiny fraction of a fraction of the defense budget, spread over 12 years, and was determined to be necessary years ago in bipartisan discussions.

So why is Trump so concerned about this? Well, for one, it means he won’t be able to fly around in his own Trumplane, which he used during the campaign and reportedly billed the taxpayers for nearly $7 million to cart around the Secret Service detail required. (US law dictates that when government employees fly on a private aircraft such as Trump’s that the government has to pay the cost of the tickets as if they flew commercial; it’s part of preventing influence-peddling.) So Trump doesn’t get to make a bunch of money by charging the government to use his airplane. Secondly, if Trump wanted to use his airplane rather than Air Force One, he’d have to upgrade the communications, security and defensive capabilities, and since he already has a plane at his disposal in AF1, he’d have to pony up the cost of the upgrades.

But maybe more of the reason is his need to retaliate when he feels he’s been challenged. (Remember, Trump has said he goes on the attack when challenged. Always.) It seems Boeing does a lot of business oversees and Trump’s sabre rattling threats of a trade war with China could affect their business interests, so the CEO of Boeing made a fairly mild statement that annoying our international trading partners is not a very good idea. In response, Trump vomited out another series of tweets and Boeing’s stock (temporarily) tanked.

Anyhow, to bring this back around to my header, I simply do not understand how a rational, thinking person could look at Trump’s actions thus far and see anything but pettiness, stupidity, lies and amateur hour.

Seriously, what am I missing here?

This is the title of a meme floating around the Interweb; it’s popped up on my Facebook feed a couple of times, and after reading and rereading it several times I find that it so precisely captures one of the main things that upsets me about this election that I decided to post it here. (Note: a kind reader named Skip sent me the link to the original author).

First, I should preface this:  I see the following paragraph as directed toward people who specifically supported Trump, not all those who voted for him; I’m differentiating them from those who voted for him but were really voting against Clinton. That’s another issue.

Anyhow:

“I am not made at you that Clinton lost. I am unconcerned that we have different politics. And I don’t think less of you because you vote one way and I vote another. No…I think less of you because you watched an adult mock a disabled person in front of a crowd and still supported him. I think less of you because you saw a man spouting clear racism and backed him. I think less of you because you listened to him advocate for war crimes, and still thought he should run this country. I think less of you because you watched him equate a woman’s worth to her appearance and got on board. It isn’t your politics that I find repulsive. It is your personal willingness to support racism, sexism and cruelty. You sided with a bully when it mattered and that is something I will never forget. So, no…you and I won’t be “coming together” to move forward or whatever. Trump disgusts me, but it is the fact that he doesn’t disgust you that will stick with me long after this election.”

These character traits are not things concocted by a hostile media. I saw them with my own eyes and heard them with my own ears. I cannot imagine a scenario where it would be OK to publicly humiliate a vulnerable 19 year-old girl; especially from the position of power that he had in the Miss Universe contest. I cannot condone mocking a disabled person for a laugh in front of a fawning crowd. To condone what our own military has labeled a war crime? And to say that his admission of sexual battery was just “locker room talk” is beneath contempt. In what locker room? It’s something I might expect a stupid little 8-year old kid to say, but a grown adult? Billy Bush rightfully got canned for his part in it; Trump gets excused. But not by me.

There may have been people who ran for president in the past who were spectacularly unqualified for the office; there may have been those who ran as nasty and divisive a campaign as Trump did. But I can’t remember anyone who so strongly embraced and demonstrated the exact qualities and characteristics I abhor, being selected as a leader. Or someone who purports to be a leader; I could never look up to someone like Trump. And while I know that there are lots of people out there like that, the fact that millions…millions of my fellow citizens voted for this contemptible creature staggers me.

And now he’s going to be President of the United States. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I thought we were better than that.

Trump has been president-elect for just at four weeks now and continues to appoint people to his cabinet who are either totally unqualified, ideologues with no agenda other than to dismantle every positive step made during the Obama administration, or slobbering sycophants who expect their reward for their worship at the Altar O’ Trump during the campaign.

And sometimes it’s all three in one: the news last week was that Sarah Palin (Sarah Palin??) is being considered to head up the Veterans’ Administration, with Ben Carson for HUD. If this weren’t so important it would be hilarious.

We’ve got a couple of billionaires being proposed; Betsy DeVos for Education and a Wall Street baron (Wilbur Ross) for Commerce. DeVos, who is married into the ultra-conservative family that owns Amway (as well as the company that I work for, by the way), is the sister of Erik Prince who founded Blackwater, the defense contractor of Iraq War infamy, and is herself a devout Christian and home-schooler who believes that the solution to our education problems is to issue vouchers. Unfortunately this will lead to a reduction in educational opportunities for the poor (who can’t afford to pony up the extra cash required by elite private schools), while at the same time blurring the church/state line established by the framers of the Constitution. It is sold to a gullible public as a combination of “privatization” and “increasing available choices” for parents. If DeVos is able to implement her agenda, we’ll see things like school prayers, the gutting of any sex education programs, and non-science being taught alongside real science to let the kiddies decide for themselves which to believe. For his part, Ol’ Wilbur is known as “King of Bankruptcies” for his habit of buying up steel companies, bleeding them to bankruptcy and leaving shareholders and banks holding the bag. Gee, kinda sounds like Trump’s not the only one to get rich on the backs of the little guy.

And Sarah Palin for the VA?? On what planet is she qualified for such a position? For any position, really. Remember she bailed as governor of Alaska halfway through her term for reasons that were never fully explained. She couldn’t cut it as the head of the state with the lowest population density of the US, yet Trump thinks she’d make a great person to head up the organization tasked with taking care of our wounded soldiers? You betcha.

For his part, Ben Carson’s close friend and business advisor Armstrong Williams said (presumably with the knowledge and consent of Carson) ….”Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.” That statement indicated that Carson wasn’t totally divorced from reality, but that breath of fresh air didn’t last long. Somehow he’s morphed from realizing that he’s totally unqualified for the position to delighted he gets to play god with poor people and “fix the inner cities.” Oh, man.

As the clown show continues, I recall Trump’s ridiculous statement that he was “the only person who could solve all our problems” and I wonder how long it’s going to take the people who fell for that line to realize what a horrible mistake they made.

Trump supporters I spoke with (the more reasonable ones anyhow) predicted that much of what Trump was saying during his incredibly vitriolic and divisive campaign was just hyperbole, and that after the election he would pivot to the center and become President for everyone, not just the deluded idiots who voted for him. Our President-elect has been that for a couple of weeks now, and the promised pivot not only has not taken place, but Trump has doubled down on the type of divisiveness that was the hallmark of his campaign. Starting out with his appointments, he’s made it clear (at least thus far) that he has no interest in appealing to a broader electorate; his contention that he’s going to be the President for the entire country is not just hollow; it’s precisely the opposite. The only four appointees who have been announced were loyalist during his entire campaign; all old, conservative white guys who slobbered over him most. Pretty much the opposite of diversity or the ability to bring any opposing perspectives.

But now his Twitter habits are kicking in again. During the last couple of weeks of the campaign his aides managed to get his tweeting under control (or so it is rumored). Prior to that, of course, he couldn’t resist responding to Clinton repeating what he said to a young beauty-pageant winner (he called her “Miss Piggy”), and when he attacked the parents of a decorated soldier killed in a car bomb attack in Iraq (Humayan Khan) via his Twitter account. Near the end of the campaign his tweets dropped off significantly but now he’s back at it, and with equally childish responses. The latest are his series of tweets condemning the cast of the Broadway show Hamilton for thanking VP-elect Pence for attending and (respectfully) reminding him that America is a nation of immigrants and encouraging him to honor his commitment to govern for everyone. Trump was apparently mightily offended by that, tweeting that theatres should be “safe zones” and that they should apologize. (Pence, for his part, said he wasn’t offended in the slightest.) Trump sent not one, but FOUR tweets (one that was later withdrawn) that criticized the cast for having the audacity to “attack” poor Veep-elect Pence. He also tweeted his displeasure at Saturday Night Live for Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him (again) on their show this past Saturday, saying not only that they were “unfunny” but demanding “equal time.”

This is the guy our country elected to the most powerful position in the world? Unbelievable. He’s got the maturity of a nine-year old. It’s beyond words how disappointed I am in the people of my country who voted for this thin-skinned buffoon.

And most recently (it’s on the news right now as I write this), a white-nationalist meeting in Washington ended their keynote speech with Nazi straight-arm salutes and a rousing “Hail Trump! Hail Victory!” and our President-elect doesn’t have time (or doesn’t think it’s important enough) to disavow their actions. He can tweet how offended he is because someone has mocked him on SNL but not to disavow a bunch of neo-Nazis from saluting him.

A pivot to become more inclusive? Sure doesn’t look like it so far.

Trump has been the President-elect for less than two weeks now. During his campaign a fair number of people defended him by saying he wasn’t really as bad as he was being portrayed; when he got elected we’d see how reasonable and moderate he was. He’s begun appointing his cabinet and other key positions and the picture that’s emerging is not very encouraging.

So far he’s appointed a racist, right-wing nut job as his chief strategist (Stephen Bannon), a xenophobe as his national security advisor (Michael Flynn), a CIA chief who believes torture is just fine (Michael Pompeo) , and an attorney general (Jeff Sessions) who once called an African-American attorney “boy” and called the ACLU (whose sole purpose is to protect First Amendment rights) “un-American” and “communist-inspired.”

Bannon has probably received the most negative press, as he came to Trump’s campaign directly from Breitbart, which has made no secret of their political attitudes in numerous articles. Flynn is a former general who, by all accounts, was respected by most during his earlier career, but he seemed to go off the rails later in his career in his attitudes about Muslims (he has said that Muslims as a group represent a threat because of their ideology and doesn’t understand how that’s offensive to moderate Muslims). To compare, if any here in the US were to refer to abortion-clinic bombers as “radical Christians,” I doubt if that would go over well. Most people I know who profess Christianity would not like to be connected, even tenuously, to such hate-filled people, yet Flynn sees no issue with lumping all Muslims together into a group we should be very afraid of. Pompeo wrote an article criticizing the Senate committee that investigated (and exonerated) Clinton for the Benghazi tragedy, and feels that waterboarding (which the Geneva Convention has outlawed as torture) should be used and in fact more aggressive torture should be fine too. Sessions has joked about the KKK, saying he thought they were “fine until he found out that they used pot.” And we should recall that during Reagan’s administration a Republican-dominated Senate declined to approve the nomination of Sessions to a position as a federal judge because of his reputation as a racist.

Quite a group. And we’re just getting started.

Trump is rewarding the people most loyal to him regardless of their qualifications or suitability for the job. At least so far, his statement that he’s going to be the president that “heals the division between Democrats and Republicans” and “unifies America” is a ridiculous charade, just like his candidacy. His appointees appear to be just as radical as his campaign promises.

I am not looking forward to the future under a Trump administration.

I’m still coming to grips with the election results; even writing “President Trump” depresses me. I’ve been watching the protests around the country against his presidency with the chants of “Not my president” and marches on city hall. I read about a pro athlete who is staying seated during the national anthem at football games out of protest. But then the article revealed this guy hadn’t voted! (In my opinion that takes away every right to protest from this guy, but that’s another story.) I saw several protesters carrying signs saying “Ashamed to be an American” or variations on a theme; a friend of mine on Facebook posted that she thought these demonstrations even un-American (he did win the election, even though Clinton won the popular vote; that’s how our system works, right or wrong). I also read an opinion column from one of the big papers (I think Washington Post) that echoed that sentiment; Trump is in fact our president (elect) and pretending otherwise is a waste of time.

And I get that. But I find myself feeling the same as the protestors: Trump is not “my president.” Not because I deny the legitimacy of the election, nor am I going ostrich, but because he does not represent my values, my sense of right and wrong or my hopes for the future of this country. I want to be able to respect the President. So far that’s not been possible with Trump. Many (including me) have pointed out how profoundly unqualified he is for the mantle of the Presidency. I can’t tell if he’s truly as stupid as he sounds; he’s done nothing to convince me otherwise. People touting his business acumen give him credit for building a fortune when in fact he would have much more money if he’d invested what he got from his father in the market and left it alone. He had no idea what the nuclear triad meant, and he shows no interest in listening to experts in anything. Others have done a better job of creating a list of his inadequacies (and it’s a LONG list), so I won’t belabor that point here.

He ran the most divisive and nasty campaign in history, initially against his own party. Go back and listen to what he said about Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorini Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John McCain and many others as a quick reminder; the fact that any of them are willing to pretend they support him is more a testament to their political ambitions than any “no worries; it was all in good fun!” attitude. While I am not a fan of most of them, it’s because I disagree with their policies, not because I think they’re unattractive (as he said about Fiorini) or little in stature (Rubio). Read up on your logical fallacies: it’s pretty universally understood that if you go straight to ad-hominem attacks it’s an indication you’ve got no substantive argument.)

After the primaries, his boorish bullying came out in force against Hillary and the press, to the point of implying that “the Second Amendment folks might be able to do something about” Clinton ( said to have caused the Secret Service to have a chat with him about inciting violence against a Presidential candidate). And now he’s assembling a freak show of sycophants as his staff and Cabinet; selecting Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist as a first step. Lest we forget, Bannon is the Executive Editor of Breitbart, the voice of the “Alt-Right” hate group. Until this election, no one outside of a few far-right wingnuts and conspiracy loons paid any attention to Breitbart or the alt-right, but Trump seems prepared to continue to give them a national platform to spew their vitriol to the world.

Kelly-Ann Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, said it was Obama’s and Clinton’s responsibility to put an end to the disturbances and protests. That is particularly ironic, since it was Trump’s deliberate stirring up of xenophobia, misogyny, religious intolerance and hatred that got him to the White House.

He created this nightmare, and now wants someone else to be responsible for cleaning up the mess. He says he wants to be “President for all Americans,” and then picks a rabid hatemonger for his chief strategist. I think I can see how he’s going to conduct himself for the next four years.

So far, there’s not one single thing I’ve seen that engenders respect for Trump in me. So: no, he’s not “My President” either.

The nastiest Presidential election in modern history (maybe in all US history?) is behind us. It began nearly 2 years ago when Ted Cruz threw his hat in the ring. Against all predictions, Trump beat all the other Republican candidates to win the nomination for the party. I was one of those who saw no chance for him; I actually thought (and a part of me still does) that this started out for him as an ego-feeding publicity stunt and got away from him. When he began getting large crowds that resonated to his hate- and fear-fueled message, his narcissism kicked in and he couldn’t stop.

Anyhow, here we are. We now have 4 years of a Groper-In-Chief.

I’m depressed for two main reasons. The first is obvious: Trump will be our next president and will set out on his first day to dismantle all the accomplishments of the last 8 years. For the first time in modern history we made health care available to everyone regardless of their pre-existing conditions or employment status. With the signing of the Paris Agreement we could begin tackling anthrogenic global warming.  We were beginning to have a productive dialogue around reasonable gun regulation. We had largely undone the ill-will created around the world during the Bush/Cheney clown show. But not all that goes away as this asshat and his toadys pander to the idiots in the far right and tear down Obama’s accomplishments with both hands. And the list goes on, too depressing to write.

But what’s even more depressing to me is not that the polls and pundits got it all wrong, or even (for that matter) that Clinton lost; what is simply stunning to me is how many people got behind his candidacy. Oh sure, a significant number voted for him because he was the Republican candidate and they are party loyalists, and probably an even larger number were voting against Hillary as opposed to for Trump, but even factoring those out there are millions of people in the United States who believe that building a wall between the US and Mexico is a practical solution for our illegal immigration problem. And that we should ban all Muslims from entering the US because the threat represented by a tiny minority of them was simply too great to do otherwise. Or that a pussy-grabbing sexual predator who believes that women who have abortions should be charged with a crime, should be in the Oval Office.

Trump has tapped into a deep anger and frustration in a large part of our populace and once given voice, it will not readily disappear. It is not just surprising to me how many people found him acceptable, even admirable, it is deeply worrying. Of course we still have a long way to go before racism and misogyny are no longer societal scourges, but I had really thought we’d come a lot farther than this Presidential race indicates.

Trump gave voice to an extremely ugly subset of my co-citizens. How did we as a nation come to this? We have a huge group of voters (not a plurality, as final counts indicate; Hillary actually won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College count) who are so fed up with our politics as usual that they are willing to elect a buffoon like Trump, the most unqualified person to run for the highest office of the land since, like, EVER.

It’s what this election says about us as a country that is so depressing to me. I thought we were better than that.

Well, today is election day. Twenty-four hours from now and it will be all over (hopefully). If there is any justice in the world, Trump will have been spanked in the voting booths, although a simple win would suffice.

I read a column by George Will (published in National Review, July of this year). The title of his piece says it all: “If Texas goes blue, Republicans are finished.” California and New York are solidly blue; the Democratic candidate has easily carried both states for the past several Presidential elections, and provide an anchor on both coasts for the Democratic party. Add Illinois and the other states that vote reliably Democratic and it adds up to something over 240 electoral votes. Texas is the single large state (i.e. more than a handful of electoral votes) that has been carried by the Republican candidate consistently over the last half-dozen or so Presidential elections. The Republicans have something like 209 electoral votes they considered reliable, but as the demographics of this country shift, several states that that have been consistently carried by the Republican party are now turning purple and will likely shift to blue in the not too distant future. Will’s observation is that Texas is likely to shift blue soon, and if it does so that would give Democrats more than 270 predictable votes they can rely on, assuring a Democratic President in future elections unless and until we have another seismic shift in demographics.

The main driver in this shift of course is the increasing size of the Hispanic voting populace. It should have been possible for Republicans to appeal to the Hispanic voter, or at least carve off enough for the Republican side that Hispanics don’t vote as a bloc. But it seems they’ve missed the opportunity. I find it particularly ironic that this past race has called into such stark relief how badly the Trump campaign has damaged the Republican prospects for the future by alienating the Hispanic community. He started out by claiming that “Mexicans were sending rapists” across the border, along with a few who were “probably good people,” or so he assumed. This statement was incredibly offensive to Hispanics and obviously Mexicans in particular; in one statement he alienated the fastest-growing voter bloc in the US. When he became the Republican nominee and the party got in line behind their candidate (or at least some did, albeit as they held their noses), they sent a message to the Hispanic bloc that the Republican Party felt they could win elections without them.

I wrote in previous posts that I thought the situation the Republican party finds itself in today (with practically open revolt against the party leadership) can be traced back to the events following the shellacking of Goldwater in 1964 and the desire to stay relevant. By recasting itself as the party of the “regular guy,” they backed themselves into a corner that is only now becoming apparent. And in the ‘90’s, with Newt Gingrich’s scorched earth tactics, any chance of forming consensus or even negotiating in good faith with Democrats went out the window.

They have very likely consigned themselves to near-insignificance by misjudging their base. If the Republican party is to stay relevant (or recapture the respect of their constituency), they will have to go back to the drawing board. Our country is changing, and the Republicans will once again need to appeal to a broader group; hopefully this time they will attempt to include minorities (who will shortly no longer be a “minority”) and women.

If Texas turns blue as expected in the near future, it will likely be largely because of Trump’s arrogance and stupidity. I wonder if he sees the irony.

Somehow, I kind of doubt it.

I saw the following post in Facebook this morning and it exactly captures what is so frustrating to me about the current election.

Alex Schiller
Bill Clinton cheats on his wife. Impeach him.

Trump proudly brags about sexual assault (and has cheated on his wives). Elect him.

Hillary oversaw the department of state while 4 people died in an embassy attack. Put her in jail.

2 Republicans were in office while over 200 people died in embassy attacks. No problem.

Immigrants don’t pay taxes. Round them up and kick them out.

Trump doesn’t pay taxes. He’s a business genius.

Hillary’s foundation only spent 87% of their donations helping people. She’s a crook.

Trumps foundation paid off his debts, bought sculptures of him, and made political donations to avoid investigations while using less than 5% of funds for charity (and he got shut down by NY State). So savvy… Put him in the white house.

Trump made 4 billion dollars in 40 years, when an index fund started at the same time with the same “small loans” he received would be worth $12 billion today… without a trail of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits and burned small business owners. He’s a real business whiz.

Hillary took a loss of $700k. She’s a criminal.

Trump is the first candidate in the modern era not to release his tax returns, and took a billion dollar loss in 1 year. Genius.

Hillary takes responsibility for private email servers and apologizes. Not credible.

Trump denies saying things (on the record) he actually said (on the record), he’s just telling it like it is.

Your arguments are thin. Your ignorance of reality is shocking. Your double-standards are offensive, and your willingness to blindly support him and recycle the rhetoric is absurd. Your opinion is not fact. Your memes are not news articles. And your hypocrisy is not a platform.

And it’s really not a “Republican vs Democrat” thing (for me, at least). I understand the frustration that Trump is capitalizing on; Bernie Sanders did the same on the left. People are upset at business as usual in Washington, they feel passed over in the economic recovery and are frightened that their way of life is slipping away (or maybe already has slipped away). They feel that at some unspecified time in the past America was “Great” and they want that for now. Trump promises to “make America great again” and they fall all over themselves in support.

What’s bothering me is how totally unqualified Trump is for the position, full stop. Every single argument brought up in his favor fails, because of who he is.

And here’s the thing: as I said, I understand the frustration of the people supporting him, and in fact, agree with much of what is so upsetting to them. (I posted a link to the Newsroom clip of Jeff Daniels’ character talking about why America is no longer “the greatest country in the world,” so “let’s make America great again” actually resonates with me.) We have a lot of things in this country that need fixing. Our middle class is shrinking with more and more wealth concentrated in a very small group at the top. Our nation’s infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) is in need of repair and update (in some cases, in desperate need of it). Our health care system is badly in need of overhaul; for the amount we spend the outcomes are pretty pathetic. We’re pretty damn good at heroic intervention medicine (US-trained surgeons are among the best in the world, for instance), but we don’t do too well at helping people stay healthy in the first place. Until the Affordable Care Act, basic healthcare was denied to so many it constituted a national embarrassment. We spend more for our military than pretty much the rest of the world combined, with no real credible threat to its dominance anywhere, while our veterans can’t get the healthcare and support they need to live a decent life after they get out of the military.

So there’s lots to fix, and I agree; I’d like to see America great again.

But is Donald Trump the person to make that happen? I think not. Trump is almost precisely the wrong guy to fix things. We need someone who can build consensus. Trump has never had to (nor even tried, as far as I can tell) to build consensus. We need someone who is true to their word; Trump has been sued over 3000 times for defaulting on contractual obligations. We need someone who can be trusted; Trump is fundamentally a liar. When caught in his lies he denies having told them in the first place, in spite of recordings proving otherwise. We need someone who owns up to mistakes; Trump blames everyone except himself, even making ridiculous assertions that have not even a shred of credibility in defense of himself. We need someone humble enough to take advice from experts; Trump’s own handlers say he has to be manipulated like a six-year-old to get him to change his own destructive behavior. He cannot accept criticism and believes himself to be smarter than experts, even in areas where he has absolutely no experience.

People supportive of Trump say he’s got the business acumen necessary to fix our economy. Setting aside the fact the government is not (and cannot be run as) a business, all evidence points to the fact that he’s actually terrible at business. How a person who loses nearly a billion dollars in one year can be thought of as a “great businessman” is completely beyond me. He got out of that particular hole by forcing the people he contracted with, his business partners and the banks he borrowed from to foot the bill for his bad business decisions.

His supporters say “he tells it like it is” but I’ve never been able to find out exactly what people mean when they say that. Are they referring to him saying “What a nasty woman” about Clinton during the debates? Or that “The military operation in Mosul is a complete disaster” when in fact the military leaders on the ground say it’s going well? Or how about “It’s Hillary’s fault that I was able to take advantage of tax loopholes” and not pay personal income tax for nearly two decades”? If people are referring to his misogynistic or overtly racist comments, then I don’t think that’s “telling it like it is;” that’s just him spewing the vitriol that reflects what lies just beneath the surface in the “bubba” subset of his followers. I hope that’s not what a thinking person really believes.

“He’s rich already so he’s not in the pockets of special interests.” This one is a classic. Are these people so fuzzy-thinking that they fail to see the irony? He IS the “special interest!” What little he’s revealed of his plans (assuming he actually has thought that far ahead) indicates he’ll lower taxes on the richest (him) and stick the bill for all his “projects” on future generation of taxpayers. Things like the billions it would cost to deport people here illegally. The likely trillions it would cost to build a “Yuge” wall between here and Mexico. The untold cost to business by tearing up trade deals, pissing off our largest trading partners and starting ruinous trade wars.

And on and on.

Yes, there’s a lot that needs fixing in our country. And it’s very depressing to me when Washington is so gridlocked that nothing is done; even more depressing when it seems like we’re going to keep doing nothing. McCain (whom I thought to be a bit more moderate than this) is vowing to continue to block any and all nominations to the Supreme Court under a Clinton Presidency. I keep hoping that reasonable minds will prevail; maybe the turmoil in the Republican Party will lead to some kind of willingness to build consensus rather than stonewall, and hopefully the Democrats will be there to work with them.

But the real frustration for me is that I simply cannot understand why so many people in this country don’t see that Donald Trump is exactly the wrong guy to “Make America great again.”