2021

 It’s a new year and perhaps time to get back to the blog. I’m not sure I have much to say but I’m going to try to make entries as often as possible. Will that be daily, weekly, monthly- honestly I don’t know. 

Today I want to talk about those folks who support and follow President Trump. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time attempting to figure out why they continue to believe in him. It would be easy to say that they are stupid. Perhaps gullible. Delusional also comes to mind. I still have folks on my Facebook feed who are avid perhaps even rabid supporters of him. You will note I did not call them Facebook “friends”. They are folks I know. People I worked with in the past. I’m fascinated by their willingness to believe any number of outrageous charges made about President-elect Biden. He is on one hand too senile and out of touch to be President. They, at the same time, are willing to believe he orchestrated a nationwide election fraud involving local and state governments, the mass media and foreign governments. While doing this they are willing to accept as fact anything Donald Trump says no matter how much evidence to the contrary that is presented. So what is going on? 

I think maybe the answer is desperation. They see the world they knew changing in ways they cannot accept. They have watched as the factory jobs they had or their parents had being moved out of the country. The social order that made life make sense has, in their view, crumbled. Life was simple. There were boys and girls. Boys were supposed to like girls and girls were supposed to like boys. Now it’s okay for boys to marry boys and girls to marry girls. We have an alphabet soup of sexual and gender identity. LGBTQ and several more letters. I can’t keep up either. I gave up trying to figure it out. If you and another person are both beyond the age of consent my position is simply do whatever it is that makes you happy as long as no one gets hurt unless that’s what they enjoy. I know there are folks out there who turn to some religious text that tells them that some forms of sexual conduct are unacceptable. They believe allowing those behaviors taints our nation and brings a supreme being’s wrath down upon us. They see the “American dream” slipping away from them. Home ownership, a new car, a college education all out of reach. They work hard, follow the rules, pay their taxes and see their lifestyle slipping away as they sink closer and closer to poverty. They see their friends and neighbors start go fund me pages for healthcare, car repairs or whatever other troubles befall them. Nothing they do seems to change the trajectory of their lives. 

So Donald sees their desperation and tells them what they want to hear. I know how the system works. I’ve made billions of dollars. I can fix this. I can bring your jobs back. I can appoint judges who will return us to the days when marriage was between one man and one woman. I will punish China for taking your jobs. I will punish illegal immigrants for taking your jobs. I’ll cut your taxes so your money isn’t going to people who don’t want to work. I’ll make our military strong so other countries will bow to our might. When those things don’t happen he tells them it isn’t his fault. The “swamp” doesn’t want to lose power. The media is not telling the truth.  Any politician who doesn’t stand with me is fighting against you and what you and I are trying to accomplish. The don’t want to make America great again. 

So here is my warning. Don’t worry about Donald Trump. He is a clown. A snake oil salesman. Keep an eye on the folks who see what he is doing and have a more subtle touch. Working in prison gives you a unique perspective on manipulators. The best advice is to listen to what they say but more importantly watch what they do. Someone smarter and more evil than Donald Trump is waiting for their opportunity.