Stuart’s Thoughts 3/31/2020

Politics and Donald Trump

My reluctance to discuss politics with family members because of my concern that nothing beneficial to anyone would likely be achieved has been recently confirmed, in my mind, when I reluctantly engaged in discussions about Donald Trump.  As I predicted, these ended today in an atmosphere of negativity.  They began as a result of my comments regarding the sad state of affairs in our nation where negativity has seemingly risen to the flood stage.

The problem with discussing Donald Trump is that opinions are so severely divided.  There are many who feel he is literally the devil on earth while others revere him.  The divide is so vast that roughly 50% of the U.S. population regard him as absolutely the worst President of all time while the other half of the population regard him as one of the best, if not the best.

When attempting to take a middle ground position in discussions with someone who is in the “devil on earth” camp, I was attacked for not being capable of rational thought and a variety of other negative characteristics.  In the case of today’s political climate, there can be no compromise, either you hate Donald Trump or you love Donald Trump.  For the haters, he can do nothing right and for the lovers, he can do no wrong.  Unfortunately, for those of us preferring the middle ground, we are equally disliked by both groups.

My opinion of Donald Trump is actually very straight forward and quite simple.  To the great surprise and shock to the Washington political establishment (politicians of both parties and the main stream Washington press corps) an outsider won in a very close election over Hillary Clinton.  My immediate response to this was, “I’m sorry that Donald Trump won but happy that Hillary Clinton lost”.  For the record, I voted for neither.

There are at least two major pillars supporting our democracy. 1. Our country is guided by the rule of law and 2. Following elections there should be the peaceful transfer of power.  As a corollary to the second pillar is the custom of the new leader being granted a “honeymoon” period (~6 mo) when he is congratulated on his victory and promised assistance by the loyal opposition in successfully resuming work on important matters of State.  Following this unofficial “honeymoon” period, politics as usual could resume.  

Following Donald Trump’s election no such “honeymoon” period was granted.  To the contrary, the “Hate Trump” bandwagon was in full swing from the moment of his election.  There were actually acts of vandalism in the streets of Washington closely following his inauguration parade.  The leaders of the Democrat Party announced that everything should be done to block and resist all of the new President’s initiatives.  He should not be helped in any way and some Democrats vowed to impeach him within hours of him taking office.  It was that attitude and the years of phony claims of his collusion with Russia and other efforts to impeach him that has led to this unfortunate period of gross negativity that I so much am troubled by.

Yes, Donald Trump is far from perfect, in fact like all of us, he makes many mistakes.  He is his own worst enemy in that he says many things that are ill conceived and objectionable to many of us.  But, in my opinion, he deserves the respect of a President duly elected.  His opponents should have respected the unofficial custom of a Presidential  ”honeymoon” and helped him get off on the right foot.  Instead, they were so incensed by loosing and, smelling political blood, they embarked on a self serving course of destroying this Presidency, regardless of the harm it might do to the country.  Despite the fact that the political left declared war on the new President, he built an impressive list of accomplishments.  Thus, even though I am aware of Donald Trump’s shortcomings and inappropriate statements, I regard the highly negative,  frequently mean, and in some cases corrupt actions of the left to be far worse for the country.