THE LEGACY OF TRUMP

As bizarre as this sounds, there is a sizable number of Christians who regard Donald Trump as a messiah. They believe that he has been sent by God to protect a Christian nation, and that he is a savior, of sorts. Despite the fact that Trump's behaviors and policies are less Christian than any other politician on either side of the aisle at any time in history, his evangelical supporters are willing to excuse all of it. I don't think it would ever occur to me to write about politics were it not for this weird and astonishing circumstance.

I myself was planning on voting for Trump, until the Access Hollywood tapes came out and I heard him say those horrible things and how he grabs women "by the p---y" and that was IT for me. The more I learned about him, the more I could not imagine him as president, so, despite my antipathy toward Hillary Clinton, I voted for her.

It was blatantly obvious to me that Trump was creepy and dangerous, and I was just stunned when he was elected. Granted, he LOST the popular vote by several million people and was put in office by the auspices of the Electoral College (a mystifying and nonsensical peculiarity of American democracy) but it frightens me that so many Americans, after hearing his disgusting comments and watching his outlandish antics, would not only vote for him, but hotly defend every crackpot thing he has done and said since - against all rational sense.

Speaking as a woman who has a wicked case of PTSD , thanks to rapes and assaults, the idea that this guy is president makes me really uneasy. He promotes grabbing women by their genitals without so much as a 'by your leave"; there are more than a dozen women suing him for that very thing (he claims they are lying); the hearing for his appointment of would-be rapist Kavanaugh to the bench was a nightmare (complete with yet another assault on the impeccable character of his ersatz victim); and, with the name-calling and generally vulgar attitude he broadly and publicly displays toward women, in general, if it weren't for my meditation practice, I would be a certifiable basket case.

I have had many days, when Trump's misogyny and explicit prejudice against disabled people have flowed into my life from random strangers, like that grocery store employee who claimed he believed in "Trump's law" and that I was not disabled enough to suit him so, in his eyes, I did not deserve to use my handicap parking placard. On days like that, when the PTSD has been activated by Trump lovers, it has been impossible to maintain my typically cheerful self.

Trump has cost me friends and the support of some of my Catholic community where I live. A few have dropped me from Facebook and shunned me at church because of him. Pointing out the lies and misbehaviors of Trump is "hateful," according to them. In order to keep their friendship, I would have been required to stick to the fantasy script that he is the messiah come to save us from the gays, the immigrants, the blacks, the browns, and the poor . I do not respond well to emotional blackmail, and I will be damned if I will pretend that wrong is right and bad is good in order to stay in the good graces of people who ought to know better.

A small number of relatives, with whom I was not emotionally close, did likewise. None of them speak to me now because I have had the temerity to point out that which is readily apparent to the rest of us. I am not a perfect person, but at least I aspire to the core values of Christ. Trump doesn't.

The idea that these Trump supporters cannot see what is right in front of their eyes gives me chills up my spine - because he is such an extreme case of explicit corruption. This psychological drama is like the worst horror movie I've ever seen. I used to wonder how these people would cope when they finally realized the amount of danger to which we have been subjected because of their slavish devotion to Trump, but it is slowly sinking in that they never will. I have to accept that this is the way things will be for probably the rest of my life. They'll never be able to admit what they have done, especially to themselves.

Thankfully, most Americans (and most people all over the world) see him for what he is: a craven, mentally unbalanced, morally and ethically bankrupt con artist - a wastrel who, after being given millions of dollars by Daddy, spent his life taking advantage wherever he could, at the expense of innocent people, a man whose level of narcissism is malignant. I also suspect, and I have read the opinion of a host of psychiatrists and doctors who agree, that he may be entering into a phase of some sort of dementia, probably having to do with the progression of disease and/or old age. Some days, his language is such a hash of words that he appears to be barely lucid. Who knows if all the cheeseburgers have clogged his arteries and rotted his brain, or whether he just has some as-yet diagnosed illness? In any case, not only is he temperamentally 'unsuited' for the job of president (that word doesn't do it justice), he is positively dangerous. Saying this makes me "hateful" in the eyes of the Trump lovers.

Once someone decides to shield their eyes and ears from the blatant, obvious, in-your-face reality of Trump, that decision imprisons them.  In order to maintain the fairy tale of Messiah Trump, they can't watch any news program except Fox, or they will hear a truthful narrative from all the professional journalists.  They choose to believe Trump's preposterous claim that CNN and other traditional news outlets are in some kind of conspiracy against him and that publications with strict journalistic standards have all thrown away decades of integrity in order to conspire to spread the exact same lies about him. (I wonder where they MEET? Is there a giant video chat, or what? Do they vote on the lie of the week?)

True believers can't read any news except extremist right wing rags. They will listen to what Trump says about the Mueller Report before they will believe anything Mueller himself says about it, and they will not read the report which IS available. These people won't even take the direction of the POPE, calling instead for the Pope's expulsion from the church on the basis of heresy because his guidance disagrees with Trump's view of the world. The Pope as much as blatantly stated that Trump is not Christian, criticizing his stupid sea-to-sea wall. All of this sounds like a science fiction movie - but it's real.

Walter Cronkite is rolling in his grave.

As I have mentioned before, I know a few people who voted for Trump because he promised to nominate right wing judges - and he has done that. Trump doesn't appear to really care about the Supreme Court. I doubt he understands its role, given how little he appears to know or care about any of the functions of government or basic principles of jurisprudence. His handlers have given him the list from The Federalist Society (another nightmare topic) and he dutifully proposes only the people on that approved list. People in the pro-life community whose focus is making abortion a criminal act are willing to let the rest of government fall down around our ears in service to this one goal. They see some of the craziness of Trump but they don't care because they are getting the judges they want. I am pro-life, but I don't agree with this tragic compromise because it is endangering our democratic process and putting America in real peril from foreign enemies to whom Trump has cozied up and/or aggravated.

I feel, and I have been saying from the beginning, that Trump will do his best to get us embroiled in a war in order to both distract us from his crimes and to lengthen his time in office. As I also predicted, he is making a tremendous amount of money from foreign governments, pouring money into his businesses, as well as the American taxpayer who have been hosting his adult children and in-laws at Trump's luxury resorts for golf trips and "meetings" held at Trump's luxury properties. The partisan Attorney General that he placed at the head of the Department of Justice has engineered a change to the interpretation of the laws around the emoluments clause of the constitution, to the effect that the president should be allowed to receive unlimited amounts of money from foreign governments, as long as those payments are washed through businesses owned by the president. This is very convenient to Trump, whose fortunes were flagging before becoming president. The longer he can extend his presidency, the more money he can pull into his businesses, and the more regulations he can remove for businessmen like himself, ensuring his future further enrichment. Money is usually at the bottom of all corruption, and his administration is no different.

The MOST ironic thing about all this is that I originally became attracted to the Catholic faith, not only because of the mystics but because the values of Jesus Christ appealed to me. Now, I find myself part of a group of people, many of whom have abandoned these values for political expediency. It is heartbreaking for me, personally.

Between the huge sex abuse scandals and this wholehearted embrace of a toxic political administration that promotes unChristian values, the Catholic Church is getting a real hit, as far as reputation is concerned.

I realize that this post is somewhat rambling. This IS a diary, after all, but I should sum up my thoughts, and here it is:

I believe in the values of Jesus Christ and I won't abandon them, even if a large group of my fellow Catholics have traded them in for Republican talking points and have embraced the most unChristian of all politicians. I will not be dissuaded from trying, to the best of my ability, to follow the precepts of the church, and I will also throw myself into my meditation and prayer life with greater devotion. The only peace I get these days is from my meditation, formal and informal, where I tune in to the Divine and leave all the rest of this behind. I am sorry to be traveling this road alone, but I have been an accidental hermit for so long now that giving up the last shred of hope for community life or spiritual support is not such a stretch for me. The Lord does step in and assist me when necessary.

As I was writing this, two things happened. The first was a heated exchange between a reporter and one of Trump's people on the CBS Sunday Morning show in regard to Iran and its supposed attempt to blow up a ship in the Gulf of Hormuz. If he plays his cards right, Trump will get that war he has been wanting.

The other thing that happened as I was writing this: I was dropped by another ersatz "Catholic" who lives in my town. She defriended me on Facebook without a word, and when I questioned her about it, it was because of Donald Trump. This is how they keep the bubble small and the message consistent. God save them.



Silver Rose