So the election is over and the unthinkable has happened. Donald Trump
is now President-elect; the leader of the free world.
I don’t like Trump. I’ve made no secret about how I feel. But he has
played a blinder in tapping into people's fears; their despair, their need to
lash out at governments who they feel hasn’t listened to them. I do understand how
people feel. I have felt the same. But what worries and disturbs me the most is
three things. One, people have turned to a morally corrupt man like Trump
because there were no alternatives. Two, and the most disturbing for me is the
signal sent to the world that racism, sexism, lying and sexual assault is OK. I'll
forgive you because you listen to me and my concerns. That it's acceptable to
attack and assault those who don’t agree with you. That it's OK to demean
prisoners of war and people with physical disabilities.
The willingness to sacrifice principles and overlook reprehensible
behaviour because a person claims they will fix my problems astounds me. In my
experience those who lack principles rarely achieve anything for others, other than
more chaos and disappointment. You can’t address a lack of principles if you have none yourself.
Hillary Clinton carries a lot of baggage. She was a very poor alternate choice. She is far from blameless but
she has also carried the burden of the man she married. She is not the only
woman to ever stick by a cheating husband and she won't be the last. I suspect
a reasonable percentage of those condemning her for it are possibly not
blameless themselves. But I wonder if she were a man would she have been
treated so harshly. After all millions were prepared to overlook Trump’s
treatment of women. Then we have his failed businesses and the resulting disastrous
impact that has had on so many people. His skiting about ripping off taxpayers,
the very people who he claims he will now champion. But, let's face it, he’s
made his money. He can afford to be sanctimonious. If he really was your
champion, he’d give the money back on principle. Then, we have his past association
with Jeffrey Epstein. A convicted pedophile known for having underage sex
slaves and who Trump called ‘a great guy’. Does that sound like a person with
good judgement?
The list of Trump’s questionable practices is very long indeed. In
addition, he is still to front court over the operation of Trump University,
facing claims that dozens of people who were ripped off. How ironic that we
have referred two of our Aussie Senators to the high court to test their
worthiness to hold representative office over business and criminal dealings. In
both of these cases they are far less than anything Trump has done.
Within 12 hours after securing the position of President-elect Donald Trump’s
statement on banning Muslims from US has disappeared from his website. In
commenting on this one person wrote in response to a column, “Surely, this is a
goo (sic) thing! Told ya he's not a bigot. Those were just buzzwords to get
redneck votes.”
I thought these were brilliant replies.
“So when those rednecks you refer to realise his words were just
buzzwords and they turn on him, I wonder how he will react. Will he boot them
out? Attack them as he has so many others who disagreed with him? More importantly
how they will react.”
“The most positive thing his supporters have been able to say about him
is "Don't worry, he doesn't believe a word he says, he's just a lying
political scumbag". I hope that's true.”
“I'm not sure it's any improvement at all. If he was just a bigot, we could possibly
call him misguided. In this case, he's a
liar and a hate-monger that intentionally stirred up hate and anger aimed at a
minority religious group for his own benefit.
That seems a whole lot worse to me, so unless I start hearing an apology
from Trump and assurances that he isn't going to single out Muslims or tolerate
any discrimination against them, I'm not giving him a pass.”
An American friend sent me this recently. Sorry I didn’t share it before
the election. It's strong but it made me think.
The world desperately needs people of principle and of good character to
lead us out of the predicament we find ourselves in. We need leaders who can engage
us in the discussions without using the language of violence, fear and divide. We
need leaders who can address concerns quickly without creating world war 3. Trump
sadly (for me) isn’t that person. He lacks principle and there are far too many
question-marks over his character. If I cannot respect the person, how could I
support them speaking for me?
But where are the principled and honourable champions of the
downtrodden, the unrepresented, the disenfranchised, those who feel they have
no voice? That for me is a most vexing question. I simply don’t see them coming
forward. So people turn to the Trump’s and the Farage’s of the world. That
scares the hell out of me. Our relatives have been down these paths before. We
need to listen to them.
We set the benchmark by the standards we accept. If we are willing to
trade-off those standards in accepting leaders who have none, we shouldn’t be
surprised when nothing changes for the better. In fact, there is a very real
possibility it could probably end up a lot worse.
Unlike Brexit the impact has been largely on the United Kingdom and EU
and to a lesser degree the rest of the world. The US decision however, has
wider reaching impacts because so much is tied to the US dollar and US trade.
Many of the things that Trump has said if enacted will have dire consequences. Whilst
I suspect millions would like to live on their own little islands independent
of the world around us that is not reality. Certainly not for small countries
like Australia we simply don’t have the population or the resources to survive
on our own.
As for Donald Trump, he hasn’t changed overnight. I suspect he can’t,
but I pray I’m wrong.
