We love America just as much as conservatives do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy.
Liberals love America like grown-ups.
To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow.
Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world.
That’s why we liberals want America to do the right thing. We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well.
— Al Franken, 2004, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
People were saying, “Give Trump a chance.” President Obama included.
So I tried.
I did. No, really. That’s not a clever new definition I’m using, or some liberal slight-of-hand. I really, legitimately, decided to give him a chance. After the election, when he came out and said he would be the President for ALL Americans, I thought…well, he’ll be the next President of the United States. He may not be the President I wanted, but it might not be so bad. I even put all my Facebook friends, many still grieving deeply about the election, on notice, saying that I was going to post silver linings where I found them. I was going to try to work with reality and give him a chance.
So I did. When he picked Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus as the new Chief of Staff, I thought, “OK, that’s rational. I’m not a Republican, but still — it makes sense. Maybe he’ll bring us together after all.”
Then he picked someone named Steve Bannon as his chief strategist. And when he did I didn’t know anything, really, about Steve Bannon. I heard some grumbling in the usual corners, but I figured it was coming from extreme liberals or something. I was focused, squarely, on giving Trump a chance.
But then I kept reading from every news-reporting organization that Republicans were mostly mum on Bannon. And that was weird. Usually they fight back against grumbling. But they mostly had nothing to say. Then I read that Glenn Beck was outraged at him. GLENN BECK – a known conservative if there ever was one. Didn’t mince words. I mean, if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I would have hardly believed how “frightening” and “terrifying” he thought the “nightmare” of Steve Bannon was.
I was desperate for a silver lining. I did research on Breitbart and found that many people of the conservative publication — including its former spokesperson — left in reaction to his alleged rampant racism. I realized he had almost no experience in government. I realized he proudly said his news was for the “alt-right,” which some were saying was a white nationalist group. Even then I was skeptical, until I saw with my own eyes a video by Richard Spencer, who coined the term “alt-right,” literally leading a roomful of people in “Heil Trump!”
No, really. It’s on tape.
But still, I thought maybe it was a fluke. And then he chose Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Didn’t know much about him either. But I soon recognized him as the person who wasn’t sure “grab them by the pussy” constituted sexual assault.
This is the guy he chose to handle the law. I also read that he was not confirmed during a Reagan administration — for racism in the late 1980s. He was too racist for the late 1980s, labeling civil rights groups “un-American” and fighting against the Voting Rights Act! I mean, look at this:
In 1986, a bipartisan majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination to a federal judgeship in the midst of charges of racial bias. For example, Sessions had criticized civil rights groups as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” and accused them of trying to “force civil rights down the throats of people.” He also dubbed a white civil rights attorney a “disgrace to his race,” according to a witness, and reportedly called a black lawyer in his office “boy.” In his confirmation hearing, he admitted to referring to the Voting Rights Act as “a piece of intrusive legislation,” and he later opposed efforts to update the landmark law.
As the New Republic chronicled, Sessions prosecuted civil rights activists for trying to register black voters while saying that he only disapproved of the Ku Klux Klan after he “found out some of them were ‘pot smokers,’” a remark he later insisted was just a joke.
I tried to account for my natural liberal bias, but this is FACT, not opinion. You can’t make this stuff up.
And he was being chosen to be Attorney General now? I’m supposed to give this a chance? Really? And a person who has also lambasted states for legalizing marijuana, claiming in April of 2016 the importance of telling the public that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” No, really. I know this is from Rachel Maddow, but this is a direct video of him saying that:
And then he also wants to enforce and even increase mandatory minimums…I had to stop reading all these articles. It was getting too depressing. It was in the way of Giving Trump A Chance.
But then he chose Betsy Devos as his education secretary (right after settling his own case for education fraud for $25 million — but I tried not to let that bug me too much, in the name of giving Trump a chance). I knew nothing about Betsy Devos, at first. But I soon found out she was a leading champion against gay rights and had experience as an activist bolstered by a strongly religious right that wanted to ensure the power of its hand in education.
I hung on to his infrastructure program, only to find that it released regulations on infrastructure without actually funding infrastructure development in poorer neighborhoods.
I saw his clownish outrage continue on Twitter through his demonizing of truths the press was telling — portraying them as liars while, again, hiring the leader of Breitbart to his side.
I came across a quote that said that later in his presidency, he might get “have to get rougher.”
I saw increasing conflicts of interest between him and foreign leaders.
And so on. And I’m starting to see that it’s a choice between giving him a chance and giving America a chance, and I’m going to have to do the latter.
Thank you for reading.
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