Jennifer Rubin’s column in the Washington Post of August 1, 2018, has energized me to blog again. It has been some time since my last blog only because of the fact of summer vacation and other pressing matters.
But Ms. Rubin struck a nerve of mine that has been twitching for some time.
https://wapo.st/2M7J1Zk?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.22bd322865c0
At first glance this column appears to be about Trumpsters treatment of the press but it soon reveals itself to be about the hard core Trumpsters themselves.
Early on, I wrote a blog about Americans who had voted for Trump. Exempting the Nazis and those dedicated to refighting the civil war in order to reclaim their former slaves, I said these voters are our fellow Americans and we must help redress their grievances that caused so many to believe erroneously that Trump would be their champion for a better life.
You know, the usual “claptrap” from a “lilly livered liberal.”
But as I’ve watched the hard cored Trump supporter remain unwilling or unable to spearate lies, cruelty and failure from the facts and truth and decent moral values which have been the bedrock of our Country, I have come to the conclusion that many of our “fellow Americans” are not reclaimable, can not be brought back through a calm recitiation of the evidence and personal help.
Like all of us, they have “made their bed” and must now lie in it (a helping hand extended is simply bitten off) but the rest of us are not obligated to lie in it with them.
Whether through willful ignorance or calclated malevelance, they are beyond redemption. That does not mean they should be deprived of their right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” or Constitutional and Legal safeguards, only that in their twisted “pursuit of happiness” they must be resisted, not coddled and cuddled, but resisted with every legal means at our disposal.
Voting and shunning come to mind.
Enough of this “let’s respect the other fellow’s point of view and accomodate it” when that view is one of know-nothing, unthinking hatred of the methods and values that guide our democracy and civil life.
Throughout our history, there has always been a body of Americans who march to a different and false “drummer.” We have survived them and we will survive the ForeverTrumpsters.
Resistance to Donald J Trump and his hard core band of followers, fueled by never ceasing outrage at their attack on the rest of us, is the key. And our non-Trump majority of Americans must follow Benjamin Franklin’s advise rendered on the occassion of the first crisis of our new Nation: ”We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”