"The Donald" Phenomenon

THE DONALD PHENOMENON

Donald Trump brings out a wide range of reactions when his name is mentioned. In some ways it is geographical.  in other ways it is jealous. in yet other ways it depends on whether you won money with him or lost it.

If New York is The Big Apple, the Donald has a deed on most of the orchards. When your business is real estate and casinos, along with a large number of smaller operations, you have to be bigger than life. 

Check out the tycoons who run the Vegas and Reno and Atlantic City Casinos. They are not a lot different from the Donald, with the exception that most of them have devoted themselves to one business, the casino business. Donald Trump loves all businesses and wants to succeed in as many as possible.

To the Donald, the casino business is just one of many cash cows that have seen him rise from bankruptcy to a net worth of $9 billion dollars. Yes, readers, that is billion with a “B”!

For those of you who see him as a clown, as an irresponsible fellow, as a publicity seeker or as someone less admirable than, lets say, a conservative bank president, let me remind you that he built his empire, stone by stone, brick by brick by hiring and managing the right people, by having dreams he followed, by knowing how to get the better of the bankers when they tried to restructure his loans, and how to climb not just out of bankruptcy but right up to the top again.

He has been married to beautiful women. He has beautiful children who are making their way successfully in the world. He has planes, yachts and some of the most sought after condominiums and apartments in New York City.

Is he sneaky, sly, manipulative, overbearing, sometimes outrageous in comment and appearance. Yes. Does he care if you don’t like that about him? No.  He measures himself as a businessman. It is the way the world often measures a man. 

Do you think he is not charitable? Do you suppose he is not a philanthropist. Interestingly, he is very generous. However, in that part of his life he does not grandstand.

People who wanted to be president of the United States called on him over the years. They would ask for advice, but what they wanted was donations. He has met them all. He was on all their lists. You don’t run for president without touching base with people like Donald Trump who can give you the help you need.

I think over the years he must have sized these folks up and said, in his conceited way, something along the lines of : I can do better than they can.

Interestingly, some candidates have recently released their success at fund raising. I think the last number I saw was from the Jeb Bush campaign and it was $150 million. Most candidates have to chase the money and that means being beholden to donors. It has ever been so. The Donald isn’t spending his time fund raising. He isn’t piling up obligations to donors. When you start out with your own $9 billion fund raising is not something you need to do. It frees you up to focus on other aspects of your campaign.

So lets look at that who is running for president this year who has accomplished more in his life than the Donald? While many have accomplishments, they are much more modest. On the other hand, we are more comfortable with them because they are more like the rest of us. And certainly some of them have significant experience in other important areas for any president, such as foreign affairs and defence matters.

Last week the Donald was running second in the GOP polls. As I write today he is running first. He will rise and fall, probably on remarks he makes from day to day. You see he does not mince words. He says what he thinks. And he will tell you why he thinks that.

His biggest problem is that people in the country tend not to trust people from New York, especially people who live large! His second biggest problem is that the news media will headline every misstatement, every windblown hair moment, and every time he says something critical about those who also want to be president.

So why is he running so well in the polls?

I posit that it is because the people are generally unhappy with what has happened to our country under the last two presidents. They don’t want to see a bunch of Iranians pushing us around. They witnessed that we backed all the wrong people in the Arab Spring. They know our enemies are using the weapons and tanks we left behind when we left those countries.

People are very fed up. They want more Teddy Roosevelt (speak softly and carry a big stick) and less Woodrow Wilson (lets work through a world organization.)

This was most recently highlighted when Trump had to move his appearance in Arizona at the Broadview Hotel to the city convention centre because the hotel could not hold all the people who wanted to attend.

I doubt that the Donald can overcome the forces at work against him. But I admit I like some of his ideas and I know he would be forceful if he were to downsize from living in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue and moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C.  And I am hopeful that his success in the polls will wake up other politicians and force them into more aggressive stances when they talk to us about their plans.

I have been a moderate all my adult life. This irritates my conservative friends and my liberal friends and it puts me in a position of seldom seeing my choice for president win the office. I am unlikely to find a way to support the Donald in his quest but I am ever so hopeful the other candidates will see how the people have reacted to his strong approach to speaking out on issues of considerable importance to our nation and do less pussyfooting around those issues, being politically correct, worrying about taking a misstep by being honest in their comments. 

If the Donald is the tool that brings that about in the overly large GOP field of presidential wannabes, I will applaud his efforts.

Some may think of the Donald as the reincarnation of P.T. Barnum (there’s a sucker born every minute.) They are wrong. He is much more than the sum of his parts. And at the moment, he is making a lot of sense.

What I am happiest about is that what appeared to be a really boring presidential campaign now shows some chance of actually being interesting.

The Confederate Battle Flag

The Confederate Battle Flag

My wife and I have had the great pleasure of living in Georgia and Virginia. So we have encountered the deep feeling southerners have with reference to the Civil War.

There are some who believe the war is really not over. They are still fighting it.

There are some who call it the War of Northern Aggression.

There are many who have great pride in the culture of the south and all its history, focusing on the good not the bad.

This last feeling we have found when we lived in parts of the north. A feeling of great pride in local culture and history, and an acceptance that some was great and some was bad.

The Confederate Flag is more properly called The Confederate War Flag. Understanding that, it is not unreasonable to assume it should have been retired at the end of the conflict. But as we all know, it is hard to let go of things that have had great meaning to us even if some of that history has been unsavory.

Recognizing that people will have different feelings about this issue, I must admit that I do not have a personal animosity toward the confederate standard. It was a standard under which many good men and women gave their lives. They believed in their lives, their way of life. In those days I do not believe all these people were racist. Their economy was based on labor and we came to see that as slave labor. Some plantation owners treated their slaves very well. Others were treated horribly. I do not believe the south went to war to make sure black people were treated as non-human. I believe they went to war to preserve their way of life. The north was threatening their way of life, their economy.

The north did not go to war to free the slaves. 

Their were many reasons for the Civil War but freeing the slaves was not high on the list. The freedom of slaves was a benefit from success at holding the union together.

When President Lincoln “freed” the slaves he freed the ones in the south, not the ones in the north. It was a military tactic designed to frighten the rebels at the idea that thousands of slaves would be on the loose behind their lines, in their hometowns.

During our time of living in the South we often were called Yankees or Northerners, all in good fun. None, not one of the people with whom we came in contact hated blacks. I would not apply the name racist to any of them.

Yes there were racists in the South. Their are racists in the North. There are also anti-Asian sentiments, and negative feelings towards lots of groups in the South, but I find them in the North also.

The Confederate Battle Flag has been made a symbol of racism. And as such it has become a national issue.

The Confederate Battle Flag should have been retired at the end of the Civil War. All 50 states are permitted to have flags. These are symbols of pride and honor. These states include those in the south. Collectively, all the states have a national flag, the Stars and Stripes. This flag represents as as a group, as a nation.

I think it is time to retire the Confederate Battle Flag as a banner to be flown in any kind of official way, such as on state capital grounds. In our country we need not deny private use of the Confederate Battle Flag. Individuals have the right to display and acknowledge their own prejudices or strongly held beliefs and loyalties. 

Public buildings, public officials, people dedicated to representing all the people need to focus on state flags and the Stars and Stripes.

There are many things to love about southern culture. The people are courteous, welcoming and have created lovely communities. Let us work with one another to remove any sign of racism from our wonderful land and create symbols that honor the rule of law, the equality of people under the law, and the pride we have in our state and our nation.

We can do it. I hope we will.

I saw Johnny today. He is an accomplished banker with considerable skills. I think of him that way. He is also black but that is not what I notice.

Hyang Jang stopped by the other day. She is a hospice nurse and gives relief and love to people, people of all colors and backgrounds. Oh, by the way she is Asian.

Bill came by to help me with some work. He spent the day sweating and working and as a team we accomplished a lot. Bill happens to be a gay man but that is not what comes to mind when we are together.

We are a sophisticated people. We are a long way from when we were frontiersmen, prejudiced, and afraid others might take our jobs or our homes. 

Today in America we honor hard work, people who exude love, folks who team up with us to accomplish tasks. The color of their skin or the country of their origin is the least of the things that we should notice, comment on or be concerned about.

We are better than that.