….Some of the things on my mind during my nine hour drive today.
On Tuesday I’ll be headed into one of Donald Trump’s States, Kansas. That’s where I was born and my family was solidly Republican like the majority of Kansans.
I will live with the results of this election however it turns out. If Trump wins it will kill me as much as Hillary’s victory will kill Trump’s partisans. By the way. In many respects those partisans aren’t necessarily Republicans. There are a few news stories circulating about former Obama voters who prefer outsiders and so have shifted to Trump this year.
My Buddy sent me an analysis by Scott Adams (creater of the Cartoon Dilbert) that he thought was persuasive. It fell in line with the Trump line, ostensibly directed at black voters (When white audiences are listening) – What do you have to lose? Scott Adams argued that voters were voting their fears and that Hillary was far more worrisome than a man who only grabbed random women’s pussies. A demure Adams didn’t fully spell the word out but treated it like the “N” word. Adams suggested that very few American women risked being groped by a President Trump so the average voter had very little to fear. Voting Trump therefore was an easy call.
I wrote back that Adams’ reasoning was more “logical than believable.” I find plenty worrisome about Trump and Trump alone. I will leave this late Newsweek story for you to ponder. http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-russia-hillary-clinton-united-states-europe-516895 I’m far more worried about this sort of stuff than my female friends and family being assaulted by Trump. (Although voting for him may have the effect of embolding a lot of wannabe Trumps)
The story makes a fascinating claim that our entire government email system has been compromised by Russian spying but that ironically Hillary Clinton’s private email server was one of the few servers to escape Russian intrusion.
What today’s Russians are doing is richly ironic because in the 1950’s, During Senator McCarthy’s heyday, we were frantic about Russian Commie sympathizers influencing our government. But as the Newsweek story demonstrates, the Internet has unleashed tens of thousands of Russian hackers onto American’s Facebook pages and everywhere else they think they can poison the public with far fetched stories about Hillary Clinton. Does that make those who believe this frauds “dupes” like McCarthy warned us about? BTW – while Trump’s mentor was the infamous Roy Cohn who guided McCarthy’s nation paralyzing, Red baiting.
On Sunday I called my Aunt who resides in another Red State, Arizona, to get some info before my trip to Topeka, Kansas. At one point she explained that she would be voting for Trump. I wasn’t surprised but I couldn’t help teasing her. In 2000 when I was campaigning for John McCain she was adamantly against him because he had left his wife for a younger women. So, of course, I mentioned this and expressed surprise that she could support a man who had pulled a McCain-like wife abandonment three times. Of course, she stammered out a justification……national security. Hillary is just too dangerous.
I gently suggested that we should stick to talking about family instead of politics.
And that leads me to my Grandfather, George Robb, who’s picture shaking the Democrat John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s hands often makes an appearance on this blog. I’ve often repeated the story about his telling me when he was in his seventies and I was in my early teens to never vote for a Democrat. I’ve also repeated several other stories about his attitudes toward Democrats. He may only have voted for a Democrat once in his life, to his eternal regret, but he told my Mother he liked, President Harry Truman – a Democrat. He refused to fire democrats in his office after he was appointed to the job of State Auditor. And he graciously accepted the invitation of the Democrat JFK to attend the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 1962. Thats when the picture was snapped.
Politics used to be more like a friendly rivalry. No more. I see shades of a darker past.
At one of the Iowa rest stops this afternoon there was a tribute to the Iowa soldiers of the Civil War; the last time our land was so divided. A series of faux tombstones contained excerpts from the letters they wrote home. Here’s one of them:
Sorry, the sun was behind it making it heavily shaddowed. This is what he wrote:
“I would be very glad to see peace made, if it could be done on honorable terms. You must not judge from this that I am tired of War. I am ready to fight it through. If any of the folks ask what took me to the war, tell them true patriotism – love of country, and love peace. I will try to live and fight for my country, so as not to dishonor it or any friends.”
Private Joseph Bedford Evans died in action four days later at the Battle of Belmont
My Grandfather nearly died in War. In fact, his death was reported back to his battalion in error after he was sent off to convalesce. If he had died I would have much less to tell you about him. In fact, I wouldn’t be here at all. I’ll be honoring his memory on Nov 11th – the old Armistice Day. And while I never followed his advice to vote a straight Republican party ticket I do follow one of his practices. I like and admire quite a few Democrats.
