Perhaps my “eight loyal readers” understand what I’m up to in my latest Quixote campaign. Maybe even the temporarily expanded 12 loyal readers understand it. As a man who fetishizes honesty I’ll be more forthcoming in this post.
I am sick about today’s politics. That’s true enough. Over the past sixteen runs for office I’ve become mostly immune to the perverse notion that standing up repeatedly for something you care about marks you as a loser. Nope. I’m of the opinion that the many good people who don’t run for office for fear of looking foolish have good reason to withhold their talents from the rest of us and no standing to regard me as a fool. [que up the Beatles “Fool on the Hill” background music]
I do like the idea of “lightning in a bottle” but it takes some coaxing. This blog has been my kite but 600 daily readers is far too small a thunderhead in a District with three quarters of a million residents. From the beginning I told Claudia that simply calling Donald Trump “loathsome” on local television made my $300 filing fee worth it. That this satisfied her too despite the discomfort my constant campaigns have caused her over the eyars was a comfort to me. BTW – she put her recent seminary degree to good used yesterday giving the sermon at our church. (It was a thoughtful and timely. She talked about Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee to drive demons out of a poor man on the other side of the lake. I’m sorry I did not record it on my cell phone.)
I would be a very interesting Congressman should I become one of the few in the sclerotic institution’s dwindling center. But my real objective was exposing Pete as a Donald Trump “yes” man. No Republican today can be anything other than that. Even during the Civil War the towering figure of Abe Lincoln never commanded anything like that kind of obsequiousness.
I do get a kick out of thumbing my nose at stupidity although I do have a soft spot in my heart for innocent ignorance. And I get a kick out of letting the public see me thumb my nose. I did it as a nonconforming Republican moderate against conformist Republicans. I did it as an outsider to a School Board that was headed into statutory debt. I did it as a man appalled at a School Board that stole the decision for the Red Plan from voters. I’m doing it again now. And I don’t mind the attention I get from it. I enjoyed seeing my name on a Sunday Op Ed piece in the Duluth News Tribune by Steven King. But Steve isn’t quite right to call me a “Trump hater.” I don’t even hate Adolph Hitler. My Christian friends tell me that it is for God to judge not we mere mortals. I rather like the phrase that Evangelicals especially repeat – that they love the sinner but hate the sin.
And frankly, I see Donald Trump giving America and especially the Republican Party that has vexed me for thirty years a well earned kick in the butt. A much more modest and thoughtful man did the same to Minnesota a decade and a half ago, Professional Wrestler, Jesse Ventura. I didn’t vote for him but I enjoyed his governorship. I’d much prefer it if Jesse and not Donald Trump was President today.
One of the targets of my political career has been the self satisfied Republican Party elitists who had little interest in “blue collar” folks, including the evangelicals included who have jumped on the Trump bandwagon. When I first campaigned for the legislature in blue-collar, western Duluth the elite Eastern Duluthians considered my campaigns ridiculous.
Although I eventually moved to East Duluth myself I’ve never forgotten that gated community attitude. Easterners were happy to close Washington Junior High with a population of kids some told me looked like the United Nations. That was my first fight with our school board. Things have not improved a quarter century later. The decisions of eastern Duluth have saddled the city and its children with a bankrupt and foundering public school system.
I found this analysis of Trump’s loyal followers, Purple Family Values,to be very insightful.
For a number of years writing books not righting politics has been my goal. The blog has been a means to keep myself sane and sharpen my writing skills. I can’t get elected to Congress with 600 daily visitors but I can tell people what I think. If they get the idea that I’m simply a “Trump hater” rather than someone devoted to political decency and a prosperous future for humanity that’s their mis-perception of me – not mine. As for me I’ve had a good life butDonald Trump will make my children’s lives and my grandchildren live’s worse. I fully expect Pete Stauber to tag along at his side like Chester:
If there are any lighting bolts out there who want to motivate me to keep fighting go ahead and strike me. A second donation would help. I’m certainly capable of two hard months of campaigning. If there are no bolts, I’ll go back to studying French for the next couple months before I travel to France. Merci beaucoup.
