In America, we are a currently a land of seeming contradictions. One of the pillars of our judicial system is a separation of church and state, and yet at the highest court in the land, Supreme Court justices are being nominated not so much for their judicial sagacity and even-keeled temperament but rather for their religious views, the more extreme the more likely they are to get nominated.
Another contradiction is to say that we are a nation governed by the rule of law, and yet we have a President who at almost every turn seeks to create chaos and violate/challenge existing laws if they do not benefit him. In other words, we have a President who is not the person at the top looking out for the best interest of the 360 million inhabitants of this country below him but rather we have a President who wants those below him to carry him on their shoulders as he continues to do what is solely in his best interest. And the tremendous threat is if a single person such as the President of the United States has declared that he is not bound by laws, then why should the people he is sworn to protect believe that laws apply to them? That is exactly what we have seen. If people don’t like a law or mandate such as wearing a mask to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 then they just ignore it or they walk into towns and cities and physically destroy them with the false belief that they are unaccountable as the President is. In this way and many others during the past four years we have moved from a nation governed by the rule of law to one where the lawless rule.
We talk about the seemingly all-knowing framers of the Constitution and their intent. Originalist constitutional experts will say that the job of today’s justices is to rule on law as the Founding Fathers would have wanted. But if so, then those same experts should punt to others when it comes to deciding cases that are well beyond the scope spelled out by the creators of the Constitution. Issues such as abortion, the Internet, and Title IX should not be decided by Originalists because for them to use what they read in the Constitution to decide cases in these areas is somewhere along the lines of a pastor using the Bible as a guide for how to create corporate tax laws. It is ominous that we now have a female Supreme Court nominee who describes herself as an Originalist, because if one is going to argue that we should follow the Constitution base on the original understanding “at the time it was adopted,” then shouldn’t that also apply to the Declaration of Independence upon which this country was founded? And nowhere does it even use the word “woman” or “women” because the founding fathers didn’t even consider them as viable options for running governments. Fortunately times have changed and so must people, especially jurists and judges. Yet, with the past few Supreme Court justices, we seem to be moving back in time instead of forward.
The other major danger we face from Originalists who want to follow exactly what was written in our country’s most sacred documents — The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence — is that it opens the door to an ominous interpretation of permission granted to those looking to tear asunder this country. It is worthwhile to revisit the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying tis foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The problem that happens with a nation divided — as we seem to be more and more these days — is that these words of the Declaration of Independence which worked so well with a group of American colonists united in their desire to govern themselves now threatens to become the undoing of the nation that resulted.
What the current President of the United States has become is President of the Divided States. When $21 billion of farm aid are sent to Republican states friendly to him while only $2 billion are sent to farm states with Democratic governors to make up for the trade mess that the President himself created, then to survive it appears that the only loyalty oath that matters is not to the United States but solely to the President himself. This is how dictatorships and monarchies rule. The President of the United States is supposed to be the leader for all people within this country.
And so when we read the opening two paragraphs from the Declaration of Independence, there is an ominous conclusion that this next election will not be peaceful. If the President loses his re-election bid, then his followers can claim that it has become “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
This is in contrast to people who believe that a new President must be installed at the next election, and that an orderly and peaceful transition of power has to occur. Many of these people have been clamoring for almost four years that the current President had to be removed, but at least their method of removal was consistent with the rule of law as opposed to what we are seeing now from the President’s supporters whose increasingly strident tones are arguing for the rule of might via physical force and violence to get what they want.
The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is no less concerning. We all grew up memorizing our “unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” However, the interpretation of “Life” and “Liberty” have been morphed into religious and political crusades that threaten the very fabric of our country.
What is “Life”? According to the next line in the Declaration of Independence, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” What is pretty clear is that “Life” was intended to mean those who are actually on this earth right now. The point being that those who are alive now have the right to have a voice about the rules that govern their lives, and that those rules should aim not for some idealistic and unbounded definition of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” but rather the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that the majority of the governed agree is in the best interest of the whole.
This means that instead of interpreting “Liberty” as the freedom to do whatever you want, it has to be the right to enjoy the freedoms that the majority of the whole agree are just. This shouldn’t be up for debate because if everyone were to exercise total liberty, then there would be no rule of law and we would live in a chaotic state where people could attack one another without fear of punishment. Anarchy would prevail.
Similarly, “the pursuit of Happiness” again cannot be totally left to individuals because what people would do based on their innate greed would lead to a level of lawlessness and violence that no American born and raised in the U.S. can truly understand. I exclude naturalized U.S. citizens not to discriminate against them but because many of them already understand through direct experience the destruction that occurs when the pursuit of Happiness is unfettered, just look at the problem with women in India being raped on public transit buses.
This brings us to the greatest conflict that all Americans have to face: the good of the individual versus the good of the whole.
Americans are some of the most generous people in the world. And for a long time, there has been an inherent part of our DNA that says, “We help those in need.” The best of us, which is also most of us, don’t belittle the weak. Instead, we extend our hands and our kindness to help raise them up. It’s why Americans love to root for the underdog, because this country was founded by the ultimate underdogs when a ragtag army of mostly amateurs went up against the greatest military machine of the time and defeated it.
We Americans have been forged from past leaders such as President Harry S. Truman who famously had a sign on his desk that said, “The buck stops here.” Leaders accept the accolades and real leaders are the first to step forward and take blame when things don’t go well. I was lucky enough to grow up with a lot of fantastic coaches and teachers who were unified in their philosophy that finger-pointing is for the weak, while the strong accept blame — even when they shouldn’t — because, well, that is why they are truly strong.
President Truman, the person who had to make one of the toughest decisions ever about whether or not to deploy nuclear bombs on humans, was a highly introspective person. He wasn’t all rah-rah saying, “Let’s drop the biggest bomb on our enemies, a bomb that’s bigger than anything the world has ever seen before.” Instead, he struggled with that decision before and after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the end, what guided his decision was what would save the most lives, and not just American lives.
Interestingly, President Truman had another habit which all future Presidents should follow. When he would get angry with someone, he would sit down and let it all spill out in a letter. Then he’d put the finished letter in a drawer with all the other angry letters that he wrote but never sent. He realized that as the President and Commander-in-Chief, he had to lead by example. He couldn’t ask for cooler heads to prevail if he didn’t have one himself.
And when other critical moments came up, Truman made the difficult choices, even though he knew it could cost him his re-election. Again, he made those tough choices not just for Americans but also to save people far away from this country. A classic example is his dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur. To South Koreans of which I am one, General MacArthur is a hero for his role during the Korean War in preventing the Chinese-backed North Korean Army from sweeping through the whole country. However, he was fired for insubordination. And the insubordination was not just for making negative statements about Truman. It was because of his desire for a quick victory in Korea by dropping 30 to 50 tactical nuclear bombs along the Yalu River which separates the Korean Peninsula from China, according to his biographer Bob Considine who quoted MacArthur as saying that the reason to do this was to win the war in Korea in a maximum of 10 days.
In retrospect, President Truman after witnessing the devastation of the atomic bombs dropped in Japan understood that the most dangerous option is to believe that winning at all costs is the end game. He understood that as awful but as necessary as dropping the atomic bombs on Japan had been, the real danger was military leaders who viewed this as a viable option for warfare in the future.
It’s important to understand that President Truman was not perfect. He appointed several of his friends to positions for which they were unqualified. He seemed to spend far too much time playing poker. And he continued to employ his closest friend Harry Vaughan in the White House even after learning that Vaughan was trading access to the White House for expensive gifts.
However, time and time again, President Truman showed that when tough decisions had to be made, he could put down his poker cards and his bourbon and make tough but well-measured decisions. He understood the importance of forming coalitions as the United Nations was formed under his watch and spearheaded by the U.S. When the then-Soviet Union blocked access to Western-held areas of Berlin, he formed a coalition of Allied forces to carry out the Berlin Airlift to deliver food and other necessities to the inhabitants of those areas. He went against his cabinet when he recognized the State of Israel in 1948 because he felt that this was the right thing to do after seeing the atrocities Hitler’s Nazi regime carried out against the Jewish people. And he racially integrated both the U.S. Armed Services and federal agencies. In essence, what President Truman did was fight for the inalienable rights for people around the world to pursue their “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This brings us back to the major contradiction of being American: the individual versus the united whole. We love to talk about how we are not just the United States but also united as we fight against those who seek to harm us and/or our allies. In other words, we take action against those who are trying to divide us.
And now with the Covid-19 pandemic, we are seeing this long-standing contradiction play out in all its ugliness. The rule of law has been replaced with the rule of rhetoric. The tweets of a President have become a major means for disseminating “news” to his followers, as opposed to just being personal opinions.
I cannot speak to this President’s mental state because who really can? For a man as vain as the President, if he does have dementia or some other mental disease, he and his aides have probably already made everyone with access to his medical records sign non-disclosure agreements, so we aren’t going to really know. But what I can speak to are his actions.
Let’s be blunt: this President only cares about himself and his family, and in that exact order.
Any criticism of him is immediately labeled by him as “fake news” or “fake media” or some other denigrating phrase. Any woman who asks him a tough question is “nasty.” He loves every general who has worked for him until they inevitably realize that he is unprepared, undisciplined, and unable to be a true leader, and then they leave his administration and are immediately vilified by him.
His political allies in Congress are only as good as the last supplication they’ve delivered to him. But when they even slightly try to disagree with them, he heavily criticizes them in the media. All of this is for one purpose: to silence dissent, even when dissent is warranted.
He has allowed special interests to take over everything from the acquisition and distribution of personal protective equipment during this Covid-19 pandemic to allowing millions of acres of protected land be opened to exploration for fossil fuels and minerals. He says that he is deregulating, but really what he is saying is that the U.S. is open to polluting our lands and air as long as the wealthiest individuals — the same individuals who never have to live in these destroyed areas — can benefit.
As bad as that is — and it’s terrible — the biggest problem is that he lies about so many important things. He destroys things that President Obama built not because they were bad, but simply because President Obama created them. He has been ranting since his 2016 election campaign about how “Obamacare” is awful and that he has a plan that will allow people to have even better care for far lower premiums. This should be taken with the same level of belief as someone approaching you today and saying that they have a top-of-the-line new Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max that they are going to sell you for half the cost of the base level iPhone 11. You wouldn’t believe that, nor should you believe the President’s lies.
Even now he continues to say that he has this amazing health care plan, but it’s interesting that just as he said in his 2016 campaign that he would reveal it after the election, he now says he won’t reveal this amazing economics-defying health care plan until after the 2020 elections. Why? Because the only way it’s even remotely possible to fulfill his boasts of his health care plan giving people more coverage with significantly lower premiums is either by substantially slashing payment for services (e.g. significantly lowering how much doctors and others in the hospital make) and/or by allowing insurance companies to exclude coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Trust me, there’s no way he’d try the former because he’s more likely to protect those who make a lot of money such as doctors and hospital administrators than those who don’t.
In many ways, what the President is offering in his secret health care plan is what can only be labelled as “credit card rewards” whereby just like people get credit cards that promise them all sorts of benefits of which the vast majority are never used (e.g. the fabled extended warranties), offering healthy Americans a new health care plan with far more coverage at a much lower premium because it excludes those with pre-existing conditions is like telling a 20-year-old healthy college student to be overjoyed because now they can get an annual colonoscopy which has just about a zero probability of finding anything significant: no student is going to take advantage of it because who really wants to go through that uncomfortable procedure when it’s totally unnecessary? So it’s not a real benefit. The other catch is that such a health care plan is only effective as long as that student doesn’t develop any medical problems. The moment he/she does, then their health care could be terminated, just when they need it most. It’s about as useful as me selling flood insurance to a fish.
And again, you don’t have to take my word that this President is lying when he says he will forbid insurance companies from discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions. Just look at the case his Administration filed with the Supreme Court to eliminate the mandate for the Affordable Care Act that protects those with pre-existing conditions.
Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, diseases don’t care. And with at least over 8 million Americans infected with the coronavirus, that’s 8+ million Americans that now have a well-documented pre-existing condition. And if the President’s case in front of the Supreme Court that would allow insurance companies to not cover people with pre-existing conditions prevails, we are going to see people denied healthcare coverage at the very time that Covid-19 infection numbers are rising in nearly every state. There are few things that can potentially bankrupt the average person as a lengthy hospital stay, especially in an Intensive Care Unit at a hospital. But that is not this President’s concern because he and his family have access to the best medical care on the face of this earth, and for free.
With all of these despicable actions — and that also includes the President’s absolutely atrocious handling of the Covid-19 pandemic — you’d think it would be obvious that he’d have no chance at being re-elected.
And yet there’s still a chance.
Why? Because there’s still a significant group of Americans who believe that their own personal pursuits of Happiness supersede any considerations regarding what is best for the whole. They are the people who say things like, “Well, I don’t really like him as a person, but my retirement fund has been doing well during his presidency.”
That’s great as long as you plan to pull out all your money as soon as you’re eligible, and also provided that the market is strong at that point.
But here’s why that reasoning is short-sighted at best. Retirement funds are based on the performance of whatever types of investments your retirement fund has made. The stock market — contrary to the simplistic belief of the President — is not the most reliable indicator of the health of the economy. To be convinced about this, all one has to do is look at the stock market still going strong despite the fact that the U.S. economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 shutdown is not so great. There are all sorts of ways of artificially propping up the stock market as any financial expert can tell you. And the bottom can fall out swiftly when those artificial props are removed.
And what about Treasury bonds or municipal bonds? This is where one doesn’t need to be a genius to understand the effects on these common investment vehicles if the climate continues to worsen — and it will because Trump is playing the short game of trying to power the economy now by deregulating so many protections that were put in place not only to safeguard the public but also to reduce our greenhouse emissions. Maybe the only people right now who believe that climate change is debatable are quite honestly the people who believe that God will save us when the time is right. And considering that God allowed Adam and Eve to eat from that fateful apple even though as an all-knowing entity He knew that they were going to do it, well, if he’s going to kick his favorite children out of Eden and allow them to experience hardship and death, what makes anyone really believe that He’s going to bail us out of this mess?
Guess what happens as climate change intensifies and the sea level rises substantially as well as the worsening of other atmospheric and oceanographic changes which are pretty much a guarantee at this point? Countries will require tremendous financial resources to help those whose property gets destroyed by increasing floods, typhoons, hurricanes, etc., and they will require enormous amounts of money just to protect their drinking water supplies. Governments and municipalities will go even more into debt as the costs of combating climate change worsen. So, how much will their financial bonds be worth? Not much.
There is that maxim, “Penny wise pound foolish.” That pretty much captures the current President. He’ll take the short-term benefits and not care about the long-term effects. Why? Because in his parochial perspective, he thinks that if he has the greatest economy in U.S. history for just a few years, then future generations will laud him. But it will be just the opposite: he will go down as the greatest failure this country has ever seen.
He was handed a booming economy and took steps to dismantle it. And yes, his completely bungled Covid-19 response plan is a key reason why American is leading the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths and so much of the country is in some version of a lockdown. He and his supporters can argue that the “Chinese virus” did this, but smart people know that although this looks plausible at first glance it doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. To use another Apple analogy, it’s like you dropping your iPhone in a bathtub full of water, leaving it in there, and then blaming the bathtub for not getting rid of the water instead of blaming yourself for not pulling out the phone or for not pulling the drainage plug so the water could exit the bath.
The reality is that this President wasn’t ready for this pandemic, still doesn’t have a plan, and is totally unprepared should this pandemic worsen or if another pandemic pops up in the next four years. And just to highlight how badly he’s screwed up the U.S.’s Covid-19 response, consider South Korea, a nation that detected its first Covid-19 infection case the same day as the U.S. South Korea’s death rate from Covid-19 is 0.1 per 100,000 people. And the U.S.? It’s 18 per 100,000 people!!!!
If we are the greatest nation on earth because this President has somehow made America great again, and if we have undisputedly the best and most advanced health care modalities at our disposal, then how can South Korea be doing not just a little better but leagues better than us at preventing deaths from this pandemic?
The answer is simple: South Korea united in a way that the U.S. has done in the past but refuses to do now. South Korea marshaled its best scientific minds and devised a comprehensive plan to work together to manage the Covid-19 pandemic. Right away they set about using science to create vast amounts of effective tests to detect Covid-19. That’s right, they weren’t running around looking at other countries for tests, they built their own. And then they implemented widespread testing. In other words, the country was unified and they used science to help save as many lives as possible.
Critics might argue that this could be done in South Korea because it’s so much smaller than the U.S. That argument holds little if any water. The population of South Korea is about 51 million people, while the U.S. is seven-fold larger. Yet, it’s GDP is only $1.6 trillion while the U.S.’s is about 18-fold larger. Since we are a nation rich in resources, bright minds, and a history of having a can-do attitude, how are smaller nations with far less resources doing so much better than us?
The answer is simple: better leadership.
Smart leaders gather the best minds in different areas to lead, but that’s not what has happened during these four years with the current President. What has occurred is that most of the best minds refused to work for this Administration because they knew that it would end badly. Those good brave souls who took the plunge eventually left the Administration, and much of what is left are people who are incompetent, have tremendous conflicts of interest, or have destroyed their once-stellar reputations by staying with this Administration.
Almost everything this President touched before he took office has failed and the trend continues to this day. His campaign for his re-election had raised over $1 billion and now has declared two weeks before the election that it has only $63 million remaining. If I were his donors, I’d be furious. But you know people tend to follow the chemistry law of solubility that “like dissolves like,” and so professional grifters and highly selfish people tend to cluster together when there is a big pot of gold somewhere. It just happened that in this case, that pot of gold was this President’s re-election campaign fund. But outside of this campaign money, the pot of gold has been the U.S. of A.
The President’s supporters can say that he’s strong militarily, but we know that’s not true. If you think that we’re spending too much money posting our soldiers abroad, then the best investment one can make in this situation is to put together coalition forces where the cost can be spread out. Instead, our allies shun the U.S. because of the damage that this President has done. In essence, the President has substantially weakened this country, and every reputable military leader know this.
You can say that you didn’t vote for his character but rather for what he said he stood for. But what does that really mean? His “beautiful border wall” is a joke, and the worst part of the joke is that much of it has been horribly constructed by a company that won the bid as well as over $1 billion of future work on the wall not because they had an amazing record of solid construction jobs completed, but rather because the company’s CEO went on the talk show circuit to convince the President to award his company these massive contracts for a few sycophantic words of praise. Those without much character have a very difficult time accurately discerning those who have it. And when you look at where vast amounts of the federal money dedicated to fighting this Covid-19 pandemic has gone, you’ll find it has gone to companies loyal to this President who have little to no ability to live up to the contracts they signed with the U.S. government.
And if character means nothing to his supporters, then how can they really trust him? Trustworthiness is a trait that all of us would rank at the top of our lists when dealing with others. If his supporters are not going to hold his character accountable, then he has free reign to do as he pleases which means being totally untrustworthy. As a simple example, look at all the people who have worked or are still working in his Administration. He’s loyal to them only as long as they never say anything remotely negative about him. Is that really true loyalty?
You can say that you support him because he wants to put America first. So he’s initiated a trade war with China which means only one thing: you and I now have to pay more because of the President’s tariffs. The President claims that China is going to pay the tariffs, but that’s not how tariffs work.
What Trump does is only support those who continuously bow to him and grovel. This is why he dislikes the military: the military teaches that respect has to be earned through actions and not just words. But the President wants the highest level of respect without action. This is what happens to people who are born with silver spoons: they don’t have the immigrant mentality of working incredibly hard because they never really had to struggle. It’s the reason why this President doesn’t respect anyone.
Some of you might still believe him when he says that he was at the top of his class at U Penn. And you might also have believed him when he said he was at the top of his class at his high school military institute. So, a good way to figure out if this is a guy you can trust is that you let him show you what he’s done by releasing his academic transcripts. But what Trump has done is made sure that his academic transcripts never see the light of day. Just as he has done with his tax returns.
Just to be clear, I do not believe that academically excelling in high school or college is the best metric for one’s ability to lead. In fact, it is often just the opposite, as you can see by President Truman who never received a college degree. But when someone constantly brags not just about being a good student but being at the top of his class, then I say we go with that wise age-old adage: Put up or shut up.
The reality is that any single one of these negatives isn’t a big deal. People inflate themselves all the times in resumes and interviews. But when the lies and deceptions repeatedly happen, you have two choices: acknowledge the pattern or refuse to consider the pattern.
This brings us to Trump’s war on science. The sad thing is that the Republican Party used to stand for a lot of good things. But Trump, who was never a Republican until he realized there was no way he could win the Democratic nomination for the 2016 election, has taken a party with a long history in this country and reduced it to “Crazy Uncle at the backyard BBQ status.”
He has taken Republican Senators who have spent their lives building up their reputations and turned them into his lapdogs: they heel when he says heel, and they bark when he orders them to bark.
And the only ones among them who speak anything resembling the truth — other than Mitt Romney on occasion — are those who are retiring, which is a euphemism for getting out of the craziness before they get too badly burnt.
But the worst thing that Trump has done is create this illusion that he has superior gut instincts. The fact is that his instincts are terrible. Look at Trump University, Trump Steak, Trump Casinos, etc. But what the President has done is convince a lot of his supporters that they should trust his instincts more than they should trust science and the experts. What he has really done is convince a lot of Americans that they should not think independently but rather just follow him because he says he’s smarter than the experts and that his gut instincts are better than the top scientists in the world.
It’s actually the perfect sort of brainwashing that cult leaders employ to manufacture devoted followers. These psychopaths tell their gullible followers to not listen to anyone else and not believe anything they might hear unless it comes directly from the cult leader’s mouth. And the people most likely to believe it are oftentimes devout religious followers because at the heart of religion is believing that something exists which cannot be proven by science.
For those of you who believe that he’s an American patriot, here is a question: if he, as the President of the U.S., is an American patriot, then why does he demand that everyone who works in the White House take a loyalty oath to him? Isn’t that exactly how monarch, dictators, and other authoritarian rulers conduct business? If his allegiance is truly to the U.S., then those same people should be taking only an oath of loyalty to the United States of America. Anything else is traitorous.
I could go on and on about how this President has set the U.S. back 40+ years. Just look at the racial tension that now exists. After 9/11, we celebrated the military as well as first responders. Now we have people suspicious about the police and this only heightens the level of tension felt by police. Is there a problem with certain officers abusing their positions? The videos don’t lie. But how is blaming all police officers for the bad actions of some officers going to lead to the types of reforms that clearly need to happen? And those reforms should allow good cops to become even better while getting rid of racist cops, but it won’t happen as long as this President is in office. Why? Because in order to have this type of reform we need a Commander-in-Peace, not a Commander-of-Chaos.
This is not just my opinion. Have we ever seen an election where so many leading members of one party (in this case the Republican Party) are voting for the other party’s candidate? And these are not people who fall into the “disgruntled former employees” category. Nearly 600 prominent Republicans have joined ranks to vote for Biden. They range from Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell to tech CEO Meg Whitman to former New Jersey Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman to Admiral William McRaven. They are joined by other prominent Republican groups including 73 former national security officials and 107 former state attorneys general. Even the venerable New England Journal of Medicine has abandoned its neutrality and is endorsing Joe Biden because it recognizes that we need a President who will help heal the country.
There are those of you that no amount of facts could convince you to vote for anyone but this President. So be it. I just have one question to ask. Do you want your children to act like this President? Just as when Major League Baseball had a rash of brawls that quickly became adopted by Little League players a while back, people — especially adolescents and teenagers — take their cues from people in positions of power.
If your child watched this President and copied his behavior, would you be happy that your child refused to ever admit making a mistake and instead blamed others? Would you be happy that your child reacts explosively to even the tiniest criticism? Would you be happy that your child constantly breaks rules and doesn’t respect them? And would you be happy with a child who spends an enormous amount of time watching TV and playing videogames (or golf) instead of actually focusing on the task at hand (i.e. studying)? If your child kept lying to you, would you be happy?
If the answer is that you don’t care, then by all means, go ahead and vote to re-elect this President. But the result of that choice is best laid out in the Bible, Galatians 6:7–8:
“A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature shall reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
But if your answer to any of the above scenarios is that you wouldn’t like it, then you shouldn’t vote for this President. Kids are highly malleable, especially mentally. And now we have a whole new generation that watches this President and thinks he’s amazing. As many of us know, high school is still a place where people struggle mightily to be cool, to be rebellious. It is also a time in life when students can be incredibly cruel unless taught otherwise.
I’ve heard that there are many young white males in high school and college who support this President. They don’t support him because he’s accomplished so much. They know he’s crude, and there are a certain sector of this demographic of supporters that love him for constantly behaving and saying things without worry about the consequences.
But many of this group support him because we have an educational system that for years has muzzled students who don’t toe the academic lines that many teachers have drawn. There is truth that as the U.S. has become more sensitive, it has also become much less tolerant of those who have contrary views. I’ve worked with many high school students and seen this first-hand. Where this leaves students is knowing that if they play “the game” and parrot back the teacher’s opinions (usually fairly liberal), then they’ll get a high score even if their research and writing are sub-par. In contrast, if a student’s research and writing are excellent and they have legitimate scholarship to back up their writing, they’ll often get a lower grade because what they are actually being graded on is how well they adhere to the beliefs of the teacher as opposed to being graded according to the level of their scholarship.
And the frustration about this is not confined to just these students but also their parents as they blame ultra-liberalism for unfairly discriminating against them. For them, “tolerance” seems to apply in only one direction, and so they voted against the status quo because what this President during his 2016 campaign run seemed to promise them was an end to the discrimination that they feel.
In our collective quest for greater tolerance, this does not mean only increasing our tolerance in accepting those who have been historically marginalized but also working with those who feel more recently marginalized as the system changes and evolves. This doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game where newly-accepted groups benefit while people falling in the more conservative groups are marginalized. In the end, what we should all stand for is a system that rewards those who work hard and excel solely on their own merits. But that will take time, and during this flux interim period, we would be wise to keep the lines of communication open for both sides.
The last thing to end with is why I am writing this. The reality I face is that I have a leadership position and a key thing I teach is that leaders need to be decisive.
In 2016, I didn’t vote for either candidate because I didn’t like either of them. At the time, I was disgusted by both candidates. But my inaction was a mistake, and for the past four years I’ve realized that anyone who really dreams of being a true leader can’t sit on the sidelines and be neutral. Now in 2020 I’ve talked with many people who remind me of my 2016 self and are saying they won’t vote because they dislike both candidates. They say that the lesser of two evils is still evil. Or they say that there’s no use in voting because the people of their state are overwhelmingly going to vote for one candidate or the other, so why bother voting?
But the problem is that such a decision for inaction is incompatible for people who either want to lead their own lives and/or lead others. Leadership in both areas requires making decisions. Have you ever wondered how amongst morbidly obese people most stay obese but there are some who make startling transformations and lose 60+ pounds. There are a lot of psychological reasons why this happens. As someone who has walked this path and lost over 100 pounds, I understand it well. And what it comes down to is not taking some huge singular action but rather taking that first tiny action because it requires making a decision and then acting on it, even though it may seem inconsequential in the face of an overwhelming amount of weight to lose. Then one tiny action builds the impetus for the next tiny decision and subsequent action, and this cycle continues until eventually massive change occurs.
Making decisions and taking action is leadership, and there is no greater test of someone exhibiting leadership than being one tiny drop in a large bucket of water but still doing something to make that bucket better.
Why?
Numerous books and articles have been written about leadership. But the distillation of all of them is this: leaders are decisive and take action. They make choices. They don’t sit on the sideline and armchair quarterback. And oftentimes the greatest leaders take action against overwhelming odds. They understand that not taking action against oppressive situations is a tacit complicity that the status quo will continue or someone else will change it. The moment we start putting such important aspects of our lives in other people’s hands is when we have lost leadership over ourselves.
Am I crazy about Joe Biden? Definitely not. But I voted for him today not because he is the lesser of two evils but rather because he is the better candidate. That is a subtle but important distinction. Trying to decide between the lesser of two evils becomes like being a hungry person trying to decide whether to put your hand on hot metal that is 300˚F or 250˚F for one minute in order to get food; either way you’re going to get burned badly and so if you have an option to pick neither and starve a bit longer you’ll most likely take it. Deciding what is better between two options would be the same scenario except picking between a pan that is 140˚F and 70˚F. In such a situation, your hand will still get a little damaged but the better choice allows you to eat and still have a fully functional hand.
Joe Biden is the better of the two candidates. He’s more stable. He’s actually successfully dealt with a highly infectious disease during the Obama Administration. He’s far more respected by our allies around the world. And contrary to the lies spread by the current President, Biden’s tax plan is not going to tax the hell out of everyone. Taxes will rise on those making more than $400,000, which is not the vast majority of us. He has a record of protecting the healthcare of people with pre-existing conditions, and he actually has plans for major initiatives, as opposed to the current President who has a giant book of his major health care initiatives that has only empty pages. Such a blank book of plans for the U.S. is what has contributed to the chaotic environment we find ourselves in today. Such a blank book means that instead of America moving forward with a course map that’s been checked and verified by experts, we are on a plane without a course destination and a capricious pilot who constantly lurches the plane in different directions causing all sorts of turbulence and motion sickness for us.
America needs to get off the crazy wild swing that we’ve been on for the past four years and instead become calmer, for it is in that calm that we can re-establish common ground between warring factions. No one builds a great structure during major storms.
To be honest, I know a lot of people who are voting for the current President to be re-elected. And contrary to their portrayals in the media, many of them are good people. They have their reasons/beliefs, so be it. I’m not going to criticize them because at least they took a stand. It wouldn’t be the one that I’d advocate for, but I can live peacefully with it. Why? Because the strength of our nation is that we don’t muzzle dissent but protect it because just as a classic sign of physical strength is how much weight one can bench press or bicep curl, the strength of any democracy is directly proportional to the amount of dissent it can support.
Regardless of which way you vote, please vote. Forget about voting according to party lines and instead look deep inside of yourself and ask yourself this single question: Who is the better leader? Future crises are guaranteed to happen, and Americans deserve the best President available.
When the time comes to tell future generations about this particular time in history, let them know that you were decisive and voted not just for yourself and for our great nation but also as a way of honoring the many who have sacrificed much so that we have this privilege of letting average American voices be heard at the highest office in the land.
