When Did Telling the Truth Stop Mattering in American Politics?

I was raised in a staunch Republican home. I don’t think my parents ever voted for a Democrat for president. Dad, like Richard Nixon, was born a Quaker, although he and Mom raised us as Episcopalians. Ethics and morality were important. When I found a dollar bill in the church parking lot, I was told to put it in the collection plate, and I did.

Integrity was paramount. I remember Dad telling me, “Just because other people steal apples doesn’t make it right for you to steal apples,” and similar teachings.

I attended the same boarding school Dad attended, and I remember having to write on every test paper, “I pledge upon my honor that I have neither given nor received help on this paper.”

Another truism Dad taught me was “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”  The French term for this is "noblesse oblige," literally "nobility obligates you."  In other words, be as charitable as I can, which in my case has taken the form of planned giving to the three private schools and one university which even today contribute to my success in life.

(By the way, Ivanka Trump attended the same boarding school as me -- Choate Rosemary Hall. A classmate in a position to know tells me that she has never donated to the school, which amazes me.)

Telling the truth and giving back is in my blood. That’s a big reason that I have been shocked, even stunned, by the affection with which a third of the American electorate holds our current president, even though none of those supporters can deny that he is a habitual, if not pathological, liar. How can that be sustainable for four years, much less eight?

Telling the truth is a core trait when it comes to assessing a person’s character. What we see with Donald Trump is that building fear about the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is key to having Trump supporters overlook the man’s character, and lying is just one part of that character, albeit a very important part. After all, who among those supporters would tolerate lying in a friend or colleague? I myself have fired broker associates for lying.

The question for Trump supporters to ask themselves (they won’t answer me, of course!) is, what is “a bridge too far” for them, and is the fear mongering about communism, socialism, gun confiscation, and you-name-it really justified, or will someone finally turn the tide against our president by playing the role Joseph Welch played when he struck back at Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Senator’s hearing into communist infiltration of the U.S. Army, saying to him, “Do you have no sense of decency?” It was the confrontation which finally brought down the Senator, ending his groundless communist fear mongering, which we see repeated now by the Trump campaign.

Of course, communism and socialism (the distinction is not offered or understood) is not the only fear mongering. There’s the blatant racism, such as saying that blacks and other minorities in “Democrat cities” will bring crime and violence to the suburbs, or that the 2nd Amendment will be abolished (as if that could be done simply by electing the Biden ticket and a Democratic congress, which it can’t), or that any of the absurd Qanon conspiracies theories are true.

But what about those other elements of Trump’s character? We know he evaded military service and that he said captured or killed soldiers aren’t heroes (“I like heroes who aren’t captured,” he said in denigrating Sen. John McCain, who he called a “loser” when he died.)

Trump’s authoritarian words and actions remind Americans, especially those who emigrated from Europe after WW II, of Mussolini or Hitler, and his calling the free press “the enemy of the people” is definitely a bridge too far for me and for countless Americans.

It’s becoming clearer day-by-day, especially with the increased investigation of the man triggered by November’s election, not only in television documentaries but by numerous books and articles by persons who have been in his inner circle, that he is not fit for the office he holds. Also, with the latest brouhaha over Trump’s alleged calling dead WWI soldiers “losers” and “suckers,” generals may now speak up, too.  Meanwhile, their silence speaks volumes. 

Have You Ever Been Conned? (If You’re a Trumper, No Need to Answer)

We have all been conned at one time or another, and it’s a terrible feeling when you realize you’ve been conned.

The fact that Donald Trump still has as many supporters as he does must make him the most successful con artist ever. But no con artist lasts forever. Joseph McCarthy conned Americans into thinking actors, journalists and professors were communists, but eventually he fell. Donald Trump will fall too, and it’s interesting to see that he’s now employing the same technique of communist fear mongering as McCarthy did. As I noted in my Talking Turkey column on April 9th, Trump’s first and greatest mentor was Roy Cohn, who served Senator McCarthy in his 1950s witch hunt.

The original con of Trump is that he’s a successful businessman. As detailed in numerous books, not just Mary Trump’s, he is, in fact, a serial failure, filing numerous bankruptcies. When he conned banks into lending him millions of dollars which they then lost, he conned them into continued support to avoid their own embarrassment. We still have much to learn, thanks to the ongoing criminal investigation of the Trump Organization in New York, especially with regards to Deutsche Bank.

A good example of this ongoing con was an email I received this Tuesday morning from Bob D.  It forwarded an urban legend titled “A Man With a Good Heart” Here it is:

The 14th of June, 1946 is the birthday of a boy born in the Jamaica district of Queens, NYC. In 1995, his car has a flat tire. A black man walking by notices it's owner is wearing a suit. So he fixes the flat. "How can I repay you?" asks our birthday boy. "My wife has always wanted some flowers" A few days later, the black man's wife gets a beautiful bouquet of flowers with a note saying, "Thanks for helping me. By the way,....the mortgage on your house is paid off." A USMC Sargent spends 7 months in a Mexican prison for a minor charge. He is beaten. The man from Queens sends him a check for $25,000 "To get you started." A black bus driver saves a suicidal girl from jumping off a bridge. Our Queens man sends him a check for $10,000. A rabbi's critically ill son needs to get from NCY the California for specialty care. No airlines will fly him. The generous man pays for a private flight for the child. This kind man from Queens commits many other "quiet acts of random kindness." A wise man once said "If a man's heart is good,....Nothing else matters. And if a man's heart is bad,....Nothing else matters." Who is this kind man?...???.Trump. Donald J. Trump,....a man with a good heart.

When I replied to Bob D. with a Snopes link about this urban legend, he replied as follows, which says so much about the victims of Trump’s artistry:

“Comrade, Who is trying to 'con' who with your propogandist pap?  Your case of TDS (Trump Degenerative Syndrome) is the worst I have seen! Get over it! Trump won, commies lost!”

A con survives in darkness. As it is unraveled by those who see it, those who don’t see it are told that the truth is not the truth, and not to read or watch those news sources that say otherwise. That strategy is abetted by conservative TV and radio talk show hosts who lend credibility to the con over and over.

To do that, these enablers of the con depend on conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump gives as good as he gets. The Netflix documentary “The Confidence Man” is an excellent documentary about Trump's addiction to conspiracy theories, starting with the "birther" theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

When I responded to another discredited line with a Snopes link, the writer replied simply “Snopes=Soros.” That’s not true either, but it allows the propagators of disproven stories to dismiss the single best non-partisan source of fact-checking.

(George Soros, if you don’t know, is a wealthy backer of Democrats.)

What amazes those of us who see Trump for the con artist he is, is how he has been enabled by Senators and Congressmen who do know that it’s a con, but choose to perpetuate it for their own political gain. This will change when continuing to support Trump more clearly spells re-election defeat and/or when Trump is out of office, hopefully in January.

I know Sen. McConnell and his co-enablers know the truth but choose to ignore it, because clearly every Senator and Congressman does read the Washington Post and the New York Times and does watch CNN and the broadcast networks, because that’s virtually required when you’re an elected official.

From the very beginning, we’ve been waiting for “moderate” Republicans to turn on their “dear leader,” but that’s regrettably still in the future — hopefully, for our nation’s sake, in the near future.