So, we have a new president. Donald J. Trump has taken the oath of office and and now holds the highest office in the land. A great many of us have greeted this event as a great victory for freedom. …. But many of us are yet wary. And some of us are terrified.
Well, I am all in favor of always maintaining a certain amount of wariness. Always keep your eyes open. But for those who watch this event in pure horror, I have a few words to say.
You can relax, Donald Trump is NOT a bigoted monster.
He really isn’t. I know they’ve screamed it at you all day long for months. But it is a lie, a bold-faced falsehood to manipulate you. I personally abhor racism. Early on in his campaign, when I was attending to the democratic nomination and catching only what was said about him (rather than listening to what he actually said), I believed him to be a monster as well. I was wrong. I was lied to. And when I investigated what he had actually said and done, the deception was revealed.
Donald Trump has not attacked racial minorities. He does not threaten women’s position in society. He has not given the non-straight community to reason to fear. He does not promote religious persecution. He has not espoused hatred of foreigners. … Over the course of the year the major media institutions have taken things Trump has said, and by strained argument, perversion of facts, and sometimes whole-cloth invention, attributed monstrous meanings to him.
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Donald Trump HAS pointed out the high level of criminal activity among people who enter the country illegally.
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- Their Story – Trump hates Mexicans.
There simply is a high level of crime among that demographic; that’s the statistics. That wasn’t about Latinos as a race. It wasn’t about Mexicans as a nationality. He didn’t even try and make out that all people who enter the country in a criminal fashion are bad people. (In fact, he made a point of saying the opposite.) But factually speaking, the illegal traffic across the border does indeed bring crime and drugs into the states – that is well known. And yes, there is a disproportionate level of rape cases among people involved in the smuggling. These are simply facts. To try and swing a mere reporting of some unpleasant facts about a (relatively) small group of people (who happen to mostly be Latino) into an attack upon the entire Spanish-American race is a job so big, so far out, that I am genuinely impressed that they convinced so many people.
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Donald Trump HAS has put emphasis on upholding the border laws.
- Their Story – Trump hates immigrants and is starting an unprecedented border tyranny
No, there’s nothing unprecedented or hateful about it. Trump has emphasized that the border regulations which America (and every other nation state) has always had, need to actually be enforced. That’s not revolutionary. It’s just basic, ubiquitous national security. Go anywhere in the world, and try and just walk into the country. Not going to happen. I can’t even drive from New-England to our good friend Canada without offering identification and an account of myself to the authorities on both sides of the border. The famed and feared wall is not about oppression – it’s simply about enforcing the existing law. American citizens who have immigrated here are not in any danger on account of this. You’re an American citizen! People who are living here against the law are indeed in danger of being sent back and made to come in legally or not at all … as they would be anywhere else. People who try to come in without legal permission will be stopped. That is not something new. It is ubiquitous. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with race. That they managed to swing this as revolutionary and racist is truly mind-boggling.
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Trump HAS recommended entry restrictions on some groups
- Their Story – Trump intends to persecute racial and religious minorities.
We are at war. We are not at war with a nation but with an ideology. This makes it messy. But we are certainly at war. And our enemy is as evil as any we have ever faced. Torture? Yes, burning and crucifying people is back in style in the Middle-East. Slavery? ISIS sells little girls as sex slaves. (I understand it makes a significant portion of their revenues.) Murder? They glorify the killing of civilians. Genocide? They slaughter not only other races and religions but even their own. This is our enemy. And they have not only threatened to bring the fight to us, they have done so. Americans and Europeans have died over the past year in attacks by Muslims in the ISIS promoted fashion. While we are at war, restricting entry in some fashion is not only reasonable but necessary. Not all Muslims are terrorists, of course, but a percentage of them are. By restricting the immigration of foreign Muslims into our land, we are not persecuting them, and we are not saying that they are all evil as individuals. We are saying that a significant percentage of Muslims are supportive of violent radical policies such as those of our fiendish enemy – because they are – and so for safety’s sake we’re keeping the door closed while the fire-fight is on. Certainly, this has absolutely nothing to do with harassing American citizens of any ethic background. It’s simply a step to keep foreign enemy warriors from infiltrating us. For those of you who are concerned about the innocent Middle-Easterners who have been displaced by the chaos, you’re perfectly right something needs to be done – like stopping the chaos so they can go home.
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Trump HAS been a cad.
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- Their Story – Trump is a misogynist.
Yes, Trump is a cad. Yes, respectable people are embarrassed on his behalf for his indiscretions. He’s a libertine. Nobody’s arguing that. But a very big deal has been made about him being the perpetrator of sexual assault – the main incident about which this narrative was spun was a video in which he was bragging about how easy slutty women are when you’re rich – bragging in very coarse terms. Now this was in horribly poor taste, but it wasn’t about assault, it was about promiscuity, it was about how loose women ‘let’ rich guys take liberties. Let. If you want to criticize him as a lout and a womanizer, that’s fair. In fact, I’ll join you. But to act like that is evidence of assault is dishonest. His philandering and his coarse words are unworthy of a president. But er, being a philanderer does not translate into being a misogynist. A misogynist is someone who hates women, not a libertine. And there is absolutely no evidence that he does hate women. He’s willing to subject individual women he dislikes to the same scorn he shows to men he dislikes – but that’s a gender neutral tendency. He hired the first woman to successfully run a presidential campaign. His daughter Ivanka grew up to be quite an independent lady. He has at no point suggested the inferiority of women. He has at no point suggested that they should have their right infringed …. Oh wait, yeah, there was this one thing. He doesn’t think women have a right to kill children. But, might that not be derived not from a negative consideration against women’s right but from a positive consideration for children’s rights? (Just, something to consider.) In any case, there was at no point a statement in the campaign attacking women. Girls …. you’re fine. Trump has no plans to let you be enslaved. (That was Hillary.)
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Trump HAS spoken of American Blacks as living in bad conditions
- Their Story – Trump hates blacks.
Actually, my ability to comprehend things is starting to give out at this point. The infamous statement about the terrible state of some black communities was in the middle of a passage in which he was talking about the importance of increasing opportunity for the black community. That was a pro-black speech. It was the exact same issue the left is always touting … that blacks don’t always have it very good, and that needs to change. How on earth they have managed to make anyone think that it was racist towards blacks I have no idea.
Oh, and finally, the Antisemitism thing … his grandchildren are all Jewish. We just had a Rabbi give the first invocation at the inauguration ceremony. He certainly hasn’t verbally attacked Jews or suggested persecution. I don’t even know where they think they can stick that.
Now, tell me, where is the hate? Because I don’t see it here. The main hatred I have seen all year is the vicious attacks on Trump and his supporters as bigots and racists and xenophobes and every other ism under the sun. Time and time again what Trump has actually promoted has been ignored by the media, who simply promote their same old script whether anybody’s following it or not. Trump will cry for better opportunities for blacks – and they screamed how he was insulting them. Pence debated his opponent beautifully and was congratulated by Trump – so Huffpost runs the headline that Pence has earned Trump’s ire by being too good and showing him up.
No better example can be given than that which happened today. Donald Trump said this:
“Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.
These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.
But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.
This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.
The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans……..
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.
We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.
At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.
The Bible tells us, “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”
We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.
When America is united, America is totally unstoppable ………..
A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.
It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.
And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.
So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:
You will never be ignored again.
Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.”
Moments later the NBC commentator said “Wow, that was divisive! I mean, he was appealing solely to those those populist fans of his! Did you notice how divisive that was?!”
Aaaaaand so the lies go on. They don’t even try to make them plausible. They are apparently hoping you weren’t watching. They are counting on you listening only to them, counting on their use of ‘isms triggering such terror in you that you cannot think or see. That is hateful behavior. That is deceptive and divisive behavior. It is deeply insulting behavior. They directly contradict what is boldly in plain sight and expect the average American to believe them. And to what end, do you ever wonder?
Trump is obviously a very flawed man. By all means, be wary. I am too. But don’t take to the streets vaguely shouting of isms. Don’t scream ‘literally Hitler!’ at the guy with Jewish grand-kids. Don’t lambaste him for attacking things which he has publicly defended. Criticize every specific thing he does which is wrong. But do not, I adjure you, simply take a great big pack of negative feelings from the MSM and run terrified of a non-existent threat. It grieves me to see so many well meaning people so angry and terrified …. of a cartoon villain put forward by CNN.
So, I don’t know what will happen over the next four years. But let’s remain calm, and deal with what actually happens, not with vague lies. Let’s not believe false reports of hatred, and respond with hatred. Let’s not let anyone else do our thinking for us. Let’s give everyone, including our new president, a chance. You should be vigilant and cautious. You should always be vigilant and cautious. But you don’t need to be terrified.
So, I say with President Trump:
Of Stars, and Ships, and Meadows Green 
Correction:
That’s Kieryn Darkwater.
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John, I am disappointed.
That article you sent me to was the most pathetic mass of over-emotionalized, hate-spewing, conspiracy-screeching, unsubstantiated, hysterical drivel that I have seen in a long time. Setting aside it’s unrestrained hate and highly judgmental attitude towards a hard-working, law-abiding, peaceful demographic (I thought liberals were all about love, tolerance, and not judging people by groups), did you really take note of the substance of the article? I admit it would have been hard to do, seeing as how there was so little of it in so many words.
So. Keiran’s allegation is that there is a vast ‘christofacist’ conspiracy to turn the country into an authoritarian theocracy. Right?
And what does she use to back up this outrageous claim?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Any decent conspiracy theory – any decent theory of any kind – works out a detailed explanation of why their hypothesis covers the facts. She doesn’t. For all her melodrama, her article is shockingly short on any kind of facts. Oh, she solemnly lists a number of organizations. …. Problem is that those organizations don’t promote theocracy, fascism, or authoritarianism of any kind openly, and she gives us no proof that they do so in secret. And she grimly mentions several supreme court decisions that her villains want to overturn …. doesn’t show connections, just tells us that these would be sure to be their first steps without explaining her evidence. Oh, and she also goes into a very emotional recollection of her days in the Zombie army, and all the terrible things they did – like educating their children according to their worldview and being politically active.
That was really all the evidence she gave. None of it supported her claim. She told a sob-story, replete with over-emotionalized anecdotes and physical sensations, drew a horror picture, threw out a couple of irrelevant facts, and apparently expected you not to notice that she’d never backed up her thesis with a single good piece of evidence.
Those supreme court decisions she put forward… Even granted that all of the organizations named supported overturning all of these decisions (a conclusion which her article gives us little help towards, and which I have good reason to believe is false), they are hardly enough to justify the strength of her language. Re-segregating would be terrible, I agree, not necessarily fascist and totally unrelated to theocracy, but terrible. Agreed. The thing is, I have never heard the Christian right promote segregation. Never. I’ve heard it from the left ……. And the anti-discrimination decisions – removing those would not be a pro-totalitarian movement but a libertarian movement. I’m not saying whether it would be right or wrong (the place of the government in regulating inclusiveness is something which can reasonably be debated), but I am pointing out that that would be a step decreasing the government’s control of the individual; the opposite of totalitarianism. And the abortion issue. Yes, it surely proves how backward a movement is, when they don’t subscribe to a magical belief in a ‘fetus’ transforming into a ‘human’ at the moment of birth. How authoritarian to believe that might doesn’t make right. How unliberal to believe in the dignity of all human life! Sorry, wherever you stand on the issue from a pragmatic standpoint, the pro-life movement is a push towards inclusiveness, towards greater recognition of human rights, and towards protecting the freedoms of the disadvantaged. Whether you think it should be legal or not, forbidding the murder of children does not make you a tyrant in and of itself.
(On a totally unrelated note, why does the left think the government should regulate personal morality when it comes to inclusiveness but not when it comes to killing? Just, honest question here.)
So, her initial suggested steps for her villains really fall kind of short of her hype (even if she had proved that those villains actually meant to take all those steps, which she didn’t). So there must be something really wretched in the nature of the organizations she mentioned ….
Only, there isn’t. They’re just conservative Christian home-school organizations, and legal defense groups, and media companies. The inclusion of a company like Focus on the Family in such a list is truly laughable. Most of the organizations I was unfamiliar with until I looked them up. But Focus on the Family I grew up on! The idea of them promoting religious coercion or government totalitarianism is absurd. If I was any less indignant on their behalf, I would find it very funny. The very ludicrousness of trying to use them as an example of fascism would undermine her whole article all on its own!
Now some, like quiverfull, are indeed a bit on the kooky side. Guess what? That’s the thing about America. You’re allowed to be kooky on the right as well as the left. She wants to make a big deal about them trying to have lots and lots of kids to increase the number people like themselves. Now, I don’t want to support the idea of unlimited reproduction being an unmitigated good, I disapprove. But she is trying to portray the simple fact of them trying increase the number of people on their side as evil, and this does appear to be really the only thing she manages to pin on all the organizations. They all promote the worldview and agenda of the people who run them. And she tries to make out that not only the agenda, but their promotion of it in and of itself as an obvious evil.
This is particularly ridiculous due to it’s hypocrisy. You can argue about the rightness of their worldview and political agenda quite reasonably. But to attempt to vilify them for educating people from their worldview and for pushing their agenda is to blame them for doing exactly what every single person who has a strong worldview or a political agenda always does. She should have kept to the rightness and wrongness of their agenda, rather than trying to make school-kids writing letters sound ominous, when it would have been praiseworthy if they were on her side.
And that basically is the whole article. Keiran acting like Christian political power is the end of the world. Like Christian values are the end-all of evil. She keeps talking as though we mean to overthrow the government. But she has no grounds for that. None at all. She gives us not one speck of evidence that there is a conspiracy to make America authoritarian. The ‘fascist’ is apparently thrown in for shock value – for she never in any way justifies it! (And an educated person should know better than to fall for mere word-misuse.) Look at the stuff she actually complains about in the article. It is not us committing actions which will make America more totalitarian. It is us exercising our religion freely. It is us preventing the government from telling us as Christians what to do. It is us having some democratic measure of influence (as every other group has) in what is socially/legally accepted. She screams the Christians are going to oppress America. And then complains about Christians wanting to be free – free to raise their children, preach their religion, hire whom they like, speak out for things they deem injustice…..
She is in fact a particularly hateful, judgmental person. Do an experiment. Copy the article, take your word processor, and replace ever ‘white’ with ‘black’ and every ‘Christian’ with ‘muslim’ and her bigotry will emerge very evidently. …. You do realize that I’m a member of the group she so despises and slanders, right?
She has no evidence for her conspiracy theory. There is no intended theocracy. There are jerks and kooks on the right. Huh, look – there are people calling for genocide and putting men in zoos on the left! In spite of your and her fury towards poor Mike Pence, I can’t find any evidence of him pushing such a theocracy. I see a guy with some not politically correct opinions. (I see a guy who says a child’s life might be more important that a queer’s feelings.) I see a guy who might be wrong on some things. I don’t see anything resembling totalitarianism. And certainly her implication and your assertion of open theocracy and forced conversions is totally without evidence of any sort!
So in the complete lack of evidence for there being a threat of actual tyranny, I’m driven to the question of whether: She is false or delusional – seeing and speaking threats where there is no grounds for them. Or, whether her screams of tyranny actually mean only that the SJWs might not get their way in everything. That they might have to play the DEMOCRATIC game of winning some and losing some.
Is that it? Is that really your nightmare world? Is that really the ‘Facist’ future you fear? Seriously?
Well, if I were to be worried about Fascism, totalitarianism, and theocracy (which I would be stupid not to be) I might be concerned about the violent Antifa thugs who are currently rioting in true fascist style. I might be concerned with the globalists (on both right and left) trying to reduce the freedom of the individual and move the power out of the hands of elected democracies into those of unelected administrators and international corporations in a horribly totalitarian manner. I might be worried about the openly declared theocracy in the Middle East which is currently in the process of conquering, slaughtering, torturing, and forcibly converting in the name of its bloody demon-god, and which has plainly stated its intention to infiltrate, conquer, and subjugate us.
But no, by all means, keep worrying about those dreadful Christians!
Seriously, John. The world is full of people who would torture us both to death! And you’re worried that those Christian conservatives might prevent a woman from killing her child, and refuse to punish a baker for refusing to cater gay weddings! Good grief, Man!
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Charlotte:
Look up Kieran Darkwater’s post on January 26, 2017 on autostraddle.com
John
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Charlotte:
A man’s character doesn’t change when he is elected. He chose to run with Mike Pence, part of the far,far religious right. This group makes the Tea Party look tame. Their idea of religious freedom is the freedom to outlaw every religion other than their own. They are intolerant, bigoted, and too narrow minded to consider any idea other than their dogma.
You obviously believe all of the Fox News, Republican lies about the Clinton’s. yes, they have their faults, but compared to Trump and Pence they are tame. This country was populated by people trying to escape people like Pence. We may have to escape again.
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By the way, I gave up on Fox nine years ago, eight years before giving up on Huff-post. I now think Huff-post the worse of the two, since I saw them misreporting the debates more shamelessly than Fox. But no. I actually got none of my reasons for believing Hillary to be an evil woman from them. I blamed them for going easy on her. Pence worse than Hillary, huh? Check this out: https://jillsmithiii.wordpress.com/2016/11/06/the-clinton-threat/
Lies, you no doubt say. Well, it’s way more backed up than anything in Keiran’s piece is!
Oh well. All the best to you and yours, John
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Charlotte:
I do not judge a man based on what he says, I judge based on what he does. He is a known compulsive liar (daily whoppers lately) and a known business cheat. He has no ethics and does not seem to care who he hurts. But I am not as afraid of Trump as I am of the Republican congress. Your essay is not comforting.
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John:
In an article which was written to contest the hysterical narrative that Trump is a raving racist who built his campaign on ‘entirely on hate’, repeating what the man actually said over the course of his campaign is highly relevant. The narrative in question is not only untrue, it is a whole-cloth lie which has been pushed to drive decent people into a state of panic. (It is also an extremely insulting and unjust accusation towards large numbers of decent Americans who believe his campaign was about something very different.) If the narrative I am contesting is about what Trump said in his campaign, then reporting what he has actually said is legitimate evidence to bring to the table. The main point of this article has been to remind people that Trump has not in fact been openly encouraging and promising any endangerment of their civil liberties. Because he hasn’t.
Now, obviously, that accusation is not the only accusation which could be made against him. This article certainly could have been a lot longer and addressed many other issues. It addressed only what I was perceiving to be the most sadly widespread, destructive, and untrue issue.
The fact that Trump is a very flawed man in his personal life is of course of concern to me. But I do however find it bizarre (and weirdly hypocritical) that so many of the same people who supported a pair such as the Clintons would act as though they are far too good to support a man like Trump. Furthermore, while I am not contesting the fact that he has done plenty of things he ought not, I do contest the ‘constant lies’ narrative. I’m not saying he hasn’t lied period, but I do say that statements he and his campaign have made have quite often been falsely accused of being lies.
Also, I would agree I am concerned about his ethics level. But to say he has none is a statement of judgement which neither you or I are in a position to objectively make.
Finally, while I agree that there is much that Trump and the congress can do wrong (the environmental ramifications in particular concern me and I am very distrustful of Paul Ryan) I believe that there is also much they might do right. And I would put forward the idea that after the catastrophe which was the Democratic party’s behavior their victory would have been a death knell for our democratic process and possibly our nation.
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