Trump and Kindness
Wait--what kind of title is that?
I have sort of an obsession with kindness. It’s so valuable, yet lately seems in short supply. One place we really need it is in government, especially at the top. Of course it’s best in combination with brains, honesty, and a reasonably decent personal moral code.
In this Dark Age of Trump, many of us can see that he and his dictator friends, Maga colleagues, and base are serious bad news for our country and the rest of the world. One of the traits they all have in common is that they are chronically unkind, and even cruel. Almost all of Trump’s plots and plans, past and future, are downright cruel, and damaging to a world in which the rest of us must live.
It’s cruel to intimidate others, threatening their welfare and even their lives if they stand in the way of his further gathering more money and power; to call “vermin” and “animals” people (non-white ones) who are desperate for safety and who are happy to work hard for it; worse, to accuse them of murder, rape, and being insane. It’s cruel to do away with the hard-won cherished rights of millions. It’s cruel to treat women as things he can do whatever he wants with, and then proclaim it loudly while contributing to their suffering; also to call up violent goons to threaten and even harm people such as election workers who are just doing their jobs and don’t jump at his commands that they do wrong in order to help him retain high office.
Lately Trump appears to be widening the net, threatening millionaire business people should they not contribute money to him, even though some time ago they’d decided they no longer wanted to support him.
Thomas Edsall in The New York Times wrote that they’re afraid he’ll come after their businesses if they don’t donate. Republican politicians once critical of him are falling into line saying they support his re-election, the latest being New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu. Some experts suspect Sununu is afraid of what Trump might do to him. (Edsall’s stunning article, "This Is What You Get When Fear Mixes With Money" is listed below in Notes, and is extremely worthwhile reading.)
Trump’s and Magas’ cruelties are numerous, with one of the worst being denying aid to Ukraine, which besides being cruel is just plain irresponsible, and stupid.
I don’t want a cruel, irresponsible, stupid president or congress-people at the helm of my country. I don’t want a president who lies and threatens his way through life and who admires the dictator clan of which he’s practically now a member.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote that Trump’s been clear about his intention to use “the power of the state to crush those who he feels have been insufficiently supportive of him,” adding that there’s every reason to believe this since Trump did so when he was president, for example using the IRS “to harass former FBI director James Comey—who refused to kill the investigation into the ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives as Trump demanded.” She lists also Trump’s investigations and indictments of Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton, and others.
In all the years he’s been tearing the fabric of our country apart, I’ve never head him utter one kind word in public. Instead we hear starkly cruel statements such as his mocking wounded soldiers and dead heroes. Or we hear painfully frightening remarks like those the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd writes that he said publicly, about how we’ll “lose World War III and America will be devastated by ‘weapons, the likes of which nobody has ever seen before.’ ” (It must be exhausting to find so many diverse ways to be both scary and cruel, and keep doing it for years.)
I believe many Magas and some (or many?) of Trump’s base mimic his hate and/or rage. That’s sad if true. I’m shocked also at his loathing of this country that overall has been good to him. I guess he’s just too dark and messed up to see that. Do we really want someone like that running the nation? Do we want someone in the White House who is often thoughtlessly cruel (in addition to the thought-out cruelties), yet compares himself to kind persons of the past Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, and Jesus?
Do we want a leader who encourages by example the increasingly mean and even brutal behavior now reported often in the news, as people attack, batter, and kill each other rather than talk through disagreements? Do we have to accept his gangster-like approach to life? Is it so very hard to act like grateful citizens of a great country, one that I was taught in school was a model of charity, caring, and equality?
The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell wrote this week that lawmakers worked hard on a bill that would exchange tax breaks for expanding the child tax credit. It would improve the living standards of 16 million low-income children, and do many other good things, and be paid for “by curbing a pandemic-era tax break that has produced an avalanche of fraudulent claims.” Yet Republican senators are trying to kill it for reasons that “are all over the place,” including "it might hand President Biden a win before the election” or “discourage parents from working” (the bill does includes an earnings requirement). She wrote that the objections get even more absurd, but “have nothing to do with helping poor kids,” and suggested maybe “some politicians misheard ‘Suffer the little children’ as simply ‘Suffer, little children.’ ”
Another un-kindness is that Trump isn’t bothered by the loss in wellbeing for some 675,000 workers whose jobs, said CNN’s Matt Egan, could go away if Trump is reelected due to his threats to increase the“Trump Tariffs.” His plan includes more steep tariffs on many imports, which could cause a recession along with the job losses. Those workers’ and their families’ suffering seems of no concern to him.
I wish Trump’s base could see that he won’t be the friend they expected if he’s re-elected. Most will suffer along with the rest of us. Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh warned on CNN that we mustn’t lose sight of the danger Trump is, since he threatens that if he doesn’t win it will be because the election was rigged. Walsh said that statement tells Trump’s violent acolytes to get ready. He believes there will in fact be violence if Trump doesn’t win.
Biden continues to try to help all Americans, especially non-rich ones, despite a dysfunctional Congress. He’s trying hard to save Ukraine, and to get more aid get into Gaza. He’s helped thousands of struggling college students pay off their loans, and has gotten many bills passed that help all of us. He repeatedly makes it clear that thinking about the wellbeing of others is central to his character.
Even if you’re bored with or angry at him, a vote for him is now crucial in order to prevent the disaster of a Trump win. It’s also the best way to help Biden continue to help all of us, and along with voting for Democrats in Congress, to protect democracy here and worldwide.
Notes:
Thomas Edsall’s article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/opinion/trump-donors-project-2025.html?unlocked_article_code=1.
HeatherCoxRichardson.substack.com April 14
Rampell, Catherine, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Rampell/WhctKKZWljzBTFjbtCLvQqrzkBJh