Political History Statement

I am 66 years old.  In sequential order, I have lived in New York City and its  suburbs, the U.S. Virgin Islands, upstate NY, Virginia, Massachusetts and Maryland.  I have lived in Israel since 2013.

I attended Colgate University in Hamilton, NY.  I originally wanted to study Religion, Philosophy, and History, but ultimately studied Biology.  I studied botany, ornithology, herpetology, entomology, ecology, genetics, and chemistry.  I marched against the Viet Nam war, and I visited the Black Panthers in New York City.  

I worked for three years in the Botany Dept. at the Smithsonian Institution. I completed my Master’s at William and Mary, in Virginia. My Master’s thesis is on Bald Eagle Nest Site Selection and Foraging Behavior.  I sought work in wildlife biology but never found it, except for a brief stint one summer working with Peregrine Falcons.

Most of my professional career has been in data processing, first in the private sector, then in the Federal government at the Social Security Administration.  I also had a parallel career as a Licensed Massage Therapist for 20 years.  I am married, all three of my children are married, and I have six grand-children.  

My “Ethnicity Estimate” from Ancestry.com is: 87% European Jewish, 5% Southern Europe, 2% Caucasus, 2% Middle East, 1% Scotland/Ireland/Wales, <1% Eastern Europe, <1% Scandinavia, 1% East Asia.

My voting record in Presidential elections is as follows:

1972 - McGovern

1976 - Ford

1980- Carter

1984 - Mondale

1988 - Dukakis

1992 - Clinton

1996 - Clinton

2000 - Bush

2004 - Bush

2008 - McCain

2012 - Romney

2016 - write-in: Pence/Weld

One can see the overall trend from liberal to conservative in my voting record.  I had high hopes for Clinton, but in the end, I felt I needed to shower every time I saw his face.  That was the end of the Democrats for me.

In the last election, I certainly wasn’t going to vote for Clinton, but couldn’t bring myself to vote for Trump.  My personal preferences in the Republican field of candidates would have been Kasich or Rubio.  So I wrote-in Pence for President and William Weld (the Libertarian VP candidate) for VP.

I know that a lot of people passionately hate Donald Trump, to the extent that family members won’t talk to each other.  To the point of violence, and character assassination.  To the point of throwing people out of restaurants.

There are many things that bother me about President Trump.  He is inarticulate.  He is unable to express himself except in the simplest words.  He isn’t slick; he’s as blunt as a spoon. He relies on Twitter, of all things, to express opinions, to berate and deride his opponents.  He shoots from the hip too often.  His hair is stupid.  He always has this smug expression on his face, that reminds me of Mussolini.  I’ll bet that he talks with his mouth full, burps at the table, and farts in public.

I had a short but interesting conversation with an Aunt of mine, who had just turned 90.  I called to wish her happy birthday.  Then she started in about how I must be happy with Trump.  I indicated to her that he is great for Israel, compared to Obama.  She grudgingly acknowledged that, while at the same time saying he is ruining America, he is separating children and parents at the border, and that  “Obama was a gentleman”.

I hadn’t called to get into a pointless political discussion.  I just wanted to tell my Aunt that I loved her.  So that’s what I did, and we parted with affection.  What I thought of saying to her was “Neville Chamberlain was a gentleman, too”. 

Does anyone reading this know who Neville Chamberlain was?  The state of education is such that I’d be happy if 50% know anything about the Prime Minister of Great Britain who appeased Hitler rather than opposing him.  He was gentleman enough to resign once the spot-on predictions of the decidedly un-gentlemanly Winston Churchill came to pass.  But he wasn’t gentleman enough not to continue to undercut Churchill’s efforts to fight Germany, rather than capitulate.  So much for “gentlemen”.  I suppose Trump would call Chamberlain a “loser”.

My goal is not to compare Churchill to Trump.  My point is that someone who is slick and smooth, articulate, well educated, intelligent, and able to soothe you with sweet words and utopian views of “peace in our time” is not necessarily worth listening to.  The snake in the Garden of Eden was also a smooth talker, and possibly even a gentleman.  My take on Obama is that he looks fair, and feels foul.

When I attempt to look objectively at what President Trump is actually doing, I find it hard to find much that I would disagree with.  He is playing hardball with the tyrants of the world. He is making it possible to do business, find a job and make a living in America.  He is defending American industry from unbalanced foreign trade.  He is attacking violent gangs.  He is not following the European model (and the Obama model) of hating your own history, and committing cultural suicide in order to do penance.  He is showing up the UN for the fraud that it is.  Fix what’s wrong, but keep what’s strong.

Americans as a whole do not know how their own government works.  No one learns civics or history anymore.  It is up to the Congress to pass laws.  It is up to the President to enforce laws.  If Congress passes a law, it is incumbent upon the Executive Branch to enforce that law.  That’s how it is supposed to work.  So, getting back to my Aunt’s reference to separating children of illegal immigrants from their parents at the border - this is a law passed by Congress and signed by a previous President, that every following President is supposed to enforce.  At one point even Obama enforced this.  

The purpose is to protect children from being incarcerated with adults.  Not every immigrant is a “poster” immigrant, not every parent is a “poster” parent, not every child is a “poster” child, not everyone who claims to be a parent is a parent.  Yes, the President somehow has the option not to do so, but the alternative has been “catch and release”.  Proven to be a very dangerous choice, with some disastrous, even fatal, consequences.

There is no question about the humanitarian issues involved.  But I have seen very little written about what is going on in those Latin American countries.  What is it that causes people to choose such a life-threatening option; to trek thousands of miles, to a country they’ve never seen, for a life that may be an illusion, and the real possibility of death along the way and deportation upon arrival?  

Why aren’t those countries held responsible for this humanitarian disaster they have created?  Why aren’t they working for the betterment of their own people?  What is the so-called United Nations doing about it?  Who is holding these governments responsible?  Why are there no consequences for these regimes?  

Better yet, why isn’t this being debated by the so-called UN Commission on Human Rights?  Refugees are pouring out of Syria as well.  Now that Jordan has closed it’s doors, they are running - of all places - to Israel.  Currently 60,000 are reported on their way to the hated Zionist Entity.  Thousands of Syrian wounded have already been treated in Israeli hospitals.   After recovery, they are returned to Syria.  What is the UNHRC doing about this exodus and the situation that is causing it?  Isn’t it the responsibility of the UN to provide safe haven for refugees?  Will refugees from Syrian, Iranian, ISIS, and Russian atrocities become eternal refugees for generations?  Will they have the “right of return”?  Or will they be assimilated into neighboring countries? 

Aside from Syria and Jordan, there are 20 other Arab states.  There are a total of 50 Muslim-majority states.  How many refugees are they taking in?  How many are they treating in hospitals?  Why should they be Israel’s responsibility, why should they be Europe’s responsibility, and why should it be America’s responsibility to allow unrestricted and illegal immigration from Latin American tyrannies?  Why aren’t Latin American countries coming to the rescue?  What has Mexico done for anyone lately?

One of Trump’s advantages is that he really doesn’t care what you think of him.  He just wants results.  And he knows how to play to his opponents’ - and even his erstwhile supporters’ - personal interests.  He is a Capitalist.  He knows that ultimately Congress acts when it is in their self-interest to do so.  He wants immigration reform.  Congress has failed to do so since the Bush years.  So he simply enforces the law in order to cause a hue and cry from both sides of the aisle.  Everyone is ticked off because “how will this play out on election day?”.

Say what you want, but he is a genius.  The cards are still on the table, and no one has cashed in their chips yet, but North Korea comes to a summit, Iran is coming apart at the seams with domestic unrest, and, miracle of miracles, Congress is finally talking immigration reform.  Jerusalem is now recognized as the Capital of Israel, the PA is becoming recognized as a sham, even Hamas is occasionally being criticized, and Prince William makes the first official trip to Israel by a member of the British Royal family.  Not bad for just two years in.  

The opposite of hate is not love.  The opposite of hate is sanity.  Hate is, essentially, a form of insanity.  If you find yourself full of hate, you should realize that you are, at best, temporarily insane.  So these people running around foaming at the mouth with hate for Trump are no better than Palestinians screaming “Death to America, Death to Israel” (or even “Death to Palestine” as we have recently heard in Iran, which shouldn’t warm my heart, but it does.  I am working on myself.)  Why death? Why hate? Is that the best alternative you have to offer?

No one knows what rules Trump is playing by, and that is his brilliance.  He catches everyone by surprise, and keeps everyone off balance.  But the results seem to speak for themselves.   It simply doesn’t matter what I think of him.  And he doesn’t care what I think of him, anyway.  If he needs to bypass the mainstream media and make news by Twitter, then so be it.  Let the media change itself in response.  It’s a free market place, and you have to change to compete.

This is the stuff that swirls through my mind at 3 AM after I wake up from some weird dream or, as happens more and more frequently, my bladder and I float to the bathroom.

So I ask you, is it just me?