1. Trump has always come across as a jerk. I don't mean merely a New Yorker. "Killer" Ron Halvorsen, the boxer turned preacher, built a career on being a working-class Noo Yawkuh wit de accent an' orl, and I was a member of his church for four years.
So I'm not talking about an accent that I find amusing, or a manner that gives me the pleasure of feeling overprivileged. I mean that Trump comes off as a rich jerk with a long record of taking advantage of anyone who's disadvantaged in any way, in business "deals," specifically including widows and disabled veterans.
2. There are those who believe that anyone who wants to declare bankruptcy instead of paying a debt should be required to sell off all his/her assets, including motor vehicles, television sets, and any garment or piece of furniture that has or ever had a market value higher than $100, and if the creditors want to be mean there doesn't really need to be any legal provision for letting non-payers of debts keep the shirts on their backs. I am one of those people.
3. I'm not even sure that I'd call Trump sexist. Men who believe that a man who lies only to women, as it might be by vowing to "forsake all others until death doth them part" and then marrying younger women, repeatedly, is a man whom other men can trust, are sexist. I don't see Trump that way. I see his obnoxious behavior toward some women as having a certain unavoidable sexist odor, but I see his behavior toward some men as being equally obnoxious. I see him as an equal-opportunity selfish jerk who's likely to cheat and/or betray anybody. I mean...without even being an elected official he's already used eminent domain to take advantage of private citizens. (The position of this web site is that that ought to be made a felony, incurring deportation at the minimum.)
Note that, although Scott Adams has presumably got into this with a lot of "anti-Trumpers" who parrot the "Trump is a crazy racist" meme (while threatening the lives of Trump supporters? ???)...this web site has never, ever, accused Trump of being "crazy." This web site does not use "crazy" as an all-purpose insult-word, first of all. Secondly, I don't think it's rational to describe a successful Bankruptcy Billionnaire as anything but intelligent. Evil, perhaps; despicable, certainly, but very intelligent...sort of like my late husband's late ex-wife, or like the late Osama bin Laden. Acknowledging intelligence doesn't mean we like or approve of a person. It can mean recognizing one of the very few people who really qualify to be hated, and regarded as enemies, by intelligent people of good will. It can also be a way of acknowledging our debt to those who successfully oppose someone who's both evil and intelligent, which is always what's going on when I acknowledge that Hitler (before the drugs) was perceptive and intelligent and able to latch on to good ideas for his evil purposes...I'm not admiring Hitler, I'm admiring Churchill.
And, racist? I think that's like "sexist." Trump is, indisputably, White and male; he was those things in the bad old days when people thought those things should automatically confer privileges on a person; he wants those privileges, for sure. But, I repeat, he's not stupid. By now he knows better than to expect to get away with overtly relying on race or gender as a disadvantage for the other person, and he's seen that people who are neither White nor male can be serious competitors.
(This web site is partial to tangents, so that "Fauxcahontas" tangent might as well be addressed here, just to get it out of the way. Elizabeth Warren is neither a relative nor otherwise comparable to Pocahontas. She won the nickname "Fauxcahontas" by falsely claiming Cherokee ancestry in order to get the benefit of affirmative action. Warren's alleged basis for this claim was her cheekbones, which, it was later determined, she inherited from Swedish ancestors. Interestingly, Trump has claimed Swedish ancestry, but his grandfather was German. The confusion seems to have been traced to the grandfather; Trump may have honestly believed he's Swedish-American, as President Obama may have believed he was part Cherokee, just because people don't expect their parents to lie to them about these things. Telling children the family name is Swedish during a war against Germany, to protect those children from being beaten up if they admitted their name was German, is less despicable than denying your heritage merely in order to cheat needier students out of allegedly need-related scholarships. Still, Trump would be well advised to let the whole "Fauxcahontas" meme drop. This web site will curate it...you're welcome.)
The question that may decide the election is whether Trump can change--or appear to have changed--his selfish-greedhead-arrogant-lying-cheating-scheming-jerk qualities. Is he capable of a genuine spiritual experience? I don't know; frankly I'm inclined to doubt it. If, as some studies suggest, extrovert personalities are produced by a defective conscience, then it's either impossible or incredibly difficult for any extrovert to have much of a spiritual experience. And Trump's not just any extrovert egomaniac; he's demonstrated to the world that he's motivated largely by money, and he's made a lot of money being an extrovert egomaniac. That camel going through the eye of that needle will have an easier time than Trump becoming a Christian.
So, more to the point: is Trump capable of wanting to be President badly enough to pursue a spiritual experience, renounce selfish ambitions, and actually serve as a President dedicated to serving the will and interests of his constituents? I don't know about that, either, but it's easier to believe than that Trump is capable of being a serious Christian. He does have the natural ability to go to church, make Christian noises, avoid being alone with a young woman, abstain from any kind of private business "deals," and put his personal life on hold for four years, just as other Presidents have done...if he really wants to do that. I'm not convinced (yet) that he does really want to do that; but it's possible that he might.
I still think the best-case scenario would involve...I'm not going to propose a running mate for Trump, because I don't really wish the stigma of inheriting the Presidency on any politician I like, and I certainly don't endorse any deliberate attempt to shorten anybody's life, even Trump's, in any way more direct than encouraging the person to campaign for or serve as President. I will limit myself to observing that it's impossible for Trump to choose a running mate on the traditional "life insurance" basis, Spiro Agnew being dead. But if Trump carries on with the campaign, and yells and goes red in the face often enough, and if just about any of the other Republican candidates happens to be Vice-President when the inevitable happens...
Oh right, Big Fat Ugly German-American Jerk, #BankruptcyBillionnaire . Convince me that I'm wrong, if you can. Prove that you are capable of admitting you've made enough money on sleazy real estate deals and selflessly serving the will and interests of the Republican Party, if you can. That's the dare. This web site's support is the bet.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/146605145036/persuasion-update-clinton-vs-trump
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