Bill Clinton – barbwoolard

Immokalee, Florida, is one of the more unlikely places on the planet where one might expect to have a soul-impacting experience; but that’s just what happened to me on Tuesday of this week. As I was standing in the second row from the fence separating the waiting crowd from the speaking area set up for the feature attraction—a campaign speech by Hillary Clinton’s number-one surrogate, former President Bill Clinton—my feet were firmly planted on the spot of soil which I had claimed to place me in a prime spot for at least a handshake and hopefully a selfie after the speech. Alas, only the first row got selfies, but I did succeed in getting the treasured handshake. While I was waiting for the event to begin, my eyes scanning the growing crowd, the gentleman behind me suddenly voiced the thoughts that were spinning in my mind: “LOOK at the diversity in this crowd!”

Indeed, it would be almost impossible to conjure in your mind the diverse group gathered there. For those unfamiliar with the Florida map, Immokalee is just under an hour’s drive from Fort Myers; it’s an agricultural community east of Naples. Both carved out of the Florida Everglades, and both in Collier County, the differences between Naples and Immokalee could not be more stark. Naples is the Palm Beach/Grosse Pointe/Hamptons of Southwest Florida. Many homes in downtown Naples could cover football fields, and there’s that “certain something” about the people one meets there on the streets.

Immokalee, on the other hand, is an unincorporated community, belonging to the Naples-Marco Island Statistical Area. It is home to a large migrant population: farm workers and produce pickers, whose main crop is tomatoes. The poverty and human rights abuses have for decades been the subject of documentaries and calls for change.

Since Collier County sits on the edge of the Florida Everglades, the county also remains the home of some Seminole Indians, who were forced to move south during the Seminole Wars in northern Florida during the early 1800s. Thanks to the Seminoles, Immokalee is not without its bright spots, especially the large Seminole Casino where people from all of South Florida enjoy gambling and dancing.

There in the middle of the Roberts Ranch, all of those wildly diverse populations were represented in what almost felt like a scene out of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” But instead of highlighting the dark heart of human nature as in Hawthorne’s fiction, this gathering highlighted the very best, most enlightened impulses of our common humanity: love and respect unbounded by skin color, race, age, or socio-economic status. With one voice, Naples elites, Immokalee farm workers, local politicians, old people, young people, black people, brown people, red people (Seminoles), and white people peacefully chanted “I’m with her!”

When President Clinton appeared, he seemed every bit as much at ease on a makeshift stage at the Roberts Ranch as he would have been at a white-tie dinner with high-rolling donors. He spoke lovingly and kindly to the audience, making every individual feel the same warmth and good humor as if he were speaking only to them.

He spoke with great knowledge and command of fact on the economy, health care, gun concerns, and other issues of significance to all; but his central theme was something even more important. He said he began this campaign expecting a “normal” scenario of two candidates stating their different views on issues and choices facing Americans; but as the campaign progressed, he said, he became increasingly aware that this campaign was going to be about far more than issues and choices. It was going to boil down to what it means to be an American.

Simple yet profound, that phrase—“what it means to be an American”—has occupied my thoughts these last few days. And here’s what I’ve decided: To me, being an American means living life on the Roberts Ranch. Oh, not literally, of course. I like my creature comforts too much, and I have no desire to start picking tomatoes. But I’d like to see that gathering become a microcosm of our country at large. Yeah, that’s idealistic, and that kind of goal will never be fully realized; but here are some things which I think are doable and which I think we must do if we are to reverse the damaging legacy of 2016.

The subculture which has found legitimacy and a public voice through the Trump campaign must be sent back to the underbelly where it belongs. According to an investigative report by Luke O’Brien (http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/alt-right/), the alt-right movement was only a loosely connected group of white supremacists and violent Neo-Nazis until Trump came along and saw a chance to latch onto a strong support group. Thanks to Trump, Steve Bannon, and the communication technology of Breitbart, this group has now infected the mainstream and has been emboldened to pursue their twisted dream of forming white ethno-states. They have even identified their “next David Duke,” a 25-year-old man named Matthew Heimbach who aims to lead the group forward toward a “future of organized hate.”

Sadly, racism is written into America’s DNA: the kidnapped Africans were here before the Pilgrims, and the white Europeans’ (from whom most of us are descended) genocide of the Native Americans is a national disgrace. But those better parts of our nature had gone a long way toward rectifying our original sins until this ugly uprising. We all have to be the people we want our fellow Americans to emulate. More than ever, being an American means being informed. We no longer have the luxury of living with our heads in the sand and assuming smart people will lead us in ways of righteousness. We must accept the responsibility of being part of the solution.

Americans of the present and the future have to heed the advice of President John F. Kennedy:

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

Party loyalty must give way to a vision for the common good. The last decade has demonstrated the dire consequences of fierce party loyalty: obsession with obstructing our president has become the driving force behind every decision in Congress, rather than accepting the mandate of constituents who elected those representatives to legislate solutions to problems facing everyday citizens. Millions of the people voting to elect a demagogue as president are doing so simply because he is the nominee of their party. That doesn’t work any more! Better for your party to lose the White House, the Senate, and the House than for all of us to lose our country! Unlike Trump’s bigoted “America first” mantra, we need to be Americans first.

More than anything else, having a Roberts Ranch culture requires all of us to look around us and truly believe that we are stronger together—not just repeat it as a catchy campaign slogan, but really internalize the fact that cracks and divisions weaken any vessel. The glue that can keep us all in one piece is love and compassion, not hate and desire to conquer and destroy. We don’t need any more David Dukes! We need some more Martin Luther Kings who believe

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil –hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars –must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

John Winthrop, one of the leaders in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its governor for 12 of the first 20 years of its existence, said in 1630:

For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our god in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world . . .

Now 386 years later, the eyes of the whole world are still upon us; and what they’re seeing is pretty embarrassing some days. They’re seeing an emotional toddler impersonating a presidential candidate, they’re seeing huge rallies where angry people spew hatred for our democracy, they’re hearing angry white people calling for the incarceration of their leader’s political opponent, they’re hearing a “presidential candidate” threaten his opponent with investigation and incarceration if he wins the high office, they’re seeing the rise of a subculture that could destroy everything the last 386 years has established, and they’ve heard a candidate threaten not to accept the voters’ decision in a major election. In other words, the whole world is seeing the United States of America do the unthinkable: give serious consideration to electing a demagogue who has no respect for our history and our institutions.

Winthrop warned, “We could become a story and a byword through the world.” In today’s language, that means “We could make asses of ourselves in front of the whole f&^%ing world. Is THAT what we want?” Of course, none of us wants that, but some are hell bent on trying to make it happen. And not only do we make ourselves look foolish, but we jeopardize all of those other countries whose security is at least partially dependent on our not losing our minds.

The government our founders envisioned was a great experiment that was supposed to determine whether humans could live as equals and be trusted to govern themselves, to prove that we didn’t need a monarch. Every now and then, we have to stop and ask ourselves the question, “So, how’s that working out for us?” Abraham Lincoln did a reality check in his Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

And today we’re in another civil conflict of sorts; we’re facing another test. Can our system work in the long term? Can we be trusted to elect smart, capable leaders? Can our two-party system function for the good of all? Can we maintain the peaceful transfer of power on which we’ve always prided ourselves? Can we get along with each other even when we disagree? Can we let the better parts of our nature dictate our actions and choices, or will we live by our base instincts?

We ARE stronger together. Do you want to live in a perpetual Trump rally, or would you rather live on Roberts Ranch? I’m voting for Roberts Ranch: love, peace, equality, and cooperation. Please join me!

The only thing more shocking than Donald Trump’s lewd dialogue with Billy Bush in the now-infamous hot-mic tape is the number of people who have defended him and shrugged off his comments as “boy talk.” At the same time, many of us have struggled to understand how anyone—especially a woman—could be undisturbed by such vile attitudes and the implied admission of sexual assault against multiple women.

Michelle Obama’s emotional statement that these revelations have shaken her to her core are juxtaposed against memes showing Julie Andrews joyfully dancing atop the mountain with the caption “This is me not caring what Donald Trump said about women.” Dozens, if not thousands, of women have taken to social media to write impassioned defenses of Trump and to state their continued enthusiastic endorsement of him and their intention to vote for him to serve as president of our country.

Baffled by such unreasonable and unthinkable responses, I’ve struggled to get inside the thinking of women who can support a blatant misogynist and evangelical Christians who can support a person who so flagrantly violates their own stated beliefs.

To be able to have a discussion with anyone, I have to understand the other person’s argument: not just the conclusion but the claim, evidence, and reasoning which led to the conclusion. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a group discussing the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. With such clear evidence that the Israelis are responsible for gross human rights violations against the Palestinians, the question I needed to have answered is “What is the argument for many people’s one-sided support of Israel?” By what thought process do so many people justify Israel’s actions and place all of the responsibility for wrongdoing on the Palestinians?

When my daughter told me that my son-in-law adamantly opposed her plan to buy all white towels for their new home, I asked “What is his argument?” What is the thought process which leads to the conclusion that having all white towels is bad? What did white towels ever do to him?

Likewise, I have tried to understand the reasoning which could lead a woman or an extreme right-wing Christian to want to elect a president who has so outspokenly violated everything they hold dear. I don’t know, but here’s one conclusion I’ve drawn: If you were delusional enough to think Donald Trump was fit to serve as President of the United States of America before the hot-mic tape was released, nothing in that tape would change your mind. That tape was not the wake-up call; it was the confirmation of a thousand wake-up calls we’d received long before the tape was released. Those who were still not awake simply can’t be wakened.

Americans have accepted sexual improprieties in our presidents throughout our history as a nation: Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Bill Clinton, to name the most familiar. Presidents, presidential hopefuls, and scores of others in high office have been brought down by sex scandals; and many of them have survived the ordeals, their reputations tarnished but their heroic status intact. Here’s a link to a list of 25 of our most admired and influential leaders who have embroiled themselves in scandalous behavior: http://www.gq.com/gallery/the-twenty-five-greatest-philanderers-in-american-political-history#26. I make the distinction between scandal and scandal-worthy behavior because before the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, many of these facts were not widely known; if those people lived today, however, their every move would be followed and reported.

Groping, skirt-chasing, lusting—none of these are new to us in the lives of our national leaders. Thomas Jefferson, in addition to his well-documented long-term relationship with his half-black slave Sally Hemings, is rumored to have had affairs with at least two other women. When Bill Clinton was impeached, it was his lying, not his philandering, that most people were unable to accept and for which they believed he should be prosecuted. In case anyone is wondering when we might have our first gay president, some believe we already have, in the person of James Buchanan.

And if consent is the thing that separates the acceptable from the unthinkable, I don’t believe Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings can be strictly defined as consensual, given the vast distance between them in terms of power and status. It seems most of Bill Clinton’s dalliances were classified as consensual, although he has also been accused of using his power and position to take advantage of women.

Other rumors from this source, http://www.salon.com/2015/02/08/the_7_biggest_presidential_sex_scandals_in_history_partner/, would have us believe that Andrew Jackson may have been married to a bigamist, since he married her before she was divorced from her previous husband; Republican saint Ronald Reagan was accused of rape in 1952 and the devoted Nancy allegedly had a fling with Frank Sinatra; Bush 41 and 43 have both been accused of extra-marital affairs, and 43 was accused of rape by a woman who later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Regardless of how much is true and how much is rumor, sex scandals are nothing new to us; and some of them have barely diminished our admiration for the perpetrators. I think it helps that we didn’t find out about Jefferson until a couple of centuries after his death, and we didn’t even know about Kennedy when he was in office. People’s private lives, even when they held high office or aspired to hold high office, were considered private. They did their jobs and established their reputations without the distraction of having their most private moments blasted out on TV and Internet every minute of every day. By the time we knew, we had learned to love and value them for their service and could forgive, though not condone, their private sins.

Those whose scandals have been made public during the age of the blow-by-blow news cycle have often, however, had their political careers dashed by their private sins; remember Gary Hart and John Edwards. And even those whose sex lives have remained either private or unremarkable have other unthinkable acts on their records, such as FDR’s executive order authorizing the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese descent, including both American citizens and non-citizens (in addition to his sexual dalliances). Abraham Lincoln, freer of the slaves, did not hold 21^st-century ideals regarding equality between blacks and whites or the possibility of our living together in harmony.

As Americans, we are obviously not accustomed to being governed by saints. How then do we defend our outrage and revulsion over the contents of Donald Trump’s hot-mic tape? I would argue that the tape is less remarkable for what it reveals about him than for its confirmation of what we already knew. This is concrete evidence which, for those of us who already found him abominable, confirmed and strengthened our conclusions. On the other hand, those who saw him as the American messiah were understandably not swayed in that opinion because they’ve seen it all before. Please don’t misunderstand: I am as appalled as ever by what we heard on that tape, but I’ve come to understand why others are not. The fact is it’s not those appalling statements that make Trump unfit for the presidency; those statements simply confirm why we already knew he was unfit.

These are the things we already knew about Donald Trump before October 9, 2016, which make him unfit to serve as our president, even IF he were a model of marital fidelity.

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because he knows nothing about our Constitution or how our government works. Thomas Jefferson was a scholar who wrote our Declaration of Independence, one of the most brilliantly composed documents ever published. Although he was out of the country serving as Minister to France during the time the Constitution was being drafted, his other writings fill volumes, and excerpts from them line the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Bill Clinton is best known for 115 consecutive months of economic expansion, the longest such period in American history, along with major contributions to providing jobs, advancing education, and lowering unemployment.

Jefferson and Clinton were not models of purity or piety, but our country is indebted to them for their brilliant minds and lasting imprint on our government and culture. Trump, on the other hand, is a demagogue whose only claim to excellence is that he will fix everything he perceives to be wrong with our country—even though 16 months into his campaign, he has yet to tell us how he would keep any of those promises. He is the most ignorant person ever to seek the presidency; and even IF his accusers’ claims were to be proven false, which I’m sure they will NOT be, he would still be unfit.

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because he has no respect for most of the people he would be “serving.” He has insulted and alienated women, veterans and their families, blacks, Latinos, immigrants, and almost every other major group except angry white men. His so-called campaign rallies consist of attacks on the latest person who has gotten under his very thin skin. His persistent attacks on the Khan family should have eliminated him from the race long before the mic-on-the-bus tape was released. Bill Clinton showed more class during his impeachment than Trump has shown toward Alec Baldwin for his unflattering portrayal on SNL.

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because he is the most immature person ever to appear on a presidential campaign platform. From the constant ax grinding to his habit of turning everything his opponent says about him back onto her, he’s the equivalent of an emotional toddler and a functional fifth grader. When Hillary Clinton says he’s not presidential, he says she’s not presidential; when she calls him temperamentally unfit, he says she has a “terrible temperament.” This is reminiscent of the Pee Wee Herman line, “I know you are, but what am I?” Cute for a comedian, unbelievably childish for a presidential candidate.

And just this week his former ghost writer, Tony Schwartz, estimated Trump’s vocabulary at about 200 words. For perspective, child development experts say that a 2 1/2-year-old should know approximately 300 words. No wonder he can’t express complex ideas and when he’s reading prepared comments, he sounds as if he’s seeing them for the first time.

Contrast Trump’s juvenile rants with the eloquent speeches of FDR, which my stepfather still plays on his computer because they bring back memories of a revered president and wartime leader. Contrast Trump’s toddler tantrums to the lofty rhetoric of John Kennedy and Bill Clinton; all three of them are known for their sex scandals, but two of them are also known as brilliant leaders with a vast knowledge of and love for our constitution and our country.

Trump is unfit to serve as president because of the people he associates with or with whom he hints at associations. When his campaign was about to implode, he replaced his campaign manager with Steve Bannon, a person best known for his white supremacist attitudes and for creating an online haven for a diverse group now known as the alt-right. Trump has also been often accused of a bromance with Vladimir Putin, known for human rights abuses in Russia. As further demonstration of his childish thinking, he has defended his support of Putin with the line, “He says nice things about me, so I’ll say nice things about him.”

Oh, and have I mentioned that Trump is unfit to serve as president because of his utter lack of knowledge about other countries’ governments and our relationships abroad? From his fascination with nuclear weapons to his casual mention of destroying international alliances, he is a threat to our safety and security as a nation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt led our country through all but four months of World War II; under his leadership, we rebounded from the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor and had nearly achieved victory by the time of his sudden death. His masterful leadership during the most globally threatening event in history overshadows our knowledge of his private transgressions. Donald Trump, with his ignorance and immaturity, would more likely be the cause of than the solution to international conflicts.

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because he has a proven record of lying. Not only do his lies confirm that he cannot be trusted, they also insult our intelligence. He denies saying and doing things which are recorded on tapes readily available to thousands of media personnel and can be replayed by the push of a button. According to Politifact, 70% of all the statements they have checked are mostly false (19%), false (34%), or pants on fire (17%). And in true Trump fashion, he has turned this truth about himself onto his opponent, who, according to Politifact, lies less than any other politician they’ve fact checked.

His lies have contributed to his incitement of fear among his followers, fear that causes them to believe his messianic claims and remain loyal to him no matter how disgusting he becomes. FDR, in his first inaugural address, famously said this about fear: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Every time Bill Clinton speaks, he eloquently reminds us what a great country we live in, not a country which is on the brink of disaster and can be made great again only by electing an ignorant demagogue.

When it comes to sex in politics, Americans are not virgins. Even claims of rape and predatory behavior are not new. What this election has brought us for the first time is an ignorant, bigoted, misogynistic xenophobe who is a threat to our existence as a republic. Sex won’t destroy us, and rape can be litigated in our courts. Ignorance and bigotry are the real threats, and we simply can’t stand by in silence as our fellow Americans vote to send an ignorant, bigoted demagogue to the sanctuary of the Oval Office. We can’t let that happen.