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Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Letter to a Jewish Trump-Supporting Friend

I don't feel like having lunch today. And I don't believe I'll see, it'll be ok. 

The Electoral College has just proven to women that a man who has a dozen women willing to come forward with charges of sexually predatory behavior can still be elected president.   What use is coming forward?   Do you feel disempowered?  I do.

We have also proven that failure to pay income taxes or one's contractors is no impediment to high office.  I'm a contractor.  So my "smartest" clients are my biggest risks?

That complete disinterest in the legislative process does not disqualify.  

That complete lack of compassion for those less fortunate, due to circumstance or disability, doesn't matter. 

That inability to focus or concentrate doesn't matter; you can prepare for the highest office in the country by "watching the shows."  On Fox. 

We have trusted a man who cannot be trusted with his own Twitter account -- his advisors finally shut it down in the last days -- with the ability to launch nuclear weapons.

David Duke is ecstatic; have you read his reactions?  The other Trump supporter among my Facebook friends is inviting Whoopi Goldberg to shove off for Canada.   Black woman, Jewish name.  He has no use for either; he's all resentment.  He thinks the "other" is eating his lunch.  He scares me.

People have voted with their lower intestines, not their brains. 

We have also proven the danger of only reading and watching what you want to see and hear.  Had I forced myself to watch Fox more, I guess I would have been less surprised and perhaps less complacent.  Had you read the New Yorker, you would have heard different voices, perhaps come to different conclusions.  

This election is an embarrassment to the world.    And part of a global, nationalistic trend that has come to terrible grief in the past.

I cannot reconcile your vote with your intelligence; I chalk it up to your authoritarian streak.  Your idealization of the past.  It's consistent with your admiration of the most hidebound, insular, conservative type of Jew: Hasidim.  They have one morality for their own kind -- or those they think they might persuade to do more morally arbitrary mitzvahs --  and little to none for anyone else. 

Yes I too miss some things about the past-- like Walter Kronkite -- but none of them turn me towards Trump.  My sister lives up in Suffern, near the Hasidim who have cynically joined school boards, starved the local schools their kids don't attend, cheated welfare, busted neighborhoods, and earned the fear and contempt of everyone around them.  Don't get her started on Hasidim.

Like our friend Bill and other liberals, I was educated to think critically and to evaluate things by humanistic bottom lines, for everyone alike.  

My whole graduating class is grieving with me. 

I'm sorry, this is a very black day.  I cannot be less angry about this than your sister is. 

Ellen