The Case Against Trump For My Republican Friends

To a liberal, the prospect of a Trump presidency is the stuff of an Orwellian nightmare.  Being a liberal who counts several staunch conservative Republicans among my friends, I have struggled with how to make a rational case which might allow them to ignore their usual views and vote against The Donald – “voting against” being defined as anything they might like: everything from withholding their vote entirely; to voting for any other third party candidate they care to choose; or even engaging in that most unholy of acts from their vantage point – voting for Hillary Clinton.  I will not make a case for Clinton in this piece, since that may well be a bridge too far for many of them.

While my Republican friends and I disagree about many things of a political nature, I know that we emphatically agree on many issues commonly found in daily life, especially the values of civility and living an ethical life in accordance with the dictates of a firm personal creed.  And while our personal creeds may differ somewhat about matters of the political mind, the differences are matters of degree rather than stark contrast because we share many of the same convictions of the heart.  I know this because I don’t make friends with zealots of any stripe, since zealots are tiresome at best; at worst, they are dangerous because their zeal so often conceals their view of whatever ethical horizons they maintain other than the object of their zealotry.

It has finally occurred to me to offer my Republican friends a technique that I long ago adopted for myself when faced with difficult decisions.  Everyone knows what it’s like to be faced with difficult decisions – the worry and the stress and the sleeplessness of getting it right when so much is on the line.  Everyone also knows what it’s like to wake up the morning after having made a difficult decision, only to realize there is no going back, that things somehow and sometimes look very different on the other side of a just-crossed line of no return.

My own technique for dealing with difficult decisions is simple: I do my very best to imagine myself over the decisional line before a final choice has to be made, to consider how each potential option then available to me might look from the other side.  This is hardly a new idea, but my implementation takes it to systematic and rigorous excess.  I do this option-by-option, rolling each perceived world it creates around on my mental tongue to see whether it tastes bitter or sweet, and I keep doing so until one option prevails over all others.  I don’t always get things right using this technique, but I have found that it manages stress more effectively and materially reduces disappointments, as long as I stay calm and rational while making the attempt.

So for the benefit of my friends who haven’t voted for anything other than a Republican in eons, I would like you to imagine a Trump victory in which you voted for him and consider the possible effects of that upon your personal situation.

Let me help you.

For the teachers and educators among you, imagine the effect upon your classrooms and the playground of having a recognized, certified bully as president.  Imagine the credibility his election will lend to his most prominent behavioral trait.  All of the hard work you have put into anti-bullying programs could well be lost overnight, especially given the boasting and roasting which would inevitably follow election day.  Some parents have told me that they have seen this effect already.  Losers will abound in a triumphant Trumpian universe; the only qualification needed being to have voted against The Donald.  How many of your students will be the children of losers?  How will the children of the “winners” be inclined to treat them?  How much more difficult will your job become?

For those members or alumni of the armed services among you, imagine the effect of having a Commander-in-Chief who considers vacillation an art form to be used to maintain control.  What is it going to be like to be a member of that class of public servants who voluntarily and routinely put themselves in peril on behalf of our country to have a man in charge who doesn’t seem to understand why we cannot use nuclear weapons in every instance of conflict?  How many places are you likely to be sent to fight for the sake of his latest whim?  How often will our soldiers, sailors, and airmen be asked to bully little guys as a means of performing the solemn duty they’ve sworn to their country?

For all of the retirees among you, imagine what the effect of his election will be upon whatever savings you’ve taken a lifetime to create.  I strongly suspect that the stock markets will go crazy – and not on the upside.  Foreign stock markets will undoubtedly crash on the news of his election, since most foreigners are already in a state of disbelief about what they are hearing about our election; when foreign markets fall, they usually drag the domestic markets down with them.  And that fact says nothing about how our own markets will be inclined to act on their own initiative.  Remember that Henry Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush and the former chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs, is already on record as opposing Trump; remember that he knows a good deal about domestic stock markets.  He’s voting for Hillary.  As he said in a Washington Post opinion piece: “The GOP, in putting Trump at the top of the ticket, is endorsing a brand of populism rooted in ignorance, prejudice, fear and isolationism.”  (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-it-comes-to-trump-a-republican-treasury-secretary-says-choose-country-over-party/2016/06/24/c7bdba34-3942-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.b9d1809cf063) What effect do you think that might have on your savings account?  Nothing good, I can assure you.

For all of my fellow attorneys, imagine the effect of having a president who not only likes to bully judges, but does so primarily in the pursuit of his own ends.  Then imagine the kinds of federal judges he is likely to appoint.  The greatest worth of our federal judiciary has always been its independence, its relative freedom from lobbying and interference.  Even when we disagree with a particular decision or a general judicial outlook, we have always admired the courage shown by strong, independent jurists.  If, as I suspect he will, Trump will seek to appoint only toadies to all levels of the federal bench, think of how much we will we have lost; think about the length of time that loss will endure; think about its effect upon the upcoming generations of lawyers.

For all of my Republican friends in business, think about having to conduct business in an atmosphere of constant uncertainty over what the rules might be tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, under a president who cannot seem to maintain any particular position longer than a nano-second.  There is nothing worse than trying to conduct business during times of uncertainty.  Imagine four or even eight years of constant uncertainty driven by the whims of a narcissist.  Even those certainties which you dislike yield ground rules by which you can operate while you bitch and complain about them.  Everyone in business knows that profit results from taking risks, and every one in business knows how hard it is to plan for even ordinary risks.  So think about the quantum jump that risk levels take when times are uncertain.  Think what the effect on your supply chain will be when Trump inevitably turns his bullying on any nation who says unkind things about him, as you must know he will.  If you are inclined to argue the point with me, remember Trump’s performance during Brexit, and think again.

For all of those who value rational democratic discourse no matter how different our basic beliefs may be, consider this conclusion reached today by Thomas Friedman in a New York Times op-ed piece entitled “Trump’s Ambiguous wink wink to ‘Second Amendment People’”:

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated.

His right-wing opponents just kept delegitimizing him as a “traitor” and “a Nazi” for wanting to make peace with the Palestinians and give back part of the Land of Israel. Of course, all is fair in politics, right? And they had God on their side, right? They weren’t actually telling anyone to assassinate Rabin. That would be horrible.

But there are always people down the line who don’t hear the caveats. They just hear the big message: The man is illegitimate, the man is a threat to the nation, the man is the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal. Well, you know what we do with people like that, don’t you? We kill them.”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/opinion/trumps-ambiguous-wink-wink-to-second-amendment-people.html)

I could go on, but space limitations prevent me from doing so.  The point is that whoever you are, whatever you do, think carefully before casting your vote this November and before you vote try to imagine what your life will be like in the still-pretend Trumpian age.  While it is never easy to cross a decisional line using your imagination, there is one advantage that each of us has in making the attempt in the context of the upcoming election: Trump’s failings are so many and so obvious that they don’t require expert interpretation; they are so clear at ground level that they stand out clearly whenever you peer into the fog of the future.

So my Republican friends, make your decision about how to vote on the basis of your own ethics, sense of civics, and self-interest, not on the basis of party or mistaken loyalty.  After all, we still have a secret ballot in this country, and you don’t have to tell anyone – not even me – how you voted.

Listen to your heart; or if you consider that to be advice which can only have come from the soggy mind of a self-professed liberal, listen to your gut instead.  They both are saying the same thing in this instance.

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