W.J. Astore
The Empty Barrel Makes the Most Noise
It’s been a welcome relief not to write much about Donald Trump since he left office with so much dignity and so little controversy in January 2021. (Just kidding!) Back in March of 2016, I wrote a BV article on how and why Donald Trump had disqualified himself for the presidency. During a debate, Trump had boasted, in his usual ignorant way, that U.S. military members would follow his orders whether they were legal or not. Basically, it was the Richard M. Nixon defense of “If the President does it (or orders it), that means it’s not illegal.” Trump, I concluded back then, was constitutionally unsuited for the presidency. It didn’t matter. Hillary Clinton ran a horrible campaign and Trump won a surprising victory.
Put charitably, his four years as president were a very mixed bag. If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can consult the Bracing Views archive and all the articles I wrote about Trump and his deeds (and misdeeds). His biggest accomplishment was a big tax cut for the already wealthy in America. He seriously bungled the COVID crisis, projecting cluelessness instead of steadiness. He blamed his generals for a botched raid on Yemen, then shamelessly trotted out before Congress the widow of a service member who’d died there. He surrendered to his generals and prolonged the Afghan War and almost started a war with Iran by killing a senior general in a risky drone strike. He pandered to Israel (he still is pandering, by the way). He boosted Pentagon spending. He angled for a big military parade in Washington, D.C., just because that’s what democracies do. (The parade at least never came to pass.) He posed with a Bible to advocate law and order. And that’s only a few items off the top of my head.
Trump is now older but judging by his speeches none the wiser. His rallies have gotten longer and his speeches more chaotic. His vilification of immigrants is especially inflammatory. His claim that student protesters of genocide in Gaza should be deported was yet another example of his fundamental misunderstanding of Constitutional guarantees to freedom of speech and assembly. He continues to be more of a divider than a uniter even as he lacks a vision for a better American future. His slogan is “Take America Back.” From whom, or to what era? Many of his claims about his opponent, Kamala Harris, are simply lies. (No, Kamala doesn’t “hate” Israel, quite the reverse; no, Kamala isn’t a “Marxist,” she’s a self-avowed capitalist.)
Speaking of Trump’s age, I worry about his health. He’s 78, overweight, but still displays admirable energy (so far). Yet we’ve just witnessed a president, Joe Biden, also elected at age 78 who’s been in obvious physical and mental decline. Is Trump ready for the rigors and strains of another four years in office, which would see him as America’s leader until age 82? I have my doubts.
Since I live in a blue state and also used to be a registered Democrat, I’ve been spared being inundated by Trump mailers. My friend M. Davout who lives in a swing state hasn’t been so lucky. Here’s his description of being mail-bombed by the Trump campaign this fall:
I have probably received over 50 pro-Trump mailers over the last month and a half. Friends of mine (also liberals) report the same torrent of ugly campaign dreck. [These mailers] appeal to the lowest negative human motives, fear and hate … Listen to the lies and racist claims Trump and Vance articulate daily–immigrants are murderers and rapists, Haitians are eating pets, Mexican gangs are taking over American cities, they are poisoning the blood of America, Harris is an idiot, she is a DEI candidate … What kind of person do you imagine they are trying to reach and mobilize with this rhetoric?
Davout has a point. Trump’s campaign rhetoric is often angry, vengeful, hateful. It’s consistent with previous Trump imagery of American carnage, of America being disrespected, of America needing to strike back at … someone. Somewhere. Immigrants at home. Iranians abroad. This is not unique to the Trump campaign, of course. Many Democrats despise Trump. Too many Democrats are pro-war. But no one would describe Trump as running a campaign based on unity and joy. A politics of harshness, of recrimination, of grievance, of score-settling, largely defines the Trump campaign.
Readers, Trump’s vision is not my vision of America. Nor was it my father’s. Eight years ago, in October 2016, I wrote an article: “Dump Chump Trump.” I’ll paste it below. I highly doubt any Trump supporters will be turned away from their man merely by my words, but perhaps they may serve to rekindle a few concerns about what kind of man Trump is. My conclusion remains the same: Trump is not the answer.
*****
Dump Chump Trump
Donald Trump is a chump. I’d call him a chimp, except it would be an insult to chimpanzees everywhere.
Oct 1, 2016, 09:29 AM EDT
What kind of a presidential candidate tweets in the middle of the night about alleged sex tapes involving a former Miss Universe winner? Indeed, what kind of a man does this?
Donald Trump is a chump. I’d call him a chimp, except it would be an insult to chimpanzees everywhere. The man has no discipline, no sense of decorum, and no compassion for others (let’s not forget his signature line, “You’re fired”). Indeed, he seems to revel in humiliating others. This was mildly amusing when he was taking on equals on the stage during the Republican primaries, but it’s disturbing in the extreme to see him bullying the little guys and gals for whom he’s supposedly a champion.
So many sane people and major newspapers have gone on record as being against Trump that there’s little I can add. Sadly, Trump’s followers seem unperturbed and undisturbed no matter his insults and tyrannical behavior.
All I can say is this: Trump is not the kind of man my father taught me to be. My dad, who fought forest fires in Oregon in the CCC, a veteran of an armored division in World War II, a city firefighter for more than 30 years until his retirement, treated people fairly and squarely. He was humble about himself and considerate to others. I can’t recall him insulting others, certainly not in the intentional and hurtful way that Trump directs at others. Trump is especially fond of attacking women or minorities or anyone he sees as vulnerable, the very opposite of my dad’s code of behavior.
Don’t get me wrong: my dad wasn’t perfect. He had his faults. But his faults were not directed at others; he didn’t try to demean or diminish other people, as Trump so obviously enjoys doing. Unlike Trump, my dad wasn’t boastful; indeed, three favorite sayings of his were: “Still waters run deep,” “Don’t toot your own horn,” and “The empty barrel makes the most noise.”
You were right, Dad. The rushing nonsense from Trump exhibits his shallowness; the man is constantly tweeting his own horn; and, like the empty vessel that he is, he makes an awful amount of noise.
Trump: Not the kind of man my father would respect; not the kind of man our country needs.
Dump chump Trump.
Standard Disclaimer (10/2024): Criticizing Trump doesn’t mean I love Kamala Harris. Instead, I’m going to demonstrate my misogyny and anti-Semitism by voting for Jill Stein—you know, a Jewish woman who’s actually for peace and against genocide.
Bracing Views 
Right, Mr. Astore, Trump is certainly not the answer. But neither is Kamala Harris. Thus the American “democracy” provides no answer. Yes, one can vote for Jill Stein, and probably ought to, if one votes at all. But she’s not allowed to be the answer. Thus, THERE IS NO ANSWER. A system that provides no answer—that is to say someone for whom people could conscientiously vote and who has a chance of being elected—cannot be called a “democracy”. So let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that the United States is more democratic than, say, Nazi Germany. In fact, it’s a failed state that has cut itself off from sanity and common decency.
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Not surprisingly, former U.S. president Barrack Obama formally backs Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
I doubt he realizes that Americans collectively deserve far better than just either the usual establishment, thus very corporate friendly, callous conservative or neo/faux liberal in the White House, something I believe they very likely will never get.
More so, it’s no longer sufficient for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates to simply fully support party policy on core non-fiscal social issues: those of race, sexuality, gender, and unrestricted abortion access.
A large enough proportion of Americans are financially struggling just that much. Some non-corporately-commissioned polls have shown that a majority of Americans favor the governmental implementation of some public programs, especially universal health care.
For his own part as an establishment president, Obama publicly drank from a glass of Flint, Michigan water [supposedly, anyway] via mass media, signifying the water system was safe from which to drink. But many say it is STILL not safe to drink.
As a then-admirer of Obama, I muttered “Say it isn’t so”. It greatly reinforced my belief that U.S. presidents, indeed along with Canadian prime ministers, essentially act as instruments of big corporate/money/power interests.
I know that the lead-tainting was not Obama’s doing; however, what he did was a major shock to and disappointment for the lead-poisoned Flint folk, who’d expected far more/better from him. To a lot of people, he had behaved like some TV-promotion actor hired by an (in this case) seriously ethically/morally challenged corporation.
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Incredibly, many faithful followers of Donald [Gimme’a Blow Job] Trump still claim he’s a genius robbed of full presidential glory and that he challenges the Deep State. And then there’s “the swamp” that Trump still claims he’ll drain if re-elected — although he himself was and will again be a part of it. … But since the Trump administration kowtowed to big fossil fuel, mostly via the recklessly significant loosening of environmental protections, he, far from genuinely trying to “drain the swamp”, actually wallowed in it.
A revelatory review (by Geoff Olson, 01/10/2018) of the book The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil and the Attack on U.S. Democracy notes that the book’s author describes big oil CEOs and lobbyists in the U.S. as being a notably large part of the American Deep State. Therefore, it would be a large part of the national Capitol’s swamp that Trump claims has corrupted D.C. and, ergo, was supposedly seeking to destroy him and his presidency.
“This notion of a supranational deep state does not seem to be far-fetched to me, though I remain agnostic about rumors involving the [Trump administration’s] Offal Office. I certainly don’t buy the alt-right notion that Trump is playing ‘four-dimensional chess’ against the deep state. The six-time bankruptee would probably lose at checkers to a nine-year old and tweet that he whipped Garry Kasparov.”
—Geoff Olson, “A Deep State of Confusion”
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