You Voted For Donald Trump? This Is What You Gave To The Rest Of Us...

I am, by nature, a bit optimistic. I am, by nature, also a bit cynical---it is the part of me I personally enjoy the most. I am, by virtue of age and experience, more than a bit jaded---it is the part of me I enjoy the least.

But even in my least optimistic and most cynical, jaded moments, I would never have foreseen that a minority of relatively drug-free, non-institutionalized white people in the United States would go to the polls in 2016 and elect a man to the presidency who is as singularly unqualified and unfit---both professionally and personally---as Donald Trump.

They elected:

A man who is not as immoral as he is amoral, the distinction between the two being really right consequential. When one asks an amoral person a question about the ethical dimensions of something he/she has said or done, it does not take long for the questioner to realize that nobody's home.

Millions of people---especially those most vulnerable and most powerless---across what once was the most respected nation on the planet are, quite honestly, made fearful by the prospect of Donald Trump assuming the presidency. To know that his past words and actions betray a real degree of amorality only heightens that fear. Exponentially.

Donald Trump brazenly denied that he had brazenly mocked/humiliated a physically disabled Hispanic journalist during a campaign press conference. He was, of course, lying, and we know that because we have all seen the videotape of him repulsively flailing his arms about, stumbling around the podium, making grimacing facial expressions and muttering incomprehensibly.

Asked afterward about his disgusting display, Trump, as noted, denied doing it. And then, before walking away, suggested the journalist had been disrespectful to him. As I said: Nobody. Home.

They elected:

A man whose business adventures have been marked by fraud, lies, crooked schemes, questionable associates and bankruptcies that cost investors millions while he walked away with the millions they invested. He has been a principal in over 4,000 litigations: Any questions?

A man known---particularly in New York City and south Florida---for stiffing small businesses (running some of them out of business) and stiffing workmen/laborers. For reasonably ethical people, negotiations end with a contract. For Trump, a contract is just the beginning of negotiations. Neither his word nor his signature seem to mean anything in TrumpWorld business dealings.

A friend of the American Worker?

He campaigned by virulently condemning businesses/farmers who hire undocumented workers: "They are taking good jobs away from real Americans," he said, "and we'll fine them and put them out of business if we have to." What he never talked about is the fact that he has been cited again and again for employing undocumented workers per his various construction projects.

He campaigned---and gave hope to thousands in the Rust Belt---on reviving the U.S. steel industry. Not only does he know, as do economists and manufacturers both in the U.S. and around the world, that the steel industry is not coming back, but he has been using Chinese steel in his construction work for years and years---giving work to Chinese steelworkers while giving the finger to American steelworkers.

He campaigned---and gave hope to thousands in Appalachia's desolate coal country---on reviving the coal industry. He knows, economists know, almost everybody knows that the coal mining industry is not coming back.

Even if "clean coal" technology becomes economically feasible, the coal industry will never be what it once was. So, instead of encouraging the kind of technological research that might lead to real jobs and a real renaissance in that part of the country now known as "Oxycontin Central," he gave another can of false hope to people who have been trying to survive on false hope for the past 25 years.

Of course, when his promises prove false and his vision bogus, he can always fall back on the racism and nativism and "anti-elitism" that won their voices---"Lock her up!"---and votes in the first place. They can't eat anger and they can't clothe their children with it, but even imaginary enemies against which one can rail over six-packs of cheap beer are better than trying to understand and live with the complexities of 21st-century socio-economic forces.

They elected:

A man who can tout no accomplishments that were were not fully intended to further enrich his portfolio---not even one.

Indeed, while Bill and Hillary Clinton were building the Clinton Foundation and its related Clinton Global Initiative into one of the most respected---CharityWatch gave it a "A" rating, partly because almost 90% of its donations go to doing the actual work of the foundation---and effective institutions on the planet (almost half of those who suffer from HIV/AIDS in Africa are alive today because of the work of the Clinton Foundation), Donald Trump was using the "foundation" which bears his name as little more than a personal slush fund.

Unbeknownst to his foundation's few donors until David Farenthold of the Washington Post began his Pulitzer-worthy reporting on it early this past fall, Donald Trump has not given a dime to his own foundation since 2008---Bill and Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, have donated at least $1 million a year to their foundation since its inception.

Farenthold's exhaustive investigative journalism (the likes of which we almost never see anymore) also made donors aware that Trump has been using their donations to purchase personal items for himself---a $20,000 portrait of himself for himself, a $12,000 signed Denver Broncos helmet for himself are just two examples.

And it was further revealed to those donors that their donations were being used by Trump to pay both legal fees and settlement fees---Farenthold gave the lie to Trump's claim that "I never settle"---he has incurred through countless court cases involving fraud in one form or the other. He also was found to have used their donations to give what many legal experts consider a $25,000 bribe to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in return for her nixing any further state investigation into his fraudulent "university"---hmmm, wonder why she, a relative regional nobody, was named to his transition team? As to foundation money being used for the betterment of anyone else, well...

They elected:

A man whose first two marriages were marred by infidelities and whose third marriage is to a woman whom he brought into the country as an immigrant and for whom he procured $20,000 worth of illegal modeling jobs---she did not have a work visa.

A misogynist who admitted on videotape to having committed sexual assault on a number of occasions and who made a practice of wandering unannounced into dressing rooms filled with naked teenage girls at beauty pageants he owned. A misogynist who has for years inflicted very public verbal abuse upon women whose appearance didn't "measure up" to his standards. A misogynist whose comments about the physical attributes of his oldest daughter and his, uh, perception of those attributes are both sick and sickening.

Charles Blow, the eminent New York Times op-ed columnist, caught the essence of this man in eleven simple words: "You can't say yes to Trump and yes to common decency."

They elected:

A man who could not locate Ukraine on a world map, who did not know that Vladimir Putin had invaded eastern Ukraine with Russian soldiers and equipment and who did not recall that Vladimir Putin had, for all intents and purposes, unilaterally annexed Crimea.

A man who still thinks that "the Iran deal" gives the Iranians a "fast-track" to the development of nuclear weapons, despite the fact---fact!---that it actually delays any Iranian nuclear development for at least ten years and provides for the most intense and specific inspections ever agreed to.

A man who impulsively suggested that perhaps it would be a good idea to encourage South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons and thereby reduce the expense of having to extend the U.S. nuclear umbrella all the way across the Pacific. And who then lied to the world by saying he didn't say what the videotape clearly shows him saying.

A man who doesn't understand that waterboarding (torture) and stealing Iraqi oil are egregious violations of international law that can lead one to be uncomfortably seated in the dock at the International Court in The Hague. (Perhaps he needs to ask Dick Cheney why there are certain foreign countries to which he will not travel.)

A man who says---and, worse, actually thinks---that he knows "more than the generals."

A man whose staff did not trust him with a Twitter account because he is impulsive, intemperate and uncontrollable but who will now have access to the nuclear codes. One can only wonder if he has yet figured out that "nuclear triad" thingy that "Little Marco Rubio" had to explain to him during one of the Republican primary debates.

They elected:

A man who lies with impunity to the entire country on national television and to thousands of rally-goers and every time he appears on FOX News---he long ago stopped doing interviews with any credible news outlet for fear he might be asked a difficult question such as "Can you point out Idaho on a map of the Middle East?" He then either doubles-down on the lie, claims he was misinterpreted, claims he was misquoted (even though, as we know, "the tape doesn't lie") or just says that "the media is rigged against him."

A no bigger liar, a no more dishonorable man, has ever run for---much less, won---the presidency of the United States. He is pathological in his disdain for the truth and his willingness to claim overt fiction as fact, as has been reported by every credible fact-checking group throughout the primary and presidential campaigns. Indeed, his penchant for lying has been so pervasive that the New York Times had to change a long-held policy about calling political statements "lies"---the editorial board agreed there was no way to get around Trump's egregious lying without using the word "lie."

Many seasons have passed since I last thumbed through my old DSM, but not so many seasons that I don't know how it would have classified Trump: Paranoid Borderline Personality Disorder. In off-the-cuff conversations with my clinical friends, however, it has been enough to simply characterize him as "one sick puppy."

Those who voted for Donald Trump are responsible for putting his name alongside the names of such American luminaries and leaders as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The enormity of the disconnect between Donald Trump and the aforementioned presidents is so great that to imagine his name on the wall of the same building or monument as theirs is enough to take one's breath away.

Barack Obama---as noble, dignified, self-assured, gracious, moral, internationally respected, intelligent, cerebral and articulate a man as has occupied the Oval Office since Jimmy Carter of Plains, Georgia (and, might I add, Emory University)---recently noted that the presidency does not change a man as much as it reveals who a man in his essence really is.

That should scare the living daylights out of Donald Trump, his toadies, his sycophants, and those who voted for him. It implies that the demands of the office will expose him for the Fraudulent Grifter, Sexual Predator, Serial Liar and Demagogic Poseur that is the real Donald Trump.

Most horrifying for The Donald, however, has got to be the possibility that his presidential portrait will reveal to the world those itty-bitty hands with cocktail-sausage fingers.

Sweet!

Karma, as it turns out, really can be a bitch.