We have to talk about Trump without derangement or devotion
If we are concerned about issues of injustice, oppression, unfairness and so on, then unbiased, honest evaluations of factual reality must be our starting point. Indeed, such evaluations must be integrated and ongoing in any efforts for improving the conditions in society. If we discard objective analysis, we will not — we cannot — actually be useful.
Donald Trump has become an off-limits subject for dispassionate evaluation. Loathing the current President of the United States is, apparently, the minimum requirement for having your humanity acknowledged. That is to say, if you do not viscerally hate the man, you are immediately characterized as a blind Right wing minion, and a foot soldier in the army of Satan. Why we, as a country, have tolerated this level of histrionics in our public discourse I do not know, but I, for one, am sick of it.
If you cannot impartially examine the policies of the Trump Administration, you are not a serious person. You are allowed to voice your views, but I am allowed to not take you seriously. Something I have found to be reliably, consistently true in every exchange I have had with people who hate Donald Trump is that they cannot identify a single policy reason to justify their rancour. When you ask why they believe he is so terrible, they predictably provide you with a list of pejoratives — he is a dictator, he is a fascist, he is a White supremacist, he wants to destroy America. When you ask them to explain which policies he has advanced that substantiate those pejoratives, they will then apply those pejoratives to you, and promptly end the conversation and block you. OK, I do not find that to be a convincing argument. If you cannot even be fair in your appraisals, I doubt very much if you are capable of serving the cause of broader justice in society.
In my own evaluation of Trump’s policies, including significant draw downs of American military interventions around the world, ordering the reduction in prices of essential medicines, promoting American manufacturing, lowering African-American unemployment to record levels, prison reform, overall job creation, protectionist economic policies towards China, slowing illegal immigration into the US (which benefits American workers), banning Critical Race Theory-based training in federal institutions; I see considerable positive achievements for the United States. The normalization agreements between the UAE and Bahrain with Israel, and the agreements of other Arab countries that will inevitably follow like dominos, from a superficial ideological viewpoint, are objectionable, and will harm the Palestinians (whose president he isn’t) in the short-term, but I believe will ultimately lead to a better — and the only realistic — resolution of the conflict, which is a one state solution.
At the same time, Trump has presided over the largest ever transfer of public wealth to the already richest corporations in America, through the various stimulus packages offered in the wake of Covid-19 lockdowns. Even this, however, has been done with (at least) the stipulation that these funds cannot be used for share buy-backs, which is a caveat not previously embedded in the Quantitative Easing packages delivered under the Obama Administration which led to the monstrous corporate debts that caused the Stock Market crash of March 2020 (no, that did not happen because of the pandemic). Despite Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Accords, carbon emissions in the US are at their lowest levels since 1993.
I simply do not see the justification for the wild-eyed, veins-in-the-neck-bulging, absolutist hatred possessing so many people over this man. I realize that this will offend some of you, and I am fine with that. If you are fine with feeling hatred that you cannot justify, and if an objective list of facts drives you into an apoplectic seizure, you have psychological problems I am not qualified to address, and I wish you a speedy recovery.
