The prospect of a second Trump presidency gives rise to a fundamental question: if a politician advocates policies that you find attractive, does it matter if he’s a disgusting human being?
Donald Trump is a liar, a cheat and a fraud. He treats the law with contempt. His wealth is rooted in his father’s money, which rescued him from serial failures. His businesses have filed for bankruptcy six times. He’s failed at casinos, airlines, football, education, publishing, steaks and vodka. His bilking of suppliers, tradespeople, blue-collar workers and small businesses is well documented.
He has a long record of cheating the sort of modest-income earners who crowd his rallies and declare their admiration of his supposed acumen. He doesn’t pay his bills. He cheats the little people, and yet they continue to cheer him — a trick practised by skilled swindlers throughout the ages.
Trump cheats on his wives, cavorts with porn stars and buys off those who cause trouble. He was found liable of sexual abuse after E. Jean Carroll told a jury he followed her into a fitting room and forced himself on her. Though his lawyers maintain that being found liable of “sexual abuse” is technically different from rape, based on her inability to precisely identify what it was he forced into her vagina, the judge who presided over the case rejected that claim.
“The finding that (E. Jean) Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in a subsequent opinion. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial … makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
And does it really matter what he used to abuse her? Is a finger or some other object forced into a woman, as opposed to a penis, the dividing line between those deserving of being elected president of the United States and those who aren’t?
In 1993, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a respected U.S. senator and thinker, published a much-discussed essay titled, “Defining Deviancy Down,” in which he argued that the U.S., over time, had been choosing “not to notice behaviour that would be otherwise controlled, or disapproved, or even punished.”
For decades, he wrote, “we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behaviour is now abnormal by any earlier standard.”
It was a timely thesis given that Bill Clinton, who was elected president that year, would engage in a sexual tryst with intern Monica Lewinsky, lie about it on national television and still manage to get re-elected.
Moynihan’s belief was that, as a country, the U.S. had become so oversupplied with bad behaviour that it could no longer bring itself to recognize it for what it was. Previously unacceptable actions instead had to be normalized and accepted. His argument certainly fit the bill with Clinton and a host of other high-levelpoliticians in subsequentscandals, but has been taken to unprecedented new levels by Trump.
Trump supporters deny he holds any responsibility for the assault on the Capitol following his defeat in 2020. He just did nothing to stop it, watching it on TV from the White House and waiting three hours before issuing a mild statement urging the rioters to go home. One police officer was killed, dozens more were hurt. More than 1,300 people have been charged and more than 450 jailed, with sentences of up to 22 years, yet Trump continues to call it a “day of love” in which “nothing (was) done wrong.”
As a politician, he specializes in personal attacks and crude insults: Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is a “s–t vice-president,” she’s “slow,” “lazy as hell” and has a “low IQ.” There’s “something wrong” with her. He mocks the handicapped and belittles the less-fortunate. Mexican immigrants are drug dealers and rapists. Military veterans are “suckers” and “losers” if they’re captured, wounded or tortured. Less advanced nations are “s–thole countries.”
None of the above is new, speculative, untrue or unproven. Trump’s past words and actions can’t be waved away as the fever dreams of a yammering press or imaginings of a privileged elite. Yet some 70- to 80-million Americans are expected to vote for Trump in spite of his behaviour, a fact that speaks to the accuracy of Moynihan’s thesis. Something has drastically changed in the American view of right and wrong.
Canadians like to think that our proximity to the U.S. and first-hand experience with its people, culture and attitudes gives us a clearer understanding of its essence than observers who are farther away. But Trump’s political career and his staying power undermines that belief, befuddling Canadians in the same way it perplexes other western countries.
In a recent survey, only one in five Canadians said they preferred him over Harris. Despite pockets of support (for instance from some writers in this newspaper), the overriding reaction is bewilderment, anxiety and concern, with a dose of revulsion. Maybe that’s a good thing — yet another indication that this country is vastly different in unobtrusive ways than the giant to the south. But it also shatters some easy assumptions, such as the reliability, safety and trustworthiness of a neighbour and ally whose essential civility we’ve long taken for granted.
The American left has much to answer for. Wokeism is a harmful virus that’s been unleashed on the West. The self-righteous preachiness and identity crusades of self-declared “progressives” have tried the tolerance of decent people rather than encourage it. Nor is the record of the Biden administration so impressive that it should ensure an automatic second term. But so accomplished a country, with so much going for it, can do better than Donald Trump. Much, much better.
Leadership isn’t just about passing legislation, defending borders or controlling taxes. A country is judged by its compassion, decency and generosity, qualities that should be reflected in, and championed by, its highest elected official. Trump is none of those things. He’s the opposite — an angry, resentful person who cares for nothing but himself. His supporters should ask themselves if they’re willing to set aside their own best instincts to ally themselves with someone so antithetical to everything Americans believe they stand for.
The spectacle of a country tearing at the very institutions and principles that backstopped its rise is unnerving to say the least. It’s possible to support a party without having to cast a vote for a person like Trump. A decent Republican would just stay home. Refusing to participate would be a more honourable stand than siding with so much hate and bile.
National Post