The 2016 political season reminds me of how I used to feel about Phyllis Schlafly back in the 1970s when she was fighting the Equal Rights Amendment. Whenever I listened to Mrs. Schlafly, I would strongly disagree with her and almost regretted that we were on the same side with respect to the ERA.1 However, when I listened to her opponents, I almost liked her again. And so it is with the 2016 political season.
I have already said that I will not vote for Donald Trump.2 As long as I continue to look at what Mr. Trump himself says, that will not change. For example, I recently read his big foreign policy speech. It just wasn’t that good. Even for something that was supposed to be a serious speech, it was full contradictions and simplistic statements.3 Robert Gates said it well.
For example, last night, I was talking with a liberal/progressive who had come over for dinner. When I was checking a text from our son, I noticed a newsflash on my smartphone that Ted Cruz had suspended his presidential campaign. When they went to check this on their smartphone, they checked The Huffington Post.4 Of course. Later, when we were talking about Mr. Trump’s appeal to some people, this person went off on North Carolina, which recently passed a law regarding, inter alia, which bathroom (men’s or women’s) people should use. Apparently (and I have not researched the North Carolina law), it says something about using the bathroom of the sex shown on your birth certificate. This person started complaining about having to have a birth certificate to go to the bathroom.
Except, of course, they could not see the other point of view. The question of which bathrooms kids can use in schools, for example, has nothing to do with any law passed by any state or national legislature. It comes from a federal government regulation (or maybe a mere interpretation; I don’t know if the agency has gone through the whole process of actually adopting a regulation) interpreting a law passed over 40 years ago. I can assure you that the legislators who passed that law in 1972 had no idea they were allowing the federal Department of Education to tell high schools which bathrooms kids were supposed to go to.
It is things like this, and things like President Obama’s refusal to call Islamic extremism Islamic extremism and the Department of Homeland Security, pre-San Bernardino, not looking at social media posts of people applying for a visa to live in the United States because of privacy concerns, that gets some people so angry they are willing to support Donald Trump.
But then I think of Donald Trump saying John McCain is not a hero. And so on and so on. Thank goodness, it is baseball season. Unfortunately, it would probably take more rainouts than are realistically possible, even with global warming, for the World Series to extend past election day.
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1 For my views on the Equal Rights Amendment, see here. They are still the same as they were in 1977 and for the same reason. At one point, after the article was published, my wife was asked how she could be married to somebody who believed like that. You can ask her how she responded and how she can be married to somebody who believes like that.
A further comment on Phyllis Schlafly. My wife and I were at a Federalist Society convention in Washington, D.C., about five years. We were in line to get into an event, and all of a sudden, we saw Phyllis Schlafly. None of the young people around us recognized her. Not being young, we did, and we offered to let her in line in front of us. She initially declined, but then accepted. And we had a nice chat with her. I think she was particularly surprised that I had read Strike From Space, the book she wrote after A Choice Not an Echo.
2 See, inter alia, here, here, and here. Plus lots of others.
3 I generally find on things like this, I like to read what the person said, instead of just reading what some newspaper or blog says about what he or she said.
4 I admit I do not read The Huffington Post very often. I did, however, read an article there this morning: “Here Are 7 Reasons Why Donald Trump Could Really Win In November.” I wanted to see if they were worried for the same reasons I am. In any case, when I got to the end of the article, I found this statement:
“Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims – 1.6 billion members of an entire religion – from entering the U.S.”
Wow, the editors of The Huffington Post must think their readers are pretty dumb if they have to be reminded of this every time they read an article about Donald Trump. On the other hand, as I said, I don’t read The Huffington Post very often, so maybe this statement is only on articles that could be interpreted as favorable about Donald Trump or his chances to win in November.
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