Hans Brinker for President

Over the past several months, I've been struggling with one question: how can so many people whom I know to be intelligent, compassionate, and otherwise discerning be so willing to contort logic and readily apply double-standards to support an unhinged president? There really are no secrets - all the facts are plain to anyone paying attention (although I would like to know what Putin has on him). Now that we know that he doesn't pay taxes and his so-called business empire is awash in the red, what remaining illusion of accomplishment or merit does he have left to hide behind?

There has to be an explanation for his support. And if I'm right, the explanation is almost as frightening as the remote possibility of a second Trump administration. 

According to 19th century legend, there was once a Dutch boy named Hans Brinker who lived in a city outside Amsterdam. Walking on his way to visit a friend in the country one afternoon, he paused at the sound of trickling water. Turning, he saw a small hole in a dike with a stream of water flowing from it. Reacting quickly, Hans stuck his finger in the dike to plug it. Afternoon turned to evening, then to night; cold, alone and afraid, Hans kept his finger in that dike all night. Finally, the next morning a passing minister heard poor Hans moaning and quickly got the menfolk to come patch the leak. Hans had single-handedly (fingeredly?) saved an entire city from a devastating flood.

Ironically, this story is part of a larger story published by an American, Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge in 1865 ("Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates"). Mary Mapes Dodge did not visit Holland until after the book was published, and Hans Brinker does not exist in any Dutch lore - he's entirely an American invention, although the Dutch have since "adopted" him as their own. In the story, Hans is a virtuous boy who makes many other personal sacrifices for family and friends. The story has become a children's classic.

But what if, from the perspective of the people whose town he saved, Hans had been a bully, and a creep? Let's say he had sold-out his own townspeople, been disloyal to his friends and unfaithful to his family, defrauded people and avoided paying his debts. Let's say all this was known about him. Would he still have been a hero?

If the town he "saved" had been America, the answer is yes - moral character makes no difference as long as he helps me keep what I see as rightfully mine. So what if he disparages minorities, veterans, our nation's allies, women. So what if he doesn't pay taxes while pretending to be a billionaire? So what if he would leverage national security interests for his own personal, political gain - and then fire or attack the integrity of lifelong public servants who blow the whistle on him?

To those Americans, who otherwise have absolutely nothing in common with Donald Trump in the first place, he is their Hans Brinker - the solitary hero with his finger in the dike, holding back the evil forces who want to take from them what should be theirs. Take what, you ask? Apparently, in this great land of opportunity many live in fear that there is not enough life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for everyone - and you can't have any of mine.

Trump has claimed that if his Democratic opponent were elected president, "our suburbs" would be destroyed. In recent weeks, he specifically called out a 2015 Obama-era fair-housing initiative that requires local governments to address historic patterns of racial segregation.

"Your home will go down in value, and crime rates will rapidly rise," Trump said. "People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they're going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I'm here." (Trump Tries To Appeal To 'Housewives' And White Suburbs)

Fear. They're still coming for our white women.

And collective societal sacrifices to minimize the impact of climate change (since it's too late to reverse it), and to fight a global pandemic pose unacceptable threats to our individual rights - despite what we know from science. Your hero single-handedly withdrew the US from a global climate agreement which merely set a goal of keeping global temperature increases below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit through commitments to voluntary reductions in carbon emissions. Only Nicaragua and Syria refused to sign initially. And what if, by everyone wearing a mask right "we could bring this epidemic under control” over the next four, six, eight weeks (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Robert Redfield)? "No. I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don't believe in that, no" Trump answered. "And I don't agree with the statement that if everybody would wear a mask, everything disappears." "Under control" does not mean "disappearing" - but it's a start. Dumbass.

Fear: no longer will I be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, without regard for anyone else.

And now, it seems, there are people who object to having people who look like them dying at the hands of the police who are sworn to protect us. They object to being handcuffed, face down with a knee on their neck until they die; object to being thrown in the back of a police vehicle in handcuffs and bounced around until their neck breaks; object to being shot while sitting in their car in front of their family, or while they are sleeping. They object so much to an ongoing pattern of indifference (at best) that they protest in the streets. 

And, conveniently, protesters and rioters are lumped together as if they are the same. 

If our opponents prevail no one will be safe in our country,” Trump told conservative activists in his first speech since the Democratic National Convention ended late on Thursday.

“I’m the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness and chaos,” Trump said.

 He urged Americans to turn back “radical left socialists and Marxists.”

“So the future of our country and indeed our civilization is at stake on Nov. 3,” he said in the speech in Arlington, Virginia, to the 2020 Council for National Policy.

Fear: turns out that Trump's finger in the dike is all that keeps "us" safe while other Americans live in justifiable fear.

And foreigners: do we even need to talk about the threat from foreigners? They are bringing in drugs, raping our women, taking our jobs, abusing our social benefits, sending us a deadly flu, taking advantage us in trade. Maybe, just maybe if we build physical walls, trade walls (tariffs), artificial walls (who's "legal," who's not) - maybe the whole world will just go away so I only have to look at people who look like me and speak like me. 

This is not America. This is evil.

This is a president who referred to countries with mostly nonwhite populations as “s---hole” countries; who made his political start with birtherism (designed to deny legitimacy to the first African American president); who continued to call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five (who were exonerated); and who began his 2016 campaign saying that Mexican immigrants are “bringing crime” and that “they’re rapists." So it’s clear Trump is doing more than using racially “insensitive” or “provocative” language. His reverence for Confederate statues and memorials is not about amorphous “heritage”; it is about a “heritage” of enslavement (not to mention treason). When he tells black and brown members of Congress born in the United States to “go back” where they came from, he is writing nonwhites out of America. (Trump’s language is racist. Period.)

Go ahead, take any of these examples apart and explain how there are two sides. But I dare you to argue the overwhelming, collective effect - no, appeal - that this president has to our dark side. The side that can justify separating children from parents, shooting people who don't comply, running over a protester in Charlottesville, deporting people who have lived and worked and raised families here for no reason other than being undocumented. And ironically, while you may hate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you know she's right when she said "(Trump) contributed less to funding our communities (by paying taxes) than waitresses & undocumented immigrants." 

Fear: you fear the fact that the US will become ‘minority white’ in 2045. While there may be nothing you can do about it, you can re-elect Hans Brinker to keep his finger in the dike for just a while longer.

Here's my fear: many of you, I love and respect. But I fear that any rational, logical person, upon seeing the evidence, and even knowing that you are an otherwise intelligent, compassionate, and discerning person, would be unable to avoid the conclusion that really - deep down - you are just a racist living in fear. And living in fear is no way to live. And it's no way to secure the future we want for our children and grandchildren.