“Weaving” has been Donald Trump’s most recent explanation/excuse of the all too often incoherent tangents he expresses while speaking.
Coupled with unhinged rampant lying and name calling, it is becoming more obvious to Americans who want a President that has character, comportment, and coherence in addition to policies that will help their lives - that Trump does not fit the bill.
The recent debate with Vice President Harris not only emphasized his dark view of America, but he also wove into his speaking so many lies and rants that it looked like the debate moderators (undoubtedly along with many viewers) were in painful disbelief.
No one can psychoanalyze the man from afar but that should not stop us from recognizing that what we are seeing and hearing in Trump is someone that is not right– particularly someone being considered for the powerful position of US President.
We must consider why we would want to empower someone to that role who takes inaccurate hearsay and leverages it to inflame passions against not just immigrants and refugees but also fellow Americans.
Case in point (among all too many) is the lie of Haitians eating pets in Springfield Ohio, or babies being executed, or jails and insane asylums feeding immigrant numbers. Stating these kinds of lies do nothing toward bringing out our better selves or even accurate understanding of a fake story such that we can unify to take positive steps for our country.
This is not the first column to disparage selecting Trump for the presidency. But we must truly ask ourselves if any gripes about the current situation in our country are worth the very real risk of creating a worse situation.
A person that demonstrates: autocratic preferences (lauding the world’s autocrats); misogyny and violence toward women (bragging of being able to assault women, liable for sexual abuse); lack of remorse for crimes (never admitting any wrongdoing in multiple legal cases); extreme bias (speaking of non-whites or non-Christians poisoning the blood of our country, discriminating against blacks in rental housing, spreading “birther “lies); excessive insults (too many examples of this exist); self-obsession (“I alone can fix it,” deluded self-grandeur such as “very, very large brain” or greatest ever crowds, economy, etc.); lack of respect for democratic institutions (trying to steal an election) – these are not the qualities of character we should want to represent and lead this country.
There is no question that this country has challenges that need to be addressed but letting anger and division fuel finding solutions makes no sense.
We understand that even in the role of addressing personal care for our well-being, taking a negative approach is counterproductive. We know that raising or educating a child works better with positivity rather than beatings or various forms of degradation.
We can “weave” a better future as a nation with a positive attitude and approach and straight talk.
Of course, there is room for different ideas for how to improve our country and even our lives. But we need to keep the freedom to evaluate and choose among the ideas and not rely on any single person to choose for us - especially one who is not right.
We fortunately have candidates on the other ticket that want to help us weave our way forward as a country in a positive optimistic manner while respecting and utilizing the loom of our democracy.
There will be times when the weaving may go awry but we can stitch together a fix - it has been done multiple times before in our nation’s history.
W Laurence Doxsey, Retired, Former Director of Office of Sustainability for City of San Antonio, former Environmental Officer for US Department of Housing and Urban Development, former Sustainability Officer for City of Austin, resides outside Medina.
