My Smart Friends

My Smart Friends

By

Leonard Zwelling

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/26/opinion/donald-trump-gender-election.html

I am blessed with many friends of great intelligence. They are well read and accomplished. They are well off and have or have had jobs of great responsibility. Their performance in these jobs has been commendable. They are, by all measures, elite.

Many of these people are going to vote for Donald Trump. This is despite all the negatives about him and his policies. Many just hate Joe Biden and think Kamala Harris will be just a continuation of Biden. They may be right in that, but given the state of the economy and their state of prosperity, I am not sure why they view that as bad.

I have been trying to understand why these seemingly bright people would vote for a womanizing, crude felon. Then I think, maybe that’s why.

Donald Trump is the embodiment of each of us at our worst. He is pure id. He says what he wants. He does what he wants. He abuses people and threatens Americans he doesn’t like with the use of the military against them. He has no bounds on his power. He lies all the time, even when he knows he’s lying. But don’t we all wish we could do that at some time? He does it all the time.

I think that people who vote for Donald Trump really like him. They like his crudeness. They like his spontaneity. They like that he calls them as he sees them without regard for who he might hurt with his utterances.

What I really think Trump voters like is that they think he will single-handedly take care of America’s problems (see Maureen Dowd, above). They believe a near dictator is needed to get things right. That’s exactly the opposite of what our Founders thought. The Founders rejected a king. Trump wants to be one.

My smart friends think Trump will stimulate the economy through tax cuts and tariffs even as neither will really do that. Trump is beholden to billionaires like Elon Musk and maybe Vladimir Putin as well. He’s going to expel 11 million illegal immigrants, so he says. I have no idea how.

He’s going to end wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and get the world to respect America again. His voters believe this. I believe that he will try. I take him at his word.

Donald Trump runs through his life the way you would if you didn’t have manners or care about how anyone felt about you. All of this and his misogyny are forgiven by my smart friends because they hate Joe Biden and Democrats and Kamala Harris and think Trump did fine last time.

Folks, he will be unbridled this time. He will finish packing the Supreme Court with right-wing originalists. He will use the military on American citizens and John Kelly and Jim Mattox won’t be there to stop him.

Everyone must really think hard when casting their vote this time. I am afraid my smart friends have not thought hard enough. If they vote for Trump and he wins, they may find that no one cares about what smart people think ever again.

If Donald Trump takes the reins of the federal government again, the inmates really will be in control of the asylum. And my smart friends will be stuck inside with the rest of us.

I do understand their arguments against Harris. I don’t understand how that allows them to vote for Trump. If any other Republican were running, I’d vote for the GOP. Mr. Trump is an American anomaly. At least, I hope he is. He is not what we need more of. He’s precisely what we need less of.