It has been nearly a month since the election. After many sleepless nights asking myself
the same question, I finally had an epiphany today. The question I kept asking myself was not “Why did Hillary
lose?” She didn’t lose, she got over
2.5 million more votes than Trump. Was
it “Why did Trump win?” Not that
either. I know he won because of the
Electoral College system. The big
question that kept shooting through my brain like lightning bolts was “How
could so many people want to have a President like Trump, with his lack of
experience and knowledge, his temperament, his lack of moral compass, and one
that suffers from an obvious personality disorder?” Today I realized he received most of his votes for just those
reasons!
Trump received all those votes because of President Barack
Obama! After eight years of a
scandal-free presidency, a President who was careful to measure his words and
his actions, a predictable and steady hand, Americans longed for drama and
unpredictability. The reason was stated
to us many times by Trump backers.
Perhaps you even said it. “I’m
voting for him because I want someone to shake things up.” “I like that he
tells it like it is.” People get bored easily nowadays. People love drama. People want entertainment every day. This is evidenced by the hours people spend online each day
watching cat videos, funny dogs, and pranks gone bad. Trump offers a President that will do or say anything for
attention and will provide an unending stream of entertainment.
I admit that there were times during Obama’s presidency that
I thought his responses to things could have been, and should have been, more
aggressive in nature. For instance,
from the git-go when Mitch McConnell stated he would do everything in his power
to make Obama fail, instead of telling him what time it was, Obama ignored
it. Instead of aiding Obama in crafting
the Affordable Care Act to make it the best possible insurance plan, they
coined it “ObamaCare” and went so far as to shut down the federal government and
brought law suits to stop it. Obama
didn’t castigate them as I thought he should.
Instead, he did what he could from the back door. Obama tried to avoid drama at all cost and
he understood that every word a President utters matters.
Another prime example of a statesman being too careful was
Obama’s response to the birtherism campaign by Trump. Trump was relentless in his insistence that Obama was born in
Kenya and was a Muslim. We have
experienced Trump’s brainwashing technique of saying something over and over;
until people believe it, even without one iota of proof. As late as August 2016, a poll showed
two-thirds of Trump backers believed Obama was born in Kenya and only 13%
believed he was a Christian. Obama’s
response about birtherism “I have watched with bemusement.” Not exactly what I would have said!
Obama is everything Trump is not. For starters, Trump is
white. The phenomenon of Trump’s
election was a protest, payback vote to those Americans who had the nerve to
vote for a black man, not once, but twice.
Their anger has simmered for eight years before boiling out on November
8. Not all people, just the 63% of
Trump supporters who still believe that Obama was born in Kenya and is a secret
Muslim.
I believe that Hillary did not get the votes from the black
community she expected because of Obama.
I believe black people felt Obama let them down and did not “tell it
like it is.” He never called out the
racism that was the root cause of the hatred and bigotry that he experienced
for eight years. I believe the Black
community had high hopes when America finally elected a Black President. When they experienced more, not less racial
bias, many just gave up.
You will never get bored or fail to be entertained by
Trump. He’s not even President yet and
he has already made a serious diplomatic faux pas by disrespecting China in
favor of Taiwan. Look for more of
these, and worse, because he shows no interest in learning. He’s not taking his daily intelligence
briefings. He is not availing himself
to the State Department on matters of protocol, and he’s still tweeting
whatever pops into his mind. Trump is the star of the biggest reality show in
the world.
For those of you who wanted a President to “shake things
up,” you got him! It won’t be long
before you will be longing for the days of “No Drama Obama.”
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