All (as of 10/16) of Trump's Bullying and Biased Quotes in One Place and with Links 2

Photo: from a Wall Street Journal article about what a "sane Donald Trump" would be like. But, it says, when it comes to Trump ignoring a tally on November 8th that says he lost, "...Does he know he's playing with fire? No. Because he's a nut."

Just like the title says. You can find #1 through #5 at my last blog entry--just click here.

Again, the following quotes come from a recent Washington Post article that outlines its closing statement about the Presidency. Well, as of 10/16, anyway. Each point has its own link back to the article and the appropriate YouTube video, for your reading and viewing convenience. To finish up:

6. "Written by a nice reporter. Now the poor guy. You ought to see this guy." November 24, 2015.

This is Trump mocking and mimicking a physically disabled New York Times reporter. You have to see this to fully appreciate how horrible it was. Click on this link to go to the article, then scroll down to #6 to see the video.

I never thought I would see a candidate for President of the United States mimicking a handicapped person. I'm talking arms flailing, body twisting, stuttering--everything. Again, this is bullying, plain and simple. And it's behavior that, frankly, a President should not have. We're above this, aren't we? By the way, this reporter's crime? He wrote an article negative about Trump. Is this what a grown man does in response to such a thing, mimic and mock another man's physical disability? A teacher wouldn't tolerate this behavior in a classroom, but we'd tolerate this behavior in the President?

This is also unforgivable. We do not mock and mimic those less fortunate than ourselves. And we learn to control our adolescent behavior, especially when we're running for President and speaking to the world. If he can't do that in a press conference for his own campaign, how is he going to be appropriate during a meeting with a leader from the Middle East, or from Russia, that's not going well?

7. "Putin's running his country and at least he's a leader." December 18, 2015.

Putin is also guilty of more civil rights violations than any other Russian leader in recent memory. His critics have a bad habit of mysteriously and permanently disappearing. He is undoubtedly behind the hacking of the Democratic (and probably Republican) Party's computers--and Trump openly suggested that he hack into them again. I can't recall the last time I heard an American politician openly asking a foreign (and possibly antagonistic) leader for aid in bringing down his political opponent--to the point that such an attack would be espionage and a major attack on our government.

This is careless beyond belief. And his cozying up to Putin is gut-churning and worrisome. If Trump is as much of a puppet to Putin as he is to his two (thuggish) sons and to Steve Bannon, then there's something very, very wrong. Even as a candidate, an alliance with Putin is treason, as Trump is right now privy to our nation's secrets and plans. Think about that last sentence for a moment.

8. "I'm going to open up our libel laws." February 26, 2016. AND "This judge is of Mexican heritage. I'm building a wall." June 3, 2016

Besides the obvious racism and bigotry (and isolationism, always a bad thing) of the second statement, what we have here is a classic case of Trump not knowing what he's saying. He would fail a middle school history class. The fact is, he can't, even as President, change any laws or build any walls--especially one that would cost billions and strain an already strained relationship with a neighboring country. Now, understand, he doesn't even mean these things. But even if he did, he has to get both of those policies through Congress, and that's not going to happen. The point is, he doesn't know that. He thinks the Presidency is a tyranny, and he'd be the King. But our democracy is purposely designed so that's not the case. No one person can declare War, or spend billions of federal dollars, or suddenly and drastically change judiciary laws. Congress does the first thing, and the Supreme Court does the last. And there's 9 judges there, and he only gets to place one right now.

Many of his supporters don't know this. Many racist people will vote for Trump because of this wall that he cannot possibly ever put up, and they're as ignorant of that as they are of anything racial.

But we're not. America needs to show it's not racist, and that it's not ignorant of how its own government works. We need to show that a politician cannot use fear, hatred and racism (the three always go together) to win the Presidency.

9. "Look at my African-American over here." June 3, 2016. See above. Need I say more?

10. "I alone can fix it." July 21, 2016.

This is how Fascism can come to America. I used to wonder how a country like Germany, a country that had the most brilliant universities, scientists, philosophers and writers of its time, all in one place, could ignore its intelligence and put someone like Hitler in power.

Now I know. Now I get it. We're one step away from doing that ourselves. I just said that. Out loud.

But so has The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, and even Dubya Bush, for God's sake. (This is the first and last time we'll agree on anything.) Millions, thank God, have spoken out.

But this is how it's done. An egomaniac, a hater, a bully, a tyrant, a Democratic old-lady stage-stalker convinces enough like-minded folks to put him in power and then he does all those crazy things. He says that he is the only one who can fix everything. Him. That's it. The only one. The demi-god. The God-in-his-own-mind. This is what Hitler did. He took a very angry nation, simmering in rage about its defeat in World War One, and he told it that he alone can make everything right again. He gave them someone to fear and hate (Jews) like Trump has (Mexicans and women). Like other tyrants, Trump said that everyone who disagreed with him (political figures, newspapers, television reporters, and even parents of fallen soldiers) were in secret conspiracy against him. And that's why there's no proof, because they're all in secret conspiracy. (Many of his supporters have to believe in secret conspiracies.) According to the latest poll, 40% of the country is like this. (This is scary in of itself.) He riles them all up, appeals to their base emotions and then he bullies everyone else into submission. Those who don't submit--like his political opponents--he threatens to throw in jail, or he threatens violence against them. Sound familiar? Trump has done both against Clinton. That's what other countries do, not us. That's what America has always prided itself in--we don't act like the tyrants of other countries, especially after Election Day. This is the sole reason Ford pardoned Nixon. If elected, with all that power, is it so unreasonable to suggest that Trump would go one small step further and actually do those things he's threatened? His supporters, of course, want this. They want a tyrant.

America and Britain let Hitler do this, even though they knew the danger. I don't see powerful countries sitting by this time and watching that happen. Britain has already banned Trump, and NATO and the United Nations have already passed policies in advance of our election--just in case.

The rest of the world is looking on in horror. Trump would shrug that off, and say that the rest of the world doesn't matter. But it does. Look at history. Look at what happened to countries that elected a tyrant and then isolated itself. Didn't turn out well, either for that country or for the world in general.

I'm not normally like this, especially politically. (I'm not normally that political in general.) I don't normally think the sky is falling. I don't live my life in fear.

But it has come to that. Again, I'm not the only one saying so. And I'm not some moralist, a guy who judges everybody, or someone who thinks you have to be a saint to be President. I voted for Bill Clinton, after all, though I wouldn't want any daughter of mine to date someone like him. But Clinton, for all of his (many) faults [the largest of which was to ignore the Cole attack, by the way], was not a world-wide danger. Countries didn't ban him. He wasn't racist, or bigoted, or a bully. I didn't worry that he knew where our nukes were because I didn't think he'd want to use them. Trump, for Heaven's sake, would use them on Mexico, or perhaps on the next national NOW meeting. (I'm kind of exaggerating there--I hope.)

And that's the problem. I'm not sure I'm kidding. Seriously. The comparisons are too obvious and real to ignore. The examples are too frequent and too crystal clear. He is that much of a hater, a bigot, a racist and a tyrant. The U.S. and the world can probably survive him, but are we totally sure? Do we want to put the world at risk to find out?

Death of the Hired Hand by Robert Frost

Photo: Haymaking, undated, oil on canvas by American artist Dwight William Tryon (1849–1925). Image courtesy of The Athenaeum. (I stole this from the Library of Congress's website of Frost's poem, "The Death of the Hired Hand," which you should read by clicking this link, or the one below.)

So I'm back to the Library of Congress's "Story of the Week," though I'm as behind on them as I am on my work and on my writing. It seems that I'm always behind everything these days, including my sleep. (Though, thankfully, not my mortgage.) Actually, I am very behind on my "Story of the Week" emails, which I have sent directly to me. That causes the backlog, of course, but they are definitely worth it. As far back as I can remember, I've only read maybe five that I didn't care for. (One, recently, was about Henry James's last assistant in his final eight years. I thought she'd have more fascinating things to say about the latter 19th Century's more famous writers, but mostly she just wrote about how he changed a lot of wordy sentences in his most popular works. She says some things that directly contradict what I've read about him; the worst was when she said he never used his fame to threaten or to use against somebody for nefarious purposes--which is a lie.)

Anyway, I just read "The Death of the Hired Hand," by Robert Frost. It's the one with the famous lines: 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in.'

This line is meant much more negatively than you might think. It's followed by 'I should have called it/Something you somehow haven't to deserve.' It's said by a farmer whose hired hand keeps taking off on him, so the guy is someone you can't trust, but who you feel obligated to take back in again. Not because you've missed him, but because he's like a lost dog and you pity him. The famous line is said by most (who haven't read the poem) as a line that someone will say about actual family who has to take you in because they're family. But Frost, who was shockingly cold and quite the nihilist, meant it to come from the POV of the farmer saying it, and not from the POV of the one who has to go home. It's not meant nicely, and those who say it like it is, like they have to be allowed in, are missing the point that they're supposed to feel like the pitied, like they'll be let in like the neighborhood's wet mongrel who people just can't leave out in the rain. The line means you'll be taken in not because of family obligation, but because of pity. The hired hand, in fact, had a brother who lived just 13 miles away, but this brother was a banker, and the hired hand didn't want to be pitied by his brother the banker. He'd rather be pitied by the farmer he keeps deserting. Again, the famous lines make more sense knowing the whole poem. And it ain't pretty, and it ain't happy. Frost is rarely either.

Frost is often misread, mostly because of those campfire poetry readings where he came across as a pre-Mister Rogers Mister Rogers.

I've got an English degree, but I somehow managed not to read too much of Frost. I guess I thought it was mostly homespun but drawn-out wisdom, amongst quaint New Englanders, who mostly keep to themselves. Good fences make good neighbors, after all. But there's a lot of genius there, and Frost is a magician who ably hides his literary tricks, which most poets seem incapable of doing. I don't see the obvious alliteration or cadences in Frost that I spot elsewhere, and when I see those, I lose my suspension of disbelief. (I speak like I'm Shakespeare, though my poetry mostly sucks. I've written exactly one that's sold.)

But I've mostly liked what I've read, though I stayed away from his longer ones, like this one. This poem is almost a short story, really, and is almost completely in dialogue, which I don't like in my poems. I also don't like them long, as per Edgar Allan Poe's dictum that all poems should be short--and then he wrote long ones. But I liked this one now, though I didn't when I was younger, perhaps because I didn't get it, or because I felt I might be the one who would have to go home and be taken in--and thereby pitied. Which I kinda was, I think. Best not to think about that now.

At any rate, there's genius here, and a message about human nature. You'll feel like you're the farmer who keeps getting deserted, yet you'll also feel like the hired hand, who keeps deserting, and then coming back with his tail between his legs. You might feel like you're the banker up the street, if you're lucky.

But sooner or later we're all the hired hand who lays down for the last time. And when that moment comes, you have to decide who you're willing to be a burden to.

Like I said, it ain't pretty, and it ain't happy. But it's real, and it's true. That's Frost's genius.