I’ve Seen Enough
After nine seasons, I just want this show to end.
Eight years ago, I walked my ballot to the ballot box, cast it, and walked home feeling we were hours away from electing the first woman President in US history.
As you know, that didn’t happen.
Even I, somebody who reads polling data for fun and watches city council meetings online, took for granted just how much it takes every single person to even keep a street lamp lit, let alone preserve democracy.
For four years, I watched Donald Trump descend into petty politics, wielding his power for personal gain. Dispatch his press secretary to lie about crowd sizes. Use a sharpie to illegally prove a point about a hurricane. The man would outright lie about the COVID-19 outbreak, leading thousands of his own followers to their deaths. He refused to transfer power peacefully, yet instead riled up millions of his followers, many of whom showed up to the Capitol on January 6 and killed police officers while threatening to kill Mike Pence.
Since the day he left office, Donald Trump has had one mission; to get back to the Oval Office. Not because he enjoys the work, but because of the protections it provides him on a personal level.
As President, it’s difficult to charge him for illegally using campaign funds to pay a porn star whom he had sex with while married to his third wife. As President, it’s difficult to prosecute the man for inciting a mob to engage in violence and delusion.
As President, you can make a lot of money from foreign officials who purchase rooms from the hotels you own in a way to curry favor. You can also stay in your own hotel while you force the American taxpayers to pay for the Secret Service to also stay in your hotel, cleverly funneling taxpayer funds into your own wallet.
For nine years, Donald Trump has run for office for one person, Donald Trump, and this reality show is due for a series finale.
What kills me about this man is that he hates his followers more than anyone. Selling crypto coins, Trump shoes, and MAGA themed bibles. I guarantee somebody is reading this right now, teeing up a nasty private message to send me when the thing is, I’ve got love for you. Trump does not.
His followers are a means to a financial end, hence why the man has no ethics, no compass, and zero loyalty to anything but his bank account. He was a democrat for decades because, in NY, that worked, and as he geared up for a life in politics, he masterfully saw an opening in the Republican Party and filled it with lies, fear, and his narcissistic tendencies.
I grew up in Upstate NY, surrounded by farms, rural communities, old factory towns, etc. I’ve also spent the majority of my adult life in evangelical churches, surrounded by folks who’d never consider voting for a Democrat.
In these spaces, I’ve generally felt comfortable in my skin as an outsider because while my politics may have differed with my friends on the right, we believed that community meant everything and that when your neighbor needs help, you stop to help, no questions asked.
You protect your family and teach your kids to be kind, hard-working, and respectful. If somebody needs a plate for Thanksgiving, you set a chair at the table and bring them in. This wholehearted, no-strings-attached love toward others is exactly what brought me to know Jesus; it’s what makes me love where I’m from.
A man of Donald Trump’s character would get run out of every diner I grew up in, every ice cream shop I love, every community event I’ve attended, and certainly every church I’ve attended. We don’t rock with narcissists who fail to take accountability for their actions.
We don’t rock with people who make jokes about widows and disabled folks. People who disrespect the selfless service of veterans are shown the door where I’m from. Somehow, you throw a red hat on this billionaire philanderer who buried his first wife on his golf course, and this man is celebrated for his courage to speak the truth to what’s wrong with American politics… and I get it.
My friends on the right have very valid concerns. I think of a place like Hudson Falls, NY, where, decades ago, almost everyone could find one good-paying job, build a life for their family, and take a vacation every year. Farm work was never easy, but it was worth it because it was profitable. Religion was important, and there was a respect for sacred Sundays with the family.
Today, good jobs are almost impossible to come by, especially in rural communities. Factories are being shut down left and right, and companies are sending their jobs to other countries. Farming equipment is insanely expensive, and with corporations buying up so much land, it’s changing how local farmers conduct their business because they can’t compete with private investors.
The moral of the story is you have decades of safe(ish) American life being upended for a plethora of reasons, and while the reasons are complex, complicated, and messy, politicians who’ve spent their careers learning just what to do to increase votes for their candidacy have taken these credible concerns and placed the blame of everything at the feet of “others.”
Donald Trump exploited these credible concerns and used his celebrity to overtake an entire party that’d been branding itself as the party of these communities. Somehow, he trojan-horsed his way into favor under the false guise of caring for people who are genuinely struggling right now.
This is why I can’t stand this man.
Yes, by definition, he’s a racist and was even racist as a Democrat. He’s an unstable leader with a weird fetish for dictators. He’s a misogynist who views every relationship with women through the lens of her perceived beauty. He’s an ineffective leader who famously doesn’t read security memos. He can’t be trusted by his own cabinet or military leaders. There are endless reasons why I find the man reprehensible as a man and a leader.
If Donald Trump was stuck in a Midwest diner without a camera or microphone to broadcast to the world, he’d refuse to shake the local’s hands, he’d spit out the food cooked for him, he’d demean the decor inside the restaurant, and he’d curse the town for its lack of intelligence, wondering why the hell would these idiots willingly live in a town like this.
Donald Trump hates his base. He doesn’t understand them, but he willingly uses them to catapult himself into power. We’re talking about a man who left thousands of people stranded in the desert after his rally — absolutely no empathy, even for the people who spend thousands of dollars on his merch.
Donald Trump hates veterans, especially Prisoners of War. The man has zero respect for law enforcement, refusing to pay cities for their use of their police and protection. The man hates blue-collar union workers, hourly employees who receive overtime, and especially evangelical Christians.
This… former President hates people like me because people like me see right through his shtick. I’d hope running for President would thicken his skin a bit, but if he wants to hate me, that’s fine. But to hate people who pay good money for his basic red hats, fly “Fuck Biden” flags from their cars, and disown their families for questioning their online presence is a level of narcissistic sociopathic behavior reserved for the Hitlers of the world, which absolutely tracks with his recent history.
For eight years, I’ve dedicated my life to family and fatherhood, writing thousands of words on the topic. I don’t write for progressives or dads who identify as Democrats. I write for men who give a damn about their families. I write for men who look at their kids and think, “I would do anything for these little ones.” I write for the men who’ve been plagued by toxic work lives. Selfless dads who consistently put their family’s needs in front of their own — those are my people.
Dads are imperfect, and we’ve got a lifetime of confusing masculine tropes that we’ll be working to dismantle for the rest of our lives, and all of that is okay. We are progressive, conservative, straight, gay, talkative, stoic, you name it. You’ll find a billion versions of dads with a billion definitions of how to be one, but remove the name, politics, and policy attached, and you couldn’t find a single one of us who’d trust their kids around a person of Donald Trump’s character.
I don’t know how many words into this I am, but this is probably where you could expect me to pivot toward explaining why Kamala Harris is the better choice for President. To be honest, you (yes, you) would be a better President than Donald Trump, but besides the obvious, for the sake of my argument, I will.
Kamala Harris has spent her short campaign advocating for a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions. She’s advocated to build 3 million homes in America within her first four years as President. She’s promised to build a bipartisan council of advisors, including incredibly conservative politicians.
She’s advocating to be a President for all Americans, including those who don’t vote for her. That is who a President should be: somebody who understands there are hundreds of millions of Americans with hopes, dreams, and a wildly different set of goals and objectives in life.
Holding the presidency of the United States is a privilege, one that Donald Trump has held before, and Kamala Harris is the only sensible choice to step into that office on January 20, 2025.
When people say, “I don’t know how this election is this close,” I understand the frustration, but we have to acknowledge that the media landscape is broken.
I often use Apple News to curate my news, and if you do the same, the first 10 articles you see will likely be different than mine. It’s curated to make us more engaged with their platform. Twitter is the same way — so is Facebook. It is rare to find a middle-of-the-road platform capable of providing large groups of people with factual information because when they do, for some reason, we have decided it’s boring.
We can be frustrated with the news environment all we want, but society has been begging for a reality show like this where the season finale is this unpredictable, driving media coverage up the wall. Just about every executive in the Media landscape is salivating at the record levels of engagement each piece of Trump news receives.
When I see stats that upwards of 80% of my white brothers and sisters in the evangelical church support a man whose social resume would get him booted from even a volunteer position at the church, let alone a leadership role, I get it. It’s disappointing, absolutely, but I’ve spent enough time in church to understand why.
For decades, biblical literacy has decreased, but the vibes are high. I’m not talking about memorizing scripture or understanding the church’s history. With motivational pep talks that are geared toward social issues while utilizing a few verses here and there, with light shows and well-produced music that capitalizes on the everyday American struggles, with attractive and trendy leaders using charisma and charm to bring people into their building, it’s easy to see why millions of Americans spend Sunday morning in evangelical churches.
I’ve got my issues with them, but some of my best memories are of my time in church. Unfortunately, when biblical literacy is lacking, and when discipleship is focused on reaching those who are more likely to think like me than those who are far from the church, then it’s easy to get caught up in an echo chamber of American Christian speak because true discipleship is hard, especially with people who hold entirely different worldviews than you.
The church has been in relative partnership with Republican politics for decades. I knew this while being an active member of multiple churches over the years. Though early in my walk with Christianity, I felt a common theme that while my social views may have differed from many of my friends, we generally had the same worldview, and that is to turn away from hate and banish it from our congregations. People’s politics weren’t going to keep me from God.
Jesus could not have been more clear in his love for the broken and disdain for the powerful. His teachings of humility and unlimited compassion are what brought me to the church.
Jesus’s core teachings may be sprinkled into a service here and there, but with a significant amount of Christians believing God has sent Donald Trump to restore Christian values to America, Americans who openly identify as Christians are dwindling with no end in sight.
Like his businesses, casinos, schools, and steaks, Donald Trump turns everything in his atmosphere into a tacky branding opportunity that eventually goes bankrupt. Donald Trump is bad for the church, law enforcement, unions, farmers, and rural communities; how far can we go?
His erratic behavior, lack of accountability, fundamental racism, obsessions with Adolf Hitler, inability to understand even the most basic Government principles, and his ruthless, sociopathic tendencies to place himself above the Constitution, bible, or God himself are just a few of the reasons 2024 needs to be the series finale for the Donald Trump show.
I’m so tired, man.
All I want to do is go to the grocery store without walking past a man wearing a t-shirt with an AI-generated image of Donald Trump flipping me off as my kids pick out snacks for the week.
I want to say things like, “Calling Puerto Rican people garbage is pretty terrible,” without someone sending me a message that says, “Oh yeah?! What about Joe Biden calling us garbage?!”
Oh, the “Let’s Go Brandon” guy? Hunter Biden’s dad, that guy? Now, why would he ever say that? I guess I won’t vote for him again.
A return to a politics of civility is unlikely in the cards for the next few years, regardless of what happens on November 5. That makes me sad.
America has dug its heels so damn hard into this back-breaking position where every mainstream media outlet has to “both sides” Donald Trump’s awfulness toward immigrants that I don’t know how we snap our fingers into civil conversations about policy and productivity while taking these stupid political flags off our homes.
There’s a lot that I wish for, starting with my hope that kids can get back to being kids and that adults can begin tending to their own yards before pulling out the binoculars to dissect their neighbor’s length of grass. Just imagine the world we could live in if we directed our energy inward rather than stewing over what might happen in that one person’s bedroom who saw briefly at Target.
Catch me in the ballot box on November 5, placing my vote for Harris/Walz and a whole slew of ballot initiatives I’ve still got to do homework on.
Catch me later this week with my Therapist because, win or lose, I need to process these feelings. Then catch me starting January 20, 2025, holding the President accountable for their campaign promises because that’s how democracy works.
Eight years ago, I walked my ballot to the ballot box, cast it, and walked home feeling we were hours away from electing the first woman President in US history. This week, we’re going to finish the job.
*Updated Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Kamala Harris did not win the Presidency. I am keeping this article up in its entirety as a reminder to never lose hope, even in the face of heartbreaking defeat, and so if my daughters find this article years from now, they know without a doubt that their dad has always fought for their future.