How the Hell Did Trump Get the Nomination?

So it’s official.  The Republican Party has nominated Donald Trump for president.  A man who thinks women exist only for a man’s pleasure.  A man who regularly mocks and insults women and the disabled.  A man who uses offensive stereotypes and inflammatory language to describe minorities.  A man whose xenophobia is second only to his extreme narcissism.  A man who changes his position on issues faster than an Olympic sprinter.  A man who is nothing more than a glorified con artist.  A man who made his entire fortune by stealing it from others.  A man who has no idea how to actually run a country, as he has made clear by offering almost no actual policies.

I could go on and on, but I do believe my point is made (and besides, most of his supporters won’t listen to the facts anyway).  There is no longer a point to arguing about him because he is running whether we like it or not.  But I think a look at just how the hell we got here is warranted so that perhaps we can prevent someone like him from getting nominated again.

So how did we get here?  Who is to blame?  Well, it’s not who you think.  I put the blame squarely on Liberals (my own people!) and Democrats.

I’ll pause here for a moment for the inevitable screaming from the Bernie Bros and trolls who just love making noise . . .

*hums and twiddles thumbs*

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let me explain why I blame Liberals and Democrats for the rise of Trump.  The problem is that we live in an age defined by polarization, especially when it comes to politics.  Our political landscape is so divisively charged that the only thing that seems to matter is making sure you don’t agree with the guy on the other side of the aisle.  More to the point, this has created a world where we bask in the afterglow of taking pot shots at our opponents.  But this has had an unintended side effect, one that people don’t seem to have realized.

There is an ancient proverb that states, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  The phrase was coined as a way of seeking allies to help fight against a common enemy.  But while this seems like a sound idea, it can also be very dangerous.  Yes, it can help bring people together, but it can also serve as a wedge, depending on how you interpret it.  Most people interpret the phrase correctly, inferring that defeating an opponent can be easier if you ally yourself with someone who shares your opposition.  This logic has been used to win numerous wars for millennia.  Unfortunately, we too often subvert this logic, inferring the wrong meaning from it by following a purely literal interpretation of it; instead of finding someone who shares your opposition, you find someone that your opponent hates.

Some would say that this doesn’t really sound any different, that it just comes to the same conclusion.  But the difference is actually very simple, and that’s why it is so easily missed.  Instead of uniting with someone to defeat a common opponent, you intentionally find someone you know that your opponent hates in order to defeat him.  I’ll give an example to properly illustrate this.  Say that you and several other people are trying to win a contest, and that you decide to team up with somebody to increase your chances of winning.  The logical choice would be to find somebody that wants to play the way you do.  But what if you really hated one of the competitors, to the point that all you wanted to do was beat him, even if you didn’t win?  You would likely team up with someone who feels the same way, even if they don’t play the way you’d like them to.  In short, your desire to make the other competitor look bad blinds you.

That is what has happened in this election.  That is why Trump has been allowed to seize what little remained of the once great Republican Party.  We have allowed ourselves to become so politically polarized that we are willing to align ourselves with someone simply because our opponents dislike them.  I believe that to be the reason that Republicans nominated Trump for the presidency; they saw the vitriolic fervor erupting from Liberals and Democrats, and subconsciously decided that if we hated him that much, he must be on to something.  For the last eight years, we’ve seen the inverse of this as well, with Republicans slamming Obama for every syllable he utters simply because they dislike him.  This is the most literal interpretation of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” that is possible, and it is by far the most dangerous.

Now, to be fair, Democrats and Liberals are every bit as guilty of this as Republicans and Conservatives.  We have all decided that those who disagree with us must be an enemy.  Democrats used this logic to nominate Hillary Clinton, a chronic liar and lackey to Wall Street (to say nothing of major scandals such as her email).  She stood up and said things that Republicans oppose and gained political points because of it.  But that is exactly the problem.  Both sides have nominated an absolutely terrible candidate (I consider Trump to be worse, but that is neither here nor there) because all that matters anymore is beating the other side.

Sadly, this isn’t even the most damning part.  In trying to beat each other, both sides have nominated someone who doesn’t even stand for what they do.  The Republicans nominated Trump, who isn’t a Conservative, and whose party affiliation seems to change every few years.  He is on the record opposing nearly everything they support (although seeing as he changes his mind every five minutes, it’s hard to tell anymore), and supporting things for which they have slammed Obama, Hillary, and other Democrats.  Moreover, he has been friends with the Clintons for many years, inviting them to his last wedding and supporting Hillary financially in her last presidential run, making it all the more confounding that Conservatives and Republicans can support him at all.

Liberals and Democrats have made precisely the same mistake in nominating Hillary, and she is every bit as dangerous as Trump.  She thinks everyone but her is trash, as is evidenced by the countless statements that both her and her husband’s staff members have made over the years.  She flouts the law and gets away with it because she is powerful (her email scandal is a particularly pertinent example).  She is a chronic liar (yeah, I know, this is a trait shared by all politicians, but the Clintons took it to a new level), doing so just as much, if not more than, Trump (although Politifact gives them nearly inverse ratings; 75% of his are rated at least Mostly False, while 75% of hers are rated at least Half True.  Make of that what you will.).  She is also known to get a lot of funding from Wall Street, big banks, and other corporations, which could spell trouble for us when they start calling in favors.  Yet, despite her many flaws, certain factions of Democrats and Liberals have clung to her in the same way that certain factions of Republicans and Conservatives cling to Trump.  Hillary is good at telling people what the want to hear, and many of her supporters are concerned only with beating Trump in the election.  But isn’t that the same reason so many people support Trump?

That is the true problem here, and it is precisely what is destroying this country.  We have allowed ourselves to become so divided that we will ally ourselves with anyone with whom we seem to share a common enemy or opposition.  The old proverb I mentioned before might seem to suggest this, but that is only in a purely literal interpretation.  The true meaning of it is far more subjective than that.  Instead of joining forces with someone purely because of a shared opposition, you find someone with enough similarities that they outweigh the differences.  But this doesn’t work if the differences are as large as they are with Trump and Hillary.  The way people on both sides are blindly following them is disturbing because they are becoming exactly the thing that they hate.  Conservatives and Republicans decry corruption in politics and fight for family values and religious freedom (all very worthwhile pursuits), yet have nominated a man who is the face of corruption, brags about his marital affairs, and who isn’t even Christian (Note- I only bring up his religious views because Republicans consider religion to be important.  I personally believe a candidate’s religious beliefs are irrelevant so long as those beliefs do not preclude them from doing their job). 

On the other side of the spectrum, Democrats and Liberals fight for transparency in campaign finance, regulation of Wall Street, the banks, and corporations, and decry anyone who ignores facts.  But Clinton and her running mate are both lackeys for Wall Street, having received massive campaign contributions from them.  As such, we can’t expect that Clinton will ever fight hard for the carefully written regulations we so desperately need to prevent another recession.  Finally, it is painfully obvious that Clinton ignores actual facts and evidence because she is every bit the liar that Trump is.  But her supporters also ignore facts and evidence, yet they slam Trump’s supporters for doing exactly the same thing.

Simply put, by supporting these candidates, both sides have become exactly what they hate.  They have made fighting against the other side their only priority (in their respective last elections, both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell said that this was their top priority, regardless of the consequences; if that doesn’t send chills down your spine, I don’t know what will).  For eight years, we’ve been led by a Republican Congress that believed voting 60+ times to repeal Obamacare (and even shutting down the government for two weeks, costing the country tens of billions of dollars in the process, more than was needed to keep the government open) was more important than working together to find a way forward.  Before this, we had a Democratic Congress doing largely the same thing, abusing the filibuster to prevent anything from getting done.  Our leaders now spend more time sniping at each other on social media and in interviews than actually doing their job.  But this is no longer limited to just the government; because of the advent of social media, this toxic behavior has managed to worm its way into everything.  You can’t turn on the news or open Facebook without seeing it.  Our entire society has become polarized as a result; we’ve started adhering to the logic of “if you’re not with me, you’re against me and the country.”  But this isn’t logical at all, or even remotely rational.  The point of a democracy (yes, I know that we’re not *technically* a Democracy, but in fact are a Constitutional Republic) is that we are free to disagree with each other.  Because our divisiveness now cripples us, the simple act of disagreement has become tantamount to pointing a gun, and BOTH sides are to blame for this.

There is a way to end this, however.  The solution is simple, although getting there might not be.  In fact, the solution has been in front of us for more than 200 years, but we have chosen to ignore it.  The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution provide ideals that even today seem remarkable, yet our leaders have consistently chose to ignore them.  Our country was designed by men who saw that our humanity was what made us special, and that that was what we needed to focus on.  The revolution was won because men from all walks of life, backgrounds, and ethnicities came together and fought for a common cause.  That’s the true meaning behind the adage I mentioned earlier; you don’t ally yourself with someone because you share an opposition.  You ally yourself with someone because you focus on what you have in common, not on the differences between you.

As children, we are all taught to love each other and to respect our differences.  We are taught that it is our similarities that matter, that we are all equal, and that we must abide by the Golden Rule of treating others how we wish to be treated.  But somehow, as we grow older, we stop doing this.  We are taught on a subconscious level to hate.  We learn by example to hold grudges and look only at differences and to ignore similarities.  For the sake of our children, and for the future of our species and our world, we must stop this.  We must stop teaching the wrong lessons.  We must let people think for themselves. 

Being different, thinking differently, these are not crimes.  But thinking that differences are all that matter is.

Crossroads

Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads?

Okay, stupid question.  And irritatingly rhetorical.

Anyway, the reason I ask is because the other day, I found myself at a crossroads that was both metaphorical and literal.  This certainly wasn’t the first one I’ve encountered, but it was unique in that I saw it coming a half-mile away.

Before I delve into this, let’s back up a bit.  Those who know me (or have read my previous posts on here) know that I have felt, well, stuck for a long time.  I’ve been out of college just over a year, and I’m still right where I was.  Moreover, I have been stuck since before I even went back to college.  True, I have changed, grown, and matured a great deal, but my overall situation in life is still the same.  I still live in the same damned house.  I wrote a novella-length post back in January about my goals for this year, and nearly six months into the year, I can’t say I’ve done much work approaching any of them.  Sure, I’ve started brainstorming ideas for posts for both my blogs, but aside from that, what have I done?  What have I accomplished?  Zip.  Nada.  Zilch.  Zippo.  Nil.

I wish I could explain this.  I really do.  My parents and friends ask me all the time, and I can’t even begin to offer an explanation, not even to myself.  Everything I come up with in my head just sounds like some lame excuse or rationalization.  So I just plod on the best I can.  But it’s not the best I can do, and I know it.  That’s what really bugs me.

My time in college was instrumental in showing me that I am capable of far more than I give myself credit for.  For nearly as long as I can remember, I’ve had a lot of issues with self-doubt and anxiety (it’s odd to think I’ve had so few issues with peer pressure given my generally negative self-view).  I’ve always preferred to keep a low profile, to blend in.  I don’t like attention being drawn to me.  For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I didn’t ever want to stand out, even if I deserved it, such as my natural gift for music (if you don’t believe me, then I will state for the record that even typing the phrase “my natural gift for music” made me feel uneasy, as if I was giving myself unwarranted hype).

Does this have anything to do with why I’m still stuck in the same rut I’ve been in for six long years?  Honestly, I don’t know.  But something tells me there is some kind of correlation that I either can’t see or am unwilling to see.  Something keeps holding me back.  I’ve written countless posts and journal entries (no, I won’t share those.  I write those by hand on paper for a reason.), but I never seem to be able to quite ascertain the problem.

So what does this have to do with the crossroads I approached the other day?  That afternoon, I finished reading Felicia Day’s memoir “You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost!)”.  I’ve been a fan of hers since discovering Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Video Blog and The Guild, and even had the pleasure of meeting her at a book signing for the above-mentioned memoir.  What I didn’t realize was how much her life’s story paralleled my own.  We’re both gamers, musicians, EVER so slightly opinionated, and we both have pretty serious problems with anxiety.  The way she bared all of her problems in the book was inspiring, especially when it came to the difficult ones.  Some of them I already knew bits and pieces about, such as the #GamerGate fiasco (I won’t go into detail here, suffice it to say that what started as one guy acting like an asshole due to a nasty breakup somehow devolved into an entire movement dedicated to misogyny and harassment of the worst kind, all under the guise of promoting “ethics in journalism.”  Feel free to Google for more information on the subject, but be warned: there are some truly nasty trolls involved in this particular scandal), and how she wrote a heartfelt opinion piece asking for peace, only to have her fear of retribution come true (she was doxxed, meaning she had personal information leaked on the internet for the purpose of allowing people to contact and harass her.  Ain’t the internet great?).  I have actually withheld opinions on topics out of that exact same fear.  I almost didn’t post my tirade about the NSA’s illegal spying because I feared what might happen.  But I pushed forward.

Unfortunately, as most people know, and as Felicia notes in her book, there is only so much one can do to push oneself, to keep plodding forward.  You have to find the motivation within yourself to keep going.  I was able to keep going for some time due solely to the fear that surrounded me.  In my early adulthood, I went through some very dark times, and my fear of what would happen if I strayed from the path expected of me kept me going.  Fear, while a terrible thing that often controls us, can be a powerful motivator.  But in recent years, my life has become very stable, and I’ve finally been able to bury my past.  So now I need to find a new motivation, and that’s not exactly something you can just dig up.  It can’t just be manufactured or willed into existence.  But you can find it by examining your life, by looking for patterns and correlations that don’t seem to make sense.

This is what happened to me the other day as I approached the crossroads that was both literal and metaphorical.  I had finished reading Felicia’s book an hour or so before I went out, and had been mulling over it ever sense.  I really enjoyed the book, but found a great deal of inspiration in her story, particularly in those instances where she looked inside herself to find the problem.  That’s something I’ve never tried in full to do.  Yes, I’ve written countless blog posts across three different platforms (Myspace and Livejournal make me feel OLD).  I’ve made thousands of posts on Facebook over the years.  I’ve written dozens of journal entries wherein I tried to go deeper into myself because it was a safe place to do so.  I even saw a therapist for about six months last year (which I cannot recommend enough for those having difficulties; sometimes, just having someone to talk to in a safe place can make all the difference in the world), which at least helped me start to understand a bit about myself (perhaps, had I continued, I would have been able to take this understanding further; unfortunately, as I have graduated, I can no longer use student health services, and I can’t currently afford to see anyone due to my lack of a job or health insurance).  But I refrained from delving deeper into myself to find the reason I’d been stuck and unhappy for so long.  Maybe I was afraid.  Maybe I already knew the answer and was just fighting with my subconscious about it.  I wish I could say what it was, but I still don’t know.  But the other day, I think I might have gotten a tiny glimpse.

The crossroads I approached was a road near my house.  I had gone out with the intention of going to the GameSwap (a local game store that deals in basically every gaming console ever created, as well as games and accessories for them) to see if they had a GameShark for my Nintendo 64 (yes, I still own and play one, and, yes, I am old), followed by getting some take-out for dinner.  As I drove down the road, I was mulling over Felicia’s book, trying to figure out if and how I could apply the lessons she learned to my own life.  This thought process somehow intertwined itself with the thought process surrounding my desire to go to GameSwap, and something interesting happened.  Call it an epiphany, a realization, or anything else; it was one of those moments where vastly different thought processes align in just the right way to make you go “Huh.  I swear this occurred to me before, but somehow it actually makes sense now.”

What occurred to me as I neared the store was that video games, which have always been a love of mine, might in fact be the key I’d been looking for.  One of the things that Felicia discusses in her book is the fact that we must identify things that are a detriment to us, be they behaviors, thoughts, or objects, and we must get rid of them.  At the very least, we must modify those things so that they are no longer a detriment (there’s no universal truth on this one because it depends on the person and the impact the thing has on them).  Now, I’m not saying that video games are a total detriment to me; on the contrary, I think that they have helped me a lot.  They have offered me an escape when I needed it, much like music has for nearly as long.  But there is a fine line between helpful and detrimental, and skewing towards the latter often ends up being self-destructive.  That may seem like an odd term to use here, but I think it’s appropriate because anything can become self-destructive if you let it. 

Most people, when they think of self-destructive behavior, think of things like drugs and alcohol.  They think of things that cause both physical and mental harm, both to the person doing them and to those who care for that person.  But I say again that anything can fall into that category if you let it.  I think that I may have done that with many things, and that video games may just be the tip of the iceberg.  I don’t mean to say that I have an addiction; actually, I have my mother’s very un-addictive personality.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t take things to an unhealthy extreme.  My problem, as I see it, is that I use video games, amongst other things, as a way to hide.

I touched on this above, this tendency to hide.  Like the adage goes, it all started innocently enough.  By nature, I am very introverted, shy, and anxious; in other words, I hit the trifecta when it comes to avoidance.  I detest confrontation, and have always kept to myself.  It really wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I started to come out of my shell, and that was saying something considering the darkness and fear that I was going through.  Unfortunately, I think I’ve begun to revert in recent years.  As my fear-based motivation dried up, I found myself without focus.  Moreover, my fragile emotional state began to get the best of me.  Going back to school helped, but, in the end, I did what I do best: I hid.  And I’m still hiding now.  Sure, therapy and medication have helped me see through the window in the door, but I’m afraid to pull it open again.

It is precisely this that led me to the crossroads the other day.  As I drove towards the intersection, I found myself thinking about how much we are defined by our choices.  I have allowed myself to become defined by my own self-destructive behavior, preferring to hide from life instead of live it.  I decided that the approaching intersection was a choice beyond the simple “right or left” (well, it was a four-way intersection, so I guess it’d really be right, straight, left, or U-turn).  If I turned left, I could go and purchase the GameShark I wanted (or something else related to video games if they didn’t have one in stock).  I definitely wanted it, but it occurred to me that if I did, I would basically just be enabling my own self-destructive behavior.  On the other hand, I could just as easily turn right, go get my take-out, and head back home.

It took me only a few seconds to decide.

“Screw it,” I thought.  “I’m just gonna get food and go back home.”

Turning right was so simple, so effective.  But it was one of the few moments in my life where I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I was right.  Video games may be a wonderful thing, but I, like many others, have too often used them for the wrong reason.  A beer now and then is great, but if you start hiding in the bottle, you miss out on life.  I think I’ve been doing the same with video games; as I said, I don’t believe I have an addiction, but I do let them distract me far too often.

This, unfortunately, is but one symptom of a larger problem, and it’s one I still don’t really know how to correct.  As I’ve noted above, I’ve had glimpses of it before, such as preferring to do a lot of my creative writing by hand in order to avoid distractions on my computer (damn you, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Netflix!).  I’ve also noticed that I tend to be happier and work better when I’m not in this house, which has led me to consider starting to go to coffee shops or the library a couple of days or so a week so that I can really get things done, be it working on projects or finding a job.

What this comes down to is that I need to start identifying all the things in my life that are self-destructive, that hold me back.  I’ve already been doing that on a subconscious level by cleaning most of the garbage out of my basement (filled two large trash cans!), and by going through my own things in preparation for moving out.  This house was my family’s home for a long time, and, as such, we accrued a lot of stuff.  Most of it was already either sent with people as they left or thrown out in our purges (the first one quite literally filled a dumpster; there are no words to describe how good that felt.)  I’m the last one here, and I feel the weight of this place on my shoulders.  That’s why I need to get out.  That’s also why I’m trying to get rid of as much as possible; getting rid of things that no longer serve any purpose is an extremely cathartic experience.  By ridding myself of both destructive behaviors and objects that do nothing but give me stress, I can finally allow my psyche to begin the healing process that has eluded me for so long.  I can finally move forward with my life instead of hiding from it.

I’m not going to pretend that everything is rosy now, or that I’m a new man (besides, as a writer, I detest such clichés).  Change is seldom that easy.  But I think this was an important step.  The first step to fixing a problem is to admit that there IS a problem; just as an alcoholic can’t change until he admits he’s an alcoholic, I couldn’t see how much I was hiding until I admitted to myself that I’m hiding.  By realizing just how much I hide from life, I’ve taken that first step.  I don’t know when or where the next step will be taken.  I don’t know how long the path is.  But I know where I need to go, and even if this isn’t precisely the right path, I’m at least moving.  Considering that my entire adulthood has been overshadowed by fear and anxiety, that’s a hell of a first step.

There’s an old Chinese proverb that says a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  I’ve always added a second part to that that says the direction in which you step doesn’t matter; all that matters is taking the first step because you can always change direction.

No path is set in stone, so, in the end, it’s all up to you.