The Trump Card

I was camping when the Republicans and the Donald had their great debate, so I didn't get to watch it.  I'm not sure I want to.  I have had about all I can take of negativity of late, and I'm rather certain that things are only going to get worse from now until next November.  It seems as though every political conversation I have had of late is dominated by one thing: we are all doomed.  As  matter of fact, most religious conversations strike a similar tone.  I have never considered myself particularly optimistic, and believe me, I can run through a fairly extensive litany of things that I consider to be totally screwed up, but I just can't bring myself to play chicken little.
Maybe it's a defense mechanism.  Maybe I'm just so hopeless that any politician is going to "fix" what is wrong with our country.  Maybe I'm just so jaded by new strategies and opinions about what the Church "needs" to be or do.  Maybe I've had it up to my eyeballs with battling ideologies and wars of morality.  Maybe I've just always kind of agreed a little too much with Ecclesiastes: "All is vanity and chasing after the wind."
I am a bit worried about the way that the Donald appears to have tapped into the zeitgeist of the American culture at this particular moment, because if Donald Trump is the avatar of your heart and soul, you have some problems.  First of all, don't every believe he is a working-class, salt of the earth type, who has succeeded thanks to his iron will and hard work. His father was a successful real estate developer, not a poor man's game. Donald was brought up to take over for his father, he was sent to military school, Fordham University and The Wharton School of Business, he is no dummy, but that doesn't mean he would make a good leader.  His success as a businessman in no way translates to promise as a politician, particularly as a President.  Because of our constitution, the President has substantially less power than the average company CEO.  If it translated, give me Warren Buffett or Bill Gates.  Trump is a business powerhouse, no doubt.  He has not just sat on his laurels and run his father's business, he has gambled and won big, he has lost more money than most people will ever see, but that means he has made enough that it doesn't even matter.
Trump is a walking (escalator riding), talking (an awful lot) example of the American fixation with wealth, and he will probably even tell you, in his New York accent that he grew up in Jamaica Queens and is a classic case of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.  And in fact, if you consider "the climb" from being rich to being ridiculously rich an example of the American dream, you might find a hero in Donald Trump, straight-shooting, bold-talking, giving-zero-craps, sort of guy.
He's entertaining to be sure, and he may just represent exactly what our country really is at the moment: arrogant, brash and ready to rumble.  But he doesn't represent what our country aspires to be, and that's why he worries me.  Trump's popularity speaks of a people who have stopped trying to be better than they are.  They are simply good enough.
I believe in progress, and I believe that we will never actually make it to a place where progress is no longer possible.  Whether it is our Constitution or our Holy Book, I believe that when you stop trying to understand better and be better as people of law or people of faith, you are doomed.  There is no set of external conditions or challenges that can doom you until you stop trying.  If your goal is improvement and progress even your failures are chances to learn.  Only by ignoring the lessons you have learned in the past do you become truly hopeless.
If there's one positive thing to say about Trump (and I try to always think about at least some positive thing to say about everyone) it's that he is never afraid of failure.  He will take the risk, speak his mind loudly and with utter conviction, even if it sounds crazy.  I guess you could say I admire that, even when I absolutely disagree with his assessment of the situation.  And I absolutely disagree with his assessments an awful lot.
As much as I believe he would be a hot mess as POTUS, I am fascinated by what he represents, because I have heard a lot of people say things like, "he's just saying what most of us think, it's just that he has the guts and the almost insane level of narcissism it takes to say it out loud."  If that is at all true I am somewhat disappointed in the level of racism, sexism, raw greed and maniacal self interest that many of my people seem to harbor but dare not speak.
It is only in an age of profound (perhaps unprecedented) cynicism about politics that a Trump candidacy is any more than a momentary farce.  He has run before, briefly, abortively, but until now no one took him seriously and he faded away.  I suspect that may happen this time as things start to get sorted, however, his raw popularity should be a warning to all politicians, not just Republicans.  When a side show like Trump starts taking your thunder, you are not well loved by your electorates.
Soon we are going to witness what may either be the point where politics pulls itself off the dung heap, or the point where our elected leadership just chooses to burrow further in.  It's not the election. It's the debate about Iran.  No one, including a majority of Iranians I suspect, wants Iran to go nuclear.  Not Israel, not the US, not India, China, Pakistan or even our buddy Vlad, no one wants a bomb in the hands of an Ayatollah, there is broad international agreement on this issue, but there is not broad international agreement on how best to prevent Iran from going nuclear.  Hawks want war, because we still haven't learned that you should never get into a land war in Asia.
Let's just say war with Iran would be a bad idea, even if we "won," a destabilized Iran would be so very much worse than Iraq and Syria and would probably give new meaning to the word quagmire.  But there's something in our mindset that wants a shootout.  There are rumblings that the Republican led congress is going to try to sabotage the deal brokered by the Obama administration via Secretary of State John Kerry.  Partly because war is big business, partly because... well let's just say they don't want Obama to win... again.
They are playing with fire.  If this deal goes south diplomacy goes with it. Security goes with it, and I'm pretty sure we're going to witness the first non-test nuclear explosion since Nagasaki.  I don't know who it will be, could be Iran, could be Israel, could be us, or even Russia because you never know what Putin might get up to.
The primary arguments against the agreement stack up to: "don't be wimps."  Which might work if we were third graders, but that is exactly the argument being made by the Donald and more disturbingly by some influential and actually elected GOP Congresspeople.  Notice that, in typical Trump-tastic fashion, he based his argument on watching a segment on Charlie Rose and deciding that the dude being interviewed was just "smarter" than the people representing our nation.  That's what terrifies me about politics these days, the utter lack of accountability to empirical evidence and logical objectivity.  But that's what we have now, and Donald Trump is just the sort of buffoon to illustrate, in grand fashion, how idiotic it all really is.
The fate of the world is in their hands and they treat it like a game of chicken.  And they misapprehend their opponent.  And I don't think they can be trusted, and since we elected them, and since we're the reason why the Donald is even getting his hour upon the stage, I think we bear some responsibility.
I don't know about you, but when it comes to Nukes, I want calm, boring dudes like Obama and Kerry holding the keys.  I want the kind of men and women who know how to walk away from a fight instead of starting a brawl where my children and everyone I love is going to suffer from the fallout.  I want people who know how to prevent and put out fires, not how to start them.
The part of me that wants entertainment wants Trump around.  The part of me that doesn't want to see the middle east go up in mushroom clouds wants someone else.  Someone boring, someone with a filter, someone who knows what tact and diplomacy are.
Come on America, let's stop being so easily distracted by shiny objects.  My challenge to all of you voters out there, let's put on our grown-up clothes and elect people with actual skills to govern not just throw tantrums because things don't go their way.