“Jon: Sadly, It may very well be that this is why he (Trump) will win in November. His soulless sycophants are motivated, and his abettors will be activated as surely as in 2016. What was done to Hillary will be done to Biden.
I hope I am wrong.  – John”

John, with all due respect, I believe you are wrong, and you are so wrong you don’t even see the gaping hole in your message.

Perhaps if you were as motivated as you believe Trump’s followers are, you would be more concerned with defeating him than doing his public relations through your sense of doom.

From the first, I’ve been annoyed by messages like John’s. I get them every single day, and I usually refrain from writing what I am thinking:  why are Trump’s opponent’s such wussies?

During the same period I’ve been getting those worried messages, I have never seen or read a message from a supporter of President Trump doubting that he will win or that he should win. I have never seen one word from anyone in the Trump biosphere that reflects the slightest doubt that he will be re-elected in the Fall.

I resist judging others, and I feel superior to nobody.  I am testosterone deficient. Still, I follow the spiritual idea about courage: it’s not about whether you win, it’s about how you handle challenge and loss.

Donald Trump has given me the gift of determination.

John Lewis, a person of eternal inspiration, and great credentials for being strong wrote that “nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society. Why? Because human beings are the most dynamic link to the divine on this planet.”

Let’s grow up: the vicious attacks on Hilary Clinton were not the only reason for the outcome of that election.

If that were true, Donald Trump would have never made it near the White House.

I am clear in my mind that President Trump’s dizzying decline is irreversible for many reasons, which I have been writing about in detail and at great length.

If, for some reason, I am wrong, I will own up to it,  continue to live my life, do my work, commit small acts of great kindness, and love my wife and dogs.

I’m not descending into fear and gloom on behalf of Donald Trump. I’m not getting on the gloomsplaining train.

John didn’t mention that this morning a bunch of moms teamed up with the Black Lives Matter movement to haul the Trump administration into court. Or that Trump has been doing everything but setting himself on fire to make sure he is defeated.

John also didn’t mention that the movement for a kinder America is more robust than it has been in decades, or that the Democratic candidate for President grows more and more popular by the day without leaving his house.

People are marching all over the country, black and brown, white and yellow for a different kind of America.

That brings hope to me, I’m sorry it doesn’t bring hope to John.

Can we borrow some of the mojo and dedication of those Portland moms, who seem not to be afraid of anything? If anybody ought to be afraid, Trump ought to be frightened of them. If they were marching on me, I’d run and hide.

In addition to marching into a wall of tear gas every night, the moms and Black Lives Matter went to Washington today to sue the Trump administration for violating their rights to free speech.

That is a truly holy alliance, depending on your beliefs. They aren’t just complaining. They are doing things.

They are seeking relief for the federal government’s use of force in suppressing nightly demonstrations in Portland and for overreaching federal authority. They are also suing to remove Chad Wolf, the acting director of Homeland Security who may well be in office illegally.

I don’t hear the moms fussing about the inevitable victory of the federal agents or the Trump administration who have invaded Portland on behalf of the President’s re-election efforts. They are putting on their masks and marching.

They mean to win.

Every day since I began writing about politics I’ve gotten one or more messages like the one from John, people telling me that they are worried, pessimistic, unsure.

People say they have this feeling that Donald Trump will be re-elected in the Fall and that Trump and the Republican Party will find a way – legal or not – to smear and defeat Joe Biden.

Sometimes I feel like I’m supposed to be that kind old grandpa who pats them on the back and assures them everything will be okay. If so, I’ve failed, I’m not the right person for that.

I have always jumped at the chance to get into good trouble.

It is an almost religious belief among Trump’s loyal supporters and working-class Americans that Democrats, liberals, journalists, boomers, yuppies, city dwellers, and progressives believe they are stupid, bigoted, and without moral values or scruples.

I’m beginning to think they are right.

If Trump should, by some remote chance, win the November election, we will only have ourselves to blame. Fear is contagious, so is hopelessness.  So is a failure of will or confidence.

If you wish to understand why I so strongly believe that President Trump will not win re-election, just look at the news today.

One day ago,  Trump finally listened to his desperate advisers and decided to mimic a real President by deciding to lead the fight against the pandemic maturely and responsibly.

Poll after a poll found that Americans were disappointed in his leadership. So he pretended to lead.

Today, he took it all back. Leadership is not something you can put on like a mask.

Trump retweeted a video in which a group of doctors makes false and discredited claims about the virus, including one who says, “you don’t need masks” because hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug pushed by the President and pals  is a “cure” in combination with other drugs.

He resumed pressuring schools to open up, whether health authorities say it is safe or not.

The video he retweeted, which went viral on YouTube, was removed by Facebook and Twitter and then by YouTube because it spread demonstrably false information.

Trump’s effort to turn his plunging poll numbers around by taking charge of the pandemic crisis instead of downplaying or ignoring it, lasted one day. Like the farmers around here say,  you can’t dress up a hog.

President Trump is simply not capable of managing a trip to the bathroom without lying or dividing or blowing through our constitution. Something is just not right with him.

While Americans were dying all over the country, he was fuming over Dr. Fauci’s invitation to throw out the first ball of the season in the Washington Nationals Ball Park.

Trump immediately lied, he told reporters he had been invited to throw out the first pitch when Yankee Stadium opened up to baseball on August 15. It turns out he was never invited at all, the Yankees had no idea what he was talking about.

Trump’s effort to distract Americans from the pandemic by sending Star Wars federal troopers into Portland has not brought that city under control or “dominated” it; it has dangerously escalated the violence there to the point where more people and federal agents and protesters are being hurt, and some may even be killed.

There is no good reason for this to be happening.

Trump looks like the progressive’s best friend to me. In another four years, he might make American the most enlightened country in the world just by existing.

President Trump has inspired and motivated some of the most powerful and ascendant moral movements in American history — Me, Too, Black Lives Matter, the Wall Moms, the national movement to removed Confederate statues. They are all growing rapidly.

I can only speak for myself; I don’t tell other people what to do. I don’t have a lot of respect for whining and gloom. This is 2020, not 2016.  The pundits say there is a lot of time for Trump to bound back.

The pundits are full of gas.

I believe we have it in our power to make this country better, kinder, and more compassionate again. And we have the power to blow it, of course. It’s exciting.

Amazingly, Black Lives Matter and the death of George Floyd have focused attention on racism and our true American history more than any other group ever has.

Black Lives Matter is now the largest social movement in the history of America, something I would not have believed possible when President Trump took office.

Trump’s refusal to pay his respects to Lewis at his memorial service said a lot about the hardness in his soul. And the small way he thinks.  It also says a lot about his ability to climb out of this awful mess he has made for himself.

It would have cost him nothing to go to the Capitol, and it might have actually made a difference among the African-American community, which he claims to have supported more than any other president but Lincoln.

Ironically and tragically, no one in the country needs help and support more than Trump’s most passionate and loyal followers – working-class white men and women who have also been left behind.

They have lost their work, their farms, their factory jobs, their Main Streets; their children die in staggering numbers from a drug overdose, unemployment, plunging life expectancy,  suicide, and hopelessness.

One of President Trump’s greatest crimes has been to abandon these people once again, using and exploiting them and then gorging on the new and bigger swamp he has built but promised to destroy.

I believe a real progressive, a true radical, cares about anyone needy and vulnerable, not just a chosen few. For the country to ever know peace, they will need some help.

Living on my farm, far outside the scrub, I perceive Donald Trump differently than John. Yes, I get afraid sometimes, and yes, I doubt myself often.  Sure, I worry about my country.

I was a police reporter for some years before writing about politics, I know that it is evil in the world.

But I am not afraid of Donald  Trump.

And I am not going to waste one-minute wetting myself about what might or might not happen four months from now.  All anybody can do is the best that they can for as long as they can.

I’ve signed up for that.

I’m going to continue doing what I can to offer calm, useful, and hopefully honest help to people struggling to make sense of things.

So far, so good.

The pandemic has unmasked him, like Count Dracula getting caught out in daylight. This pandemic is his sun, he has revealed his true self, and he is not capable of changing it, because what you see is what you get, there is nothing else in there.

Mary Trump hit it right on the nose. He can’t strategize, he couldn’t manage, he can’t listen.  He can fascinate, but he can’t inspire. As Tulsa proved so poignantly, even those loyal fans won’t risk everything for him, as he was so sure they would.

These people are suffering much more during the Trump years than the liberals and progressives whining and fretting about surviving him and defeating him have suffered.

To me, everything is possible now; everything is on the table.

Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts, said Churchill. Real courage, said Atticus Finch, is when you know you’re licked before you have begun, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. Courage, not fear, wrote Maya Angelou is the most important of all the virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

It takes a  good deal of courage to do good, bring about change.

My inspiration for the week is John Lewis, who had a lot of courage, and brought about real change. He was thrown in jail more than 40 times, beaten up, and kicked more times than that,  and he said he was never once afraid in all that time.

Speaking at the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 1 of this year, Lewis said, “get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.’

Go out and get into good trouble, John.

Godspeed.