Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I was shocked by the number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump. I’ve gotten sick of the hysteria and the effort to keep people fearful has left me feeling disillusioned.

Labels don’t resonate with me; I identify beyond blue or red. I think independently, and my views range from conservative to what we often label as progressive.

I am sick of arguments and outrage and grievance and victim talk. I need to clear my head of the people we call leaders and the mindless people we call leaders.

No label covers all of my thoughts, and that’s the way I intend to keep it. There is no point in having a mind if you don’t use it. It’s time for me to start using it.

I’ve never been one to argue about politics; in my 77 years, I’ve never heard a sound or unpredictable argument about politics.  And I certainly won’t be spending the rest of my life in fear and resentment.

I have some real thinking, and I’m doing it alone.

Why, I wonder, did more than one-half of the country voted for someone the Democrats seemed to feel never had a chance? I didn’t know, and I don’t like not understanding things like that, even if I don’t like them.

I want to learn and open my mind to different realities and dogmas. There is a major shift in our culture.

I love my spiritual work, but I won’t submit to the absolute truths of organized religion or the manipulations of politicians.

I have little use for either political party. I am not afraid of Donald Trump. I don’t flatter myself by thinking he is coming for me and my farm.

People like me have persistently underrated Donald Trump, and so has almost everyone in the Democratic Party, from the aging President Biden right down to party and local county leaders.

I don’t know of one major member of the party who foresaw Trump’s stunning and almost total victory or mentioned it to the rest of us.

Neither did I or any friend I know.

So what does it mean for me?

The media has lost my trust. The mainstream media, where I once worked,  is primarily a fear and greed machine. How sad.

This week’s hysteria – there is a new one almost daily-  is that our new president is going to throw Liz Chaney and many Democrats in jail for their work on his role in the January 6 camera attack.

The hysteria spread all through the Internet and panicked millions of people. Of course, they said, he is a dictator and will destroy our democracy.

The “threat” was so thin that the CNN interview was not even mentioned but the New York Times the next day.

I don’t buy it, and I am no Trumpist. But I have been ignorant, arrogant, and poorly informed. I’m missing something; I want to find out what, not just beat my chest and wet my pants. I was a young bed wetter; I don’t care to do it now.

Do all of his supporters see what I didn’t see or understand? Why do they react so differently to him than people like me did?

I’ve been hard at work and often talk with the many Trump supporters in my town, many of whom are my friends. We talk quickly and openly. They have helped me understand, and I am not expecting Armageddon or the Third Reich. I had stopped changing and thinking differently. I need to change.

I’m surprised at how I feel about some good things now on the table. This is what people tell me over and over again what they wanted: change.

But first, I have to deal with hysteria,  one of Trump’s favorite media tools. The media loves him for it.

There is the throwing of enemies into jail, the concentration camp for illegal immigrants, the destruction of Social Security, and the rise of an evil dictator.  The hysteria of yesterday (and tomorrow)  is that Trump will build concentration camps and deport between eight and ten million people.

 

 

Nothing gets Mr. Trump more publicity, money, or power than being foremost in the news almost every day for years. This is America. That kind of media skill can get you far, even to the White House. Nothing gets more media attention than arousing millions of people to unleash millions of grievances, some justified.

And nothing has riled voters in America over the years more than immigration, from Jews to Irish to the Chinese, and now South American. It’s an ancient story in America. Trump sensed it and jumped.

And I have to be honest. The border has been completely out of control.

One of Trump’s many skills is keeping himself in the news again and again, most often with stunning and shocking statements that never occur – remember the wall that the Mexicans were going to pay for?

Nobody seemed to mind that this never happened or never will happen.

But the point was that everyone paid attention to him whenever he opened his mouth, every day. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who pledged to be a one-term President, lied about it and was mostly silent about his many accomplishments and shortcomings. Remember the riddle that if a tree falls and no one hears it, did it happen? I might ask the same question about the Biden administration.

How did he do so many wonderful things that nobody knows about?  Trump sucked up all the air there was and still does.

President-elect Trump has accomplished little in government so far, but nobody cares. That’s politics poorly played by his opponents.

Rather than be frustrated or fearful,  I decided to think about things differently and learn something.

I decided to do something I’d never done before and challenge my own preconceptions. The problem with labels—progressive, conservative, blue, and red—is that you must give up thinking.

I like thinking. So, rather than wring my hands over things I can’t control, I’ve decided to listen carefully to the new agenda, pretend to like all of it, and focus on things I really would like.

Some examples of not thinking:

If you follow the text of the Chaney hysteria, you will hear President-elect Trump say something the media has not mentioned or reported.

He did not say he was going to put Chaney in jail; he said she deserved to be in jail. There is no way for him to do that. Like her or not, she broke no laws, and Trump is no fool, although he likes to act like one. Apart from Impeachment, the president cannot throw congressional critics in jail.

Does any sane person think the media-savvy Mr. Trump will put into motion a trail that reviews and revisits the overwhelming testimony of those many Republicans who testified against him? No way.

This time, the country might be paying attention; why on earth would he risk that?  He’s already won big.

What he said on NBC before urging jail on the January 6 committee was that he didn’t want to replay the past; he wanted to get on with what he promised to do: control the border, remove immigrants who have committed crimes, and lower the cost of living.

Unlike the modern Democratic Party, Trump seems almost eerily plugged into what working-class Americans are worried about. We learned that his instincts are excellent, much better than mine.

They are not worried about Liz Cheney; Mr. Trump and his fellow billionaire Bros plan to have a lot more fun than that.

When Mr. Trump states a position, I stop and wonder if there is anything I should understand and learn about. There often is, sometimes to my surprise.

All my life, America has been in costly and brutal wars in foreign countries, never seeming to grasp that foreign countries don’t want Americans to liberate them or dominate them. We are the world’s most war-happy nation.

Countless Americans have died in these wars that seem to go on forever and end up in catastrophe – think  Vietnam, Iraq,  and Afghanistan.

When I was younger, it was the Democrats and people like me who opposed these endless and ultimately failed conflicts. When the rebels took over Syria last week, a lot of people in Washington started talking about how we should get involved and support the new rulers of the country. You know, give them support.

Trump said it’s not our business. He doesn’t like wars.

Volunteering to work in a food pantry has helped me understand what so many working-class Americans are feeling and enduring; their leaders kept telling them all was well, but their bank accounts told them otherwise.

President-elect Trump immediately said this was not our fight and that we had no business getting involved!in Syria. Decades ago, that would have been a much-hailed “progressive opinion.” I liked his position and was more or less prepared not to.

I am intrigued by his claim that he can bring the Ukrainian conflict to an end. The war has gone on too long and killed and threatened too many people.  I appreciate people who end wars rather than start them.

I was startled recently to learn that the U.S. National Deficit is over $33 Trillion.

I know everyone appreciates the money spent after and during the pandemic, but how many of us could survive if we spent money like that that we didn’t have?

That doesn’t feel like leadership to me. It could be better than gutless management. Giving away billions of dollars, even for a good cause, is a well-known way to degrade the strength of a nation. Obviously, it doesn’t always buy votes.

I don’t know what, if anything, Trump can or will do about it, but it makes sense to me to realize that the country can’t go on spending money like this, and if Trump means what he says – in doubt to many – something might be done about it.

So far, Trump has proven himself a great entertainer. I don’t know if he can be a serious and effective President, but I hope he is. Nobody wins if a President fails.

I am the child of an immigrant family, and I have worked hard to support the immigrants who have come to America, many illegally.

But no country can accept a border that eight or nine (or ten) million people have crossed unlawfully and whose cost has nearly bankrupted scores of cities along the southern border who have to pay for it.

Americans have become increasingly angry and aroused by this. During almost all of his administration, Joe Biden said nothing about this or the deficit or inflation overwhelming the thousands of food pantries struggling to cope with it.

How is this exercise in thinking going? I am learning that Donald Trump has some good ideas. I’m confident of the votes of more than half of the country. They are sending a message. I want to hear it.

I am learning from my friends that almost no one but liberals and “progressives” believe Trump when he says stupid and outrageous things as he says so often.  

He is not Hitler; he is not as bright, organized, determined, or evil as that. My friends and neighbors are not fools.

They don’t see that in him. Could they all be wrong? Naive? Blind?

One Trump supporter after another tells me that nobody but people in the mainstream media and the Democratic Party believes he will do all of the disturbing and shocking things he says he will do.

Why are people on the left so sure he is the next Hitler and the rest of the country so positive he isn’t?

As the British say, I’m missing something and working to sort it.

This exercise I am conducting – standing in the shoes of people I often disagree with and am sometimes even frightened by – has been good for me. I am not a Republican (or, to be honest, a Democrat) any longer.  I am no longer anybody’s blind supporter.

And I am no longer afraid of Donald  Trump and his supporters. Underlying all of the foolish and extremist rhetoric on both sides are some vital truths that need to be dealt with in my book, and most of them, at least, are on the Trump agenda.

Trump is not a thoughtful leader but an entertainer with brilliant instincts about what average people think.

As an older man, I have a lot of faith in ordinary people’s instincts. I am impressed by the thoughtfulness of Trump supporters, if not him; I’ve talked with many of his supporters, who have told me this is not an evil man.

In a democracy, we are supposed to respect what most people think. Why don’t we?

They think he will take on the things nobody else seems to care about—the gutting of rural America, the collapse of our border, and the rising costs of essential goods bankrupting them.

They say the Democratic Party has abandoned them; I hear this all the time. It is true, no matter how many E-battery factories are popping up.

The challenge for those people like me is to stop trembling and demonizing and to start listening. They might be surprised, as I am. I am not giving up my fundamental values or worshipping Donald Trump, but it would be interesting if anyone in power followed their promises.

If he chooses to use the new FBI to pursue his enemies, he will give up all the things he promised and the goodwill he has almost miraculously mustered. He is not that stupid. He is an entertainer, not a monster, and now a true politician. I aim to try to understand him, not hate or fear him.

I like the idea of a smaller federal bureaucracy, a smaller federal budget, a refusal to be in perpetual wars that sacrifice so many of  our young men and women, a border that retains our identity as an independent nation, and putting an end to the suffering and fear of the so-called “Dreamers.”

When I think about it, there is more to approve and some things to fear, at least for now. Ironically, almost every one of the things Mr. Trump says he wants to do was once on the Democratic or “progressive” agenda, including dealing with the border.

Is there anything that fundamentally divides them?

Mr. Trump is now saying he will find a way for the Dreamers, children – now middle-aged – who were brought into the country as small children and risk returning to countries where they have never lived.

The Democrats had every chance to deal with the Dreamers issue for the eight years they have been in power. They didn’t. Nor did they deal with two issues Americans have been shouting about for years – empathy for the people suffering food costs and concern about the millions of people crossing the border at the expense of local Northern, Southwestern, and Southern communities.

It doesn’t matter if these fears were overblown; poll after poll said that these were Americans’ primary concerns. I suspect Joe Biden, who I voted for, fell asleep long ago. Trump didn’t.

The other issue is that I am learning things that surprised me.

I have more listening to go—no whining, arrogance, or complaining.