I'm sure we all have mental blinders that keep us from seeing what we don't want to see, especially on matters of religion and politics. I'm sure I do, and it'd be good for all of us to be made aware of what we're not seeing.
Since those best positioned to make us aware of what we're overlooking are those who stand on the other side of the political divide and can see our blind spots more clearly, I offer the following to my friends on the left:
Friends and family have asked how anyone could vote for a liar like Donald Trump. This would be a fair question were it not for the fact that these friends and family would have people vote for the same administration who for the last five years lied to us about Joe Biden's mental acuity.
Donald Trump has an uneasy relationship with the truth, to be sure, but at least there's no doubt that he's the president. Who has actually been the de facto president for the last two and a half years of the Biden administration? Ron Klain? Jeff Zients? Jill Biden? Hunter Biden?
Why did the Biden people lie about the president's debility so adamantly and for so long?
Speaking of lies and Hunter Biden how many times did Joe Biden tell us he had no conversations with Hunter about his business dealings? How many times were we lied to about Hunter's sleazy laptop being Russian disinformation so that it wouldn't diminish Joe's chances in the 2024 election?
How many times has Biden lied about the circumstances of his son Beau's death? How many times has he just made up stories about his life? How many times did he or his administration tell us the border was under control and to the extent that it wasn't there was little he could do about it?
One of his most egregious lies was telling the American people that no American servicemen and women had been killed abroad during his presidency. This despite the loss of thirteen Americans in the Abbey Gate debacle in Afghanistan and three more to a missile attack in Jordan. Is it only Trump's lies that matter to people? Is a lie worse if it comes from Trump and less bad if it came from Biden?
I have a couple of friends who claim to be strongly pro-life. Yet they can't understand why anyone would vote for a man as flawed as Donald Trump who, despite those flaws, is perhaps the most pro-life president in our history, rather than voting for Kamala Harris who supports removing almost all restrictions on a woman's right to kill her unborn child.
A lot of folks are sure that Donald Trump is a fascist, and perhaps he does list toward authoritarianism, but I've heard very little from those who condemn his and his supporters' alleged penchant for fascism about contemporary political violence perpetrated by the left. Why are so many liberals so silent about the BLM riots, the Antifa violence, the assassination attempts, the Tesla bombers, and so on?
Political violence is the trademark of fascism and is at least as common on the left as it is on the right. Indeed, in our current political moment it seems to be much more a feature of the left.
What would those who are willing to spend years in jail for vandalizing Teslas and assaulting Tesla owners say if asked why they harbor such a deep hatred for Elon Musk? What exactly has Musk done that makes him the object of so much loathing? That he has trimmed the bureaucracy? That he has saved taxpayers billions of dollars by finding and eliminating waste and fraud? What?
Speaking of taxes, why is it that people who think we should all pay more in taxes often take all the deductions to which they're legally entitled? If they think we should all pay more, why don't they?
Why is it that those who demand that we throw open the doors of our country to whomever wishes to come in nevertheless lock the doors of their homes and cars when they leave them? Why open the doors to the country to those in need but close the doors to our homes to those in need?
It's ironic that those who are most vocal in their desire for peace are often the most vocal in their disdain for the one president who has probably done more to bring peace to the world than any of his predecessors. If Trump fails to get a ceasefire in Ukraine and a satisfactory conclusion to Hamas' war against Israel it won't be for lack of trying. Would peace be any more likely were Kamala Harris our Commander in Chief?
I asked a relative once why she so despises Trump. Her answer was that E. Jean Carroll accused him of having assaulted and raped her (he was found not guilty of rape) some years ago and that he was in general an odious human being. Perhaps so, but had Biden stayed in the race she would've voted for him despite his perverse weirdness around women and children and despite the fact that he was credibly accused of sexual assault by Tara Reade, and despite the fact that he was accused by Jill's first husband, Bill Stevenson, of having had an affair with her while she was still married to Stevenson.
My relative did vote for Kamala Harris whose husband once publicly slapped a woman so hard it almost knocked her down and who hired a secretary solely because of her looks and "friendliness." Is there a significant difference between these cases on the "odious" scale?
As I said above, I'm sure we all have political blinders that keep us from seeing what we don't want to see. It'd be good for all of us, including those hostile to Trump and Musk, to recognize ours.
