Taking Trump’s advice, I’ve had my head examined — I’m still not voting for him

Donald Trump says Jews who don’t vote for him should have their heads examined. I took his advice.

After a comprehensive self- examination and evaluation of my head, I have come to the conclusion that Donald Trump is extremely bad both for me as an American and as a Jewish person.

Part of the greatness of America is that everybody can have a dual identity. I’m Jewish, but I’m also very much an American – not just culturally, but in my values. I love my country. I love the American flag. I’m a fan of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and Bruce Springsteen. I love the movies, rock and roll, and cars. I grew up playing baseball, basketball and touch football in the street. I draw the line at fast food, guns and those wavy tube men you see at car dealerships.

More than culture and sports, it’s our country’s foundational principles that make me an American. Our first president defined one of those principles in a famous letter to a Newport synagogue in 1790, of what it means to be an American:

“All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution, no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. . . May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants…”

I learned about this letter when I was just a bored kid in Hebrew school. Washington’s words temporarily lifted the haze of my inattention, inspiring me. After finding out about the history of my family, who suffered centuries of persecution in Czarist Russia, and the more than four dozen of my cousins in Latvia, who were killed by the Nazis during World War II, Washington’s letter meant I could belong here. So could everybody else.

Clearly, we have not lived up to Washington’s ideal, particularly in terms of our treatment of native Americans and African Americans. We can’t justify the centuries of land theft, slaughter, enslavement, and white supremacist terror, but this country has lately wrestled with the ideals of our founding documents and worked to right historical wrongs.

All the work we’ve done on inclusion, from the painful integration of baseball and our Armed Forces, and the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, enacted in the 1960s, to the 2021 American Rescue Plan’s investment in Native American education, businesses, health, social services and safety, is being recklessly torn up by Trump, a quilt that had been carefully sewn by the work of millions for hundreds of years, turning the thing into a ripped and tattered rag that he wants to toss in the garbage.

No Jew should ever forget that Trump, President in 2017, saw the Charlottesville, Virginia tiki-torchers shouting, “The Jews will not replace us!” and responded, “There were very fine people on both sides” of the confrontation. There weren’t.

Trump welcomed Jew-hater Nick Fuentes into his home in 2022. Fuentes has called for the execution of American Jews, and all others who aren’t Christian. Fuentes says the Jews are perfidious, which means deceitful and untrustworthy — language straight out of Hitler’s playbook. Fuentes frequently praises Hitler – big surprise there.

I guess Fuentes, who professes a great love for Jesus, the Prince of Peace, didn’t read the New Testament’s John 13:34, which says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” And I guess he didn’t read 1 Corinthians 13-16, which states, “…if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing…. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud….it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered…Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.”

Trump, the man who happily met with Fuentes at Mar-A-Lago (for what purpose – to exchange golf tips?), continually singles out the Jews as an “other.” And it’s not just us.

Donald Trump’s entire operating principle is to separate minorities out from the rest of America. Look what he’s recently done with Kamala Harris’ background, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, accusing her of very recently taking on a black identity to obtain an advantage. As if Trump, being white, is somehow better than Harris, putting him in an authoritative position to judge everybody else. As if Trump’s family hadn’t been immigrants themselves, from his grandfather to his current wife. Then he goes and agrees with a radio host that Harris’ husband is “a crappy Jew.”

Comparing Trump with George Washington, what do we have? A man who started a riot on Capitol Hill on January 6^th to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results, and continually lies that the election was stolen, possessing no credible evidence of this theft at all, and now a convicted felon.

Trump was found liable in a civil rape trial. He spews venomous untruths whenever it’s convenient, which means just about every minute. He says immigrants are poisoning the blood of America (Hitler again!). He demeans anyone who’s not a white Christian, or anyone who doesn’t support his maniacal ravings. He likes to pretend he’s a gangster. He says the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter is “great,” while many of his followers believe God sent Trump to save America.

We’re way beyond dual identities now, Donald! Trump seems to possess several personalities all at the same time. Trump’s political philosophy can be boiled down to elevating white Christians above everyone else in America, even though I can’t even say he’s a crappy Christian. He’s not a Christian at all. His ranting about minorities opens up the rest of us to being demeaned, at best, by Trump’s people, or other, much worse things – like terroristic violence. My family already experienced that in Europe, so no thank you!

A special shout-out should go out at this time to Miriam Adelson, who recently gave Trump $100 million for his campaign. I’m supposed to overlook the cruelty and maliciousness that Trump spews out at any given moment, just because he’s going to allow Netanyahu to kill more Palestinians, who won’t provide them the least little shred of hope that they’ll ever be able to govern themselves? With all due respect, Mrs. Adelson, what you did is a Shanda.

It’s critical that Israel survives, but that can’t be my only criterion about who I vote for as President. Despite my poor Hebrew school record, I take Jewish ethics very seriously, which are the foundation for Jesus’ teaching.

In Leviticus 19:18, God states, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Hillel expanded on that a little further, by saying, “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor.”

Hillel’s ethic constructs the foundation of empathy in us. He wanted the Israelites to see their lives, concerns, and worries reflected in other people, to make us recognize that most everybody else is just trying to survive in an often-harsh world, that we all want love, respect, and dignity.

Far too much of the history of human civilization has been filled with blood-soaked violence between different tribes, a tale the Bible tells all too well. However, Western civilization, built on Judeo-Christian values, has attempted to evolve, to understand that treating other people as we want to be treated creates the potential for establishing a world of shared prosperity.

That’s why Trump’s values are so dangerous. He can’t imagine sharing prosperity with anyone, except his family, and maybe a few loyalist allies who excel at bowing down to him. He can only picture himself winning. His mental world cannot accept the success of others. That’s one possible reason he lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. When he says that the Democrats can only win if they cheat, he’s laying down a marker for his followers that anyone else who obtains the Presidency is illegitimate. Trump winning is the only possible reality. These are the values of a five-year old brat who’s failing kindergarten.  After eight years of listening to him prattling on about this kind of thing, I still can’t believe his followers ingest his swill as if it were manna from Heaven.

Politics in a democracy is often about compromise. Both sides generally have to talk to each other. Both sides have to get something for a decent deal to be struck. Not in Trump’s world. The enemy must be smashed. The other side is evil. When Biden recently brought home Evan Gershkovich and other American hostages from Russian prisons, Trump trashed the deal. Because no one can be greater than him at making deals. Climate change doesn’t exist because he likes burning fossil fuels. Covid is going to disappear, like magic, because it threatens his re-election. One million Americans died from the virus because Trump was too lazy, or too uncaring, to figure out how to protect us from it.

Another alienating aspect of Trump’s personality is that he sees people as things to be manipulated. He’s very open about it. He told voters before the Iowa caucuses to vote for him even if they were sick. He said at a January rally, “If you’re sick as a dog, you say, ‘Darling, I gotta make it.’ Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it.” He doesn’t care about whether his supporters die, as long as they pull the lever for Trump before they go.

Trump’s Christian followers are fond of bewailing the moral degeneracy of modern America. But they suck up Trump’s lies and spread them all over the airwaves. Trump says President Biden is a criminal. He says Democrats kill babies after they’re born. The Republican Party’s minions nod their heads in lockstep, no matter how insane the lie. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who claims that the Bible is his ethical guidepost, was one of the major conspirators trying to help Trump overturn the election results.

The Bible is quite clear about lying. As written in the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “Sanctify them through the truth. Psalm 31:5 says, “God hates lying. And God forbids his children to lie.”

Yet these people, who say they are Christians, keep lying. If you’re not going to follow God’s word on lying, how can you call yourself a Christian? The Republicans spewing Trump’s dangerous nonsense should be put behind window glass in a museum and labeled “Moral Degeneracy — Exhibit A.”

In contrast, President Biden, an authentically religious, serious Catholic, who cares deeply about the American people, believes the United States is a community, in which we all belong.

In his address to the nation on July 24^th, when he dropped out of the race, Biden said that America is powerful because of this one idea: “We’re all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We’ve never fully lived up to it — to this sacred idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either.  And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.”

Because Biden, and by extension, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, reflect the values of George Washington’s letter to the Newport Synagogue — the ethics of inclusion, I’m voting for Kamala Harris for President in November. She’s not perfect. Who is? Someone once said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Kamala Harris is the good. As for Trump, the Republican Party’s golden calf, the ultimate false idol, he needs his head examined.