Trump's Betrayal of Gays Is His Betrayal of all of America

Polls indicate that on issue after issue, Donald Trump is out of sync with a majority of Americans. That's one reason why his approval ratings have never gotten out of the low 40% realm - more often they are under 40%.  Indeed, Trump's approval is limited to small factions: right wing evangelical Christians and extreme right Catholics - the so-called Christofascists - white supremacists, and Republicans who according to Gallup surveys comprise only 30% of voters (thus, 89% approval by Republicans equates to only 26.7% of overall voters). The take away, therefore, is that when Trump and the sinister Mike Pence claim that they represent American values, they, in fact, do not. They represent a rump minority of Americans who are at war with modernity, science and knowledge, and who cling to racism and religious superstition. As a result, Trump is at war with a majority of Americans and their values. A column in the New York Times makes the case that the Trump/Pence war against LGBT Americans personifies this betrayal of the beliefs of the majority.  Here are column excerpts:

During the 2016 campaign, he spoke out against a North Carolina law forbidding transgender people to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity and said that Caitlyn Jenner could use the commode of her choice in Trump Tower.

And then, of course, there was his speech at the Republican National Convention, when he carefully enunciated “L.G.B.T.Q.,” pledged to protect those of us represented by that consonant cluster and, upon hearing applause, added, “I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said.”

I’m glad he enjoyed it. We L.G.B.T.Q. Americans aren’t enjoying him. Far from protecting us, he and his administration have stranded us, packing federal courts with judges hostile to gay rights, barring transgender Americans from military service and giving a green light to Americans who, citing religious beliefs, don’t want to give us medical care or bake us a cake. When several United States embassies — including the one in Berlin, over which Grenell presides — requested permission to fly the rainbow flag this month in honor of Gay Pride, the State Department said no.

It’s an ugly story, and it pretty much sums up Trump’s approach to governing. His treatment of gay people perfectly reveals the flabbiness of his convictions and his willingness to stand at odds with a majority of Americans if it pleases the smaller number who adore him. He’ll suffer our anger for their ardor. Decency and principle don’t enter into it.

And he is at odds with most of the country, very much so. Take the Trump administration out of the equation and the march toward gay equality continues apace. As gay and transgender Americans prepare to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, we inhabit a state of cognitive dissonance, staring at a split screen: insults from the White House on one half of it, positive reinforcement from elsewhere on the other.

Democrats’ embrace of Buttigieg, the first openly gay politician to land in the top tier of presidential candidates, illustrates the trajectory beyond Trump. “As recently as five or 10 years ago, I think, a project like this would have been dismissed out of hand,” Buttigieg told me in a recent interview, referring to his campaign. “It was unsafe for Democrats to support same-sex marriage at the beginning of this same decade that we’re living in now.”

Being gay, Buttigieg said, hasn’t been any impediment to his bid for the White House so far. “It led to there being more interest and attention early on,” he said. “Perhaps the most interesting thing is how often it doesn’t come up — all the interviews in which it’s not mentioned. At this point, it’s safe to say that that’s most of the time.”

I was given an exclusive advance copy of a new report by the Victory Institute, a group that promotes L.G.B.T.Q. candidates. It found that the number of known L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials at the municipal, state and national levels in America rose 24.9 percent, to 698 from 559, over the past year. And while some of that is attributable to more politicians coming out, much is attributable to more being voted into office.

With the congressional elections last November, the number of openly L.G.B.T.Q. members of Congress rose to an all-time high of 10 — eight in the House and two in the Senate — up from seven. That same month Jared Polis in Colorado became the first openly gay person to win a governorship. He told me that his sexual orientation was absolutely not a factor in his race: “There might be some people who care about it, but they wouldn’t be considered swing voters, so they’re not relevant in terms of who you have to win over. It never comes up in terms of scrapping for the votes you need in the middle.”

In Chicago in April, Lori Lightfoot became the first openly gay person to win the mayoralty of one of the country’s three most-populous cities. “The fact that I could run as an out lesbian, married, in an interracial relationship, with a child, would have been unthinkable not that long ago,” she said when I spoke with her recently. “You can’t stop progress. You just can’t. It’s like trying to stop a ball from rolling down a hill.”

While media attention focuses on proposed state legislation to deny rights to L.G.B.T.Q. people, there are probably more examples of bipartisan pushes to protect or expand those rights.

According to Freedom for All Americans, an advocacy group, more than two dozen Republican lawmakers in 15 states recently sponsored legislation to protect gay or transgender people from discrimination. They include the chairman of the Republican Party in Florida and the State Senate majority leader in West Virginia. Republican lawmakers were crucially involved in blocking discriminatory measures proposed in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia, the group said. In South Dakota, where Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature, four different measures to permit discrimination against transgender people were defeated this year.

That reflects Americans’ values more accurately than the Trump administration does. In a Quinnipiac University poll in April, 92 percent of Americans said that employers should not be allowed to fire someone based on his or her “sexual orientation or sexual identity.” When Americans are asked whether a full spectrum of civil rights protections should be extended to L.G.B.T.Q. people, the number falls — but a majority of 53 percent still say yes. And in poll after poll, most Americans say that transgender people should be able to serve in the military, with 70 percent of them indicating support in one survey.

Yet the Trump administration keeps tugging in the opposite direction. Trump has nominated and the Senate has confirmed many jurists with explicit, unabashed hostility to gay and transgender rights, including, just days ago, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who received a lifetime appointment as a United States district judge for the Northern District of Texas.
 The choice of Kacsmaryk is hardly an aberration, said Sharon McGowan, the chief strategy officer and legal director for Lambda Legal, an advocacy group that has been tracking these appointments to the federal bench. “The arc of history may bend toward justice,” she told me, “but history will not be kind to those who are complicit in what has been happening over these past two years.” She meant in the White House, in the cabinet and on Capitol Hill, where a stubbornly retrograde social conservatism holds sway.
 Trump himself continues to murmur words kinder than his deeds, such as his tweet three weeks ago exhorting Americans to “celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made.”

But the contributions Trump is focused on are the votes and donations from the so-called religious right, given in gratitude for his opposition to abortion and his anti-gay actions. “Because he doesn’t have the ability to broaden his support, he’s playing to a narrow base, and at the center of that base is this right-wing faction that’s often garbed in religion,” . . . “He’s throwing them any meat he can find.”

On issue after issue it’s like that: He doesn’t act or speak for the majority, but he accomplishes some narrower purpose, and gets away with it partly because gerrymandering, the structure of the Senate and the Electoral College have led to a government out of sync with the governed.

Trump is on the wrong side of history. But he doesn’t care — so long as it’s right for Trump.

The majority of voters need to end the nation's nightmare and vote Trump from office in 2020.  Meanwhile, here in Virginia, we need to vote out Republicans in November, 2019, and give control of the Virginia General Assembly so that Virginia can become a true progressive state. 

Buttigieg Looks to Truman, Not Obama, on Foreign Policy

If one looks at America's foreign policy over the last quarter century, in many ways it has been a disaster - think the Iraq War and the never ending war in Afghanistan as prime examples- that has done little to improve the lives of most Americans.  One could point to the stability of the NATO Alliance as a positive, but now under Donald Trump, everything is plagued with instability and Trump's tariff policies and war on clean energy are taking the nation backwards and in many ways making it less competitive - e.g., if Trump rolls back fuel efficiency standards on cars, American made vehicles will be less competitive in the global market and at home, Americans may switch to more fuel efficient foreign vehicles (I drive a very fuel efficient Mercedes). So far, few of the Democrats have laid out detailed foreign policy positions.  One, Pete Buttigieg, while in the beginning stages, may be headed towards a foreign policy approach that for a change considers impacts on everyday Americans.  He has a long way to go, but perhaps it is a start as a piece in The Atlantic suggests.  Here are excerpts:

“Basically, my entire adult life has been one where it’s a little bit illegible where you’re supposed to be as a Democrat on foreign policy,” Pete Buttigieg told me last weekend. He was preparing to give his first speech on the subject, today at Indiana University. So far, most of the Democratic candidates have avoided the question of how they’d conduct foreign policy, and the voters and the press have made that easy for them.

When candidates decide to say something about global affairs, they tend to quarantine their views in a single all-encompassing speech, as if to get the topic out of the way. Elizabeth Warren gave hers in Washington in November. Bernie Sanders has actually given two, in Missouri in 2017 and last fall at Johns Hopkins. None of the other candidates has given even one.

This silence about America’s role in the world is strange. The quest to replace Donald Trump presents the first chance since the end of the Cold War for Democrats to think fundamentally anew about foreign policy. The liberal internationalist approach of the Bill Clinton years aimed to enlarge the sphere of capitalist democracies, manage the world’s chaos, and extend American influence, through free trade, NATO expansion, diplomatic deal making, and occasional military intervention.

The high-water mark was the American-led peace agreement in 1995 that ended the war in Bosnia and repaired damage to the transatlantic alliance. September 11, the Iraq War, and the financial crisis threw this consensus into confusion. Those were the early years of Buttigieg’s adult life, when Democratic foreign policy became “a little bit illegible.” Still, the approach of the ’90s persisted into Barack Obama’s presidency—free trade, diplomacy, ongoing war—even as Obama himself became more and more skeptical of American overreach.

Hillary Clinton, a holdover from the unipolar moment, was the last of the muscular interventionists.

In his Indiana speech, Buttigieg welcomed “a season for thinking about what comes next with greater urgency and, in certain ways, greater freedom than has been available to a president for some time.”

Most of the energy in the new thinking is on the left. Sanders has called for a foreign policy based on the worldwide struggle against oligarchy and corporate power—a “global progressive movement” for economic equality, democratic rights, and environmental sustainability. In this view, American dominance has been a mixed bag at best, a force for ill as much as good, and it should yield to a transnational movement led by citizens, not just governments.

As Peter Beinart has pointed out, this idea goes back to World War II and the appeal in 1942 by FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace for a foreign policy of “the common man.”
Where does Buttigieg come down? When I asked him which recent presidents might serve as models for foreign-policy making in his administration, he didn’t single anyone out. “What’s interesting about the period certainly since the Cold War is how hard it is to say there’s been a real alignment that many of us could feel like we’re signed up for,” he said. “Most of what I get out of looking at the past is cautionary tales, and just reminders of how hazardous it is.”

After our interview, he got back to me with the name of an earlier president—Harry S. Truman, the namesake of one of Buttigieg’s dogs. In 1948, Truman defeated Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate, and made liberal anti-communism the doctrine of the postwar Democratic Party.

Buttigieg spent seven months as a Navy intelligence officer in Kabul in 2014, which was supposed to be the last year of the American war in Afghanistan. Five years later, American troops are still there. Buttigieg is a critic of ill-defined military intervention generally. “I believe we should use force when there is a clear and present threat to the U.S.,” he said in his speech, “when it’s necessary to deter and defend against an attack on or imminent threat against the United States, our citizens at home or abroad, or our treaty allies, and when we act as part of a legitimate international coalition to prevent genocide or other atrocities.” Those conditions would have ruled out the war in Iraq, of course, which Buttigieg opposed while he was at Harvard, but also military intervention in the Syrian civil war. When I asked whether he would have ordered missile strikes after the Syrian regime massacred civilians with chemical weapons outside Damascus in the summer of 2013, the answer was no, not without the support of allies and Congress. Both Republican and Democratic presidents since the Cold War have failed to connect events overseas with the lives of ordinary Americans. It wasn’t until his last months in office, just days after the election of Trump, that Obama said, “Globalization needs a course correction.” That failure to see the connection between foreign and domestic policy explains the public’s exhaustion with unexplained commitments and its loss of faith in foreign-policy elites.

Buttigieg is placed by age and experience—a Millennial, a veteran of the forever war, the mayor of a struggling industrial city—to insist on making the connection. “Everything we have to say about foreign policy has to be tied back to what it means at home,” he told me. In other words, every geopolitical move should be evaluated by its effect on American workers, farmers, and citizens.

Ever since the ’90s, for example, America’s relationship with China has generally been more beneficial for elites than for ordinary Americans.

But where Trump sees a merely economic rival, Buttigieg sees a dangerous ideological model (“the perfection of dictatorship”) whose stability and success look more and more attractive to other countries. To prevail against that competition, America has to be true to its own claims about itself. [T]he rising popularity of Chinese-style authoritarianism and Russian-style oligarchy make it all the more important “that American values be vindicated globally … It’s actually a moment that kind of makes me, more than usual, feel patriotically committed to American values, at least American values at our best and what they’re supposed to be.” In framing a picture of the next few decades as a battle of competing ideologies, Buttigieg sounds a bit like Truman at the beginning of the Cold War.

Buttigieg wants to set a generous narrative of national identity against Trump’s cramped and cruel vision, and against the progressive hostility to any national identity at all. It won’t be easy. He speaks of the compassion of his Indiana neighbors toward refugees, their desire to be part of “a greater project” than just America First. But the strongest political emotions of the moment are fear, disillusionment, and hatred. As impressive as he is personally, Buttigieg hasn’t yet found the words, the music, and the policies to make his appeal convincing.

The Death of "Morning in America"

Republicans love to bloviate about Ronald Reagan yet the irony is that I doubt Reagan could win a nomination in today's GOP.  Despite his many drawbacks, Reagan simply was not sufficiently extreme and racist to be acceptable to the toxic base of the GOP.  A base that cannot see the common humanity of others, a base that seemingly wants a dictatorship, a base that revels in cruelty toward those deemed "other", and a base that daily discards revered American principals.  With another anniversary of Reagan's death close at hand, his daughter ponders what her father would think of what has become of America under today's GOP and Donald Trump.  She rightly believes that he would be repulsed. Indeed, any true patriot should be repulsed.  Here are column excerpts:

My father used to talk about a recurring dream he had in which he was walking into a beautiful white building with grand columns, knowing that it was his new home. When he was elected president, he said the image finally made sense to him. Once in the White House, he never had the dream again.

My strident protests against some of my father’s policies definitely got his attention, which was what I intended — but they also wounded him, which was not my intention. In his last years of life, when Alzheimer’s disease had stolen many things but not love, I was able to sit with him and tell him my regrets. I miss my father in deeply personal ways. I also miss the dignity that he brought to the task of leading this country, the deep respect he had for our democracy, and now, after so much time has passed, I miss how much he loved America.

People often ask me what he would say if he were here now. . . . I simply say he’d be pretty horrified at where we’ve come to. But as the June 5 anniversary of his death has drawn near, I’ve let myself imagine what he would say to the country he loved so much. 

I think he would remind us that America began as a dream in the minds of men who dared to envision a land that was free of tyranny, with a government designed and structured so that no one branch of government could dominate the others. It was a bold and brave dream. But, he would caution, no government is infallible. Our democracy, because it is founded on the authority of “We the people,” puts the burden of vigilance on all American citizens.

Countries can be splintered from within, he would say. It’s a sinister form of destruction that can happen gradually if people don’t realize that our Constitution will protect us only if the principles of that document are adhered to and defended. He would be appalled and heartbroken at a Congress that refuses to stand up to a president who not only seems ignorant of the Constitution but who also attempts at every turn to dismantle and mock our system of checks and balances. He would plead with Americans to recognize that the caustic, destructive language emanating from our current president is sullying the dream that America once was. And in a time of increased tensions in the world, playing verbal Russian roulette is not leadership, it’s madness. He would point to one of the pillars of our freedom — a free press — which sets us apart from dictatorships and countries ruled by despots. He didn’t always like the press — no president does — but the idea of relentlessly attacking the media as the enemy would never have occurred to him. And if someone else had done so, he wouldn’t have tolerated it.

He would ask us to think about the Statue of Liberty and the light she holds for immigrants coming to America for a better life. Immigrants like his ancestors, who persevered despite prejudice and signs that read “No Irish or dogs allowed.” There is a difference between immigration laws and cruelty. He believed in laws; he hated cruelty. [H]e would ask the people of this country to reflect on his own words from his famous speech, “A Time for Choosing,”delivered in 1964: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Today's GOP and the Trump/Pence regime are sentencing the nation and in no small part, the world to darkness.  They must be stopped. 

McCain and Biden Form Alliance Against Trumpism

Sadly, many Republicans refuse to recognize that the betrayed America's core values when they voted for the Donald Trump/Mike Pence ticket almost a year ago.  Honesty, decency, a respect for the rule of law and the rights of all citizens were thrown on the trash heap by Trump supporters.  The ravings of a malignant narcissist via Twitter are now a daily occurrence.  Meanwhile, Pence is pushing a theocratic agenda that exalts the rights of Christian extremists while denigrating the rights of religious freedom for everyone else.  Ignorance is embraced, science and objective fact are rejected, and America no longer is respected and looked up to by the rest of the world. Traveling in the United Kingdom, the husband and I experienced just how low America has fallen with an unfit madman in the White House.  A few Republicans are speaking out and belatedly resisting the ugliness that is Trumpism.  John McCain, who admittedly has made his share of mistakes over the years, including picking the idiot of Wasilla, Sarah Palin as his VP running mate, is one such Republican.  As the Washington Post reports McCain and other true patriots are forming alliances to resist the evil that is the Trump/Pence regime.  Here are story highlights:

John McCain and Joe Biden have been on opposite sides of many crucial national security debates over the past 30 years.

From Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria, the Arizona Republican and the Delaware Democrat clashed over the scope of the American military mission and the efficacy of reaching for diplomatic resolutions for these war-torn nations. They maintained a genuine friendship through 22 years of service together in the Senate and then Biden’s eight years as vice president. Yet theirs was a fierce, principled rivalry.

On Monday night, in the cradle of liberty, those disputes disappeared as Biden presented the Liberty Medal to McCain at the National Constitution Center, a nonprofit organization that touts bipartisanship and sits across the street from Independence Hall.

Another reality has also brought them together: President Trump, whose global outlook has helped crystallize just how closely aligned these two elder statesmen really are.

“We believed in our country, and in our country’s indispensability to international peace and stability and to the progress of humanity,” McCain said, growing unusually emotional at times during the address.

McCain pivoted into a full-frontal attack on those who “refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last, best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism.” He did not mention Trump by name, but the implication was clear, and it brought a standing ovation from a crowd that included Democratic and Republican members of Congress from the region.

Now, McCain and Biden are on the same side, battling the isolationism that Trump has avowed and that has been most clearly articulated by his onetime chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon.

In his first nine months in office, Trump has withdrawn the United States from a Pacific Rim trade deal, the Paris climate accords and a cultural organization at the United Nations, while also signaling opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and new sanctions against Moscow.

[O]verall they reveal Trump’s broad intention to live up to his “America First” presidential campaign of 2016 — a repudiation of all that McCain and Biden have pressed for 40 years.

The speech prompted the president [Trump] to issue an immediate threat: “People have to be careful because at some point, I fight back,” Trump said in an interview Tuesday with WMAL, a D.C. radio station.

McCain wiped away tears as Biden spoke of his son’s adoration for the Arizona senator, a symbolic forging of their alliance. They will, for now, set aside their old disputes on how to engage the world and instead take up a mutual fight against those who want to withdraw from global leadership.

Biden read from an old McCain speech to sum up the new approach, saying that the United States should always be an “international beacon of liberty and a defender of the dignity of all human beings, and the right to freedom and justice.”  “That’s what it’s always been for four decades,” Biden said.

 Yes, you noted correctly that I will not give Trump the title of president.  He's NOT my president and is the antithesis of what a president - or any decent human being - should be. Kudos to McCain and Biden.

Is America Headed to Being a Middle East Style Autocracy?

Despite its many misdeeds throughout its history - inconvenient facts ignored by the political right wing - and missteps, America has largely been viewed as a defender of democracy and western values.  Not so much anymore with Der Trumpenführer in the White House.  Crude, obnoxious behavior is increasingly the norm flowing from the White House and decades of foreign relations building is being torn asunder  America's version of Odoacer who over threw the western Roman Empire.  All of this may play well for the moment among rural and red state Trump supporters, but the time will come when America needs the allies that Trump is alienating. The reckoning could be far worse than the ignorance embracing, xenophobic Trumpians imagine.  Indeed, an op-ed in the New York Times suggests that America is headed toward rule akin to that of a Middle East autocracy, aided by the complicity of what I refer to as the Vichy Republicans (Fox News viewers will need to look up the term Vichy).  Here are column highlights:

President Trump’s trip to Europe was truly historic.

He left our most important allies there so uncertain about America’s commitment to their security from Russia and to shared values on trade and climate change that German leader Angela Merkel was prompted to tell her countrymen that Europe’s days of relying on America are “over to a certain extent,” and therefore Germany and its European allies “really must take our fate into our own hands.”

No U.S. president before had ever put a crack in the Atlantic alliance on his inaugural tour. Historic.

“Who is America today?” is the first question I’ve been asked on each stop through New Zealand, Australia and South Korea. My answer: We’re not the U.S.A. anymore. We’re the new U.A.E.: the United American Emirate.

We have an emir. His name is Donald. We have a crown prince. His name is Jared. We have a crown princess. Her name is Ivanka. We have a consultative council (Congress) that rubber-stamps whatever the emir wants. And like any good monarchy, our ruling family sees no conflict of interest between its personal businesses and those of the state.

So any lingering Kennedyesque thoughts about us should be banished, I explained. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay no price, bear no burden, meet no hardship, support no friend, oppose no foe to assure the success of liberty — unless we’re paid in advance. And we take cash, checks, gold, Visa, American Express, Bitcoin and memberships in Mar-a-Lago.

The Trump doctrine is very simple: There are just four threats in the world: terrorists who will kill us, immigrants who will rape us or take our jobs, importers and exporters who will take our industries — and North Korea. Threats to democracy, free trade, the environment and human rights are no longer on our menu. Therefore, no matter how unsavory you are as a foreign leader, you can be the United American Emirate’s best friend if you:

1.) Pay us by buying our weapons. . . .
2.) Pay us in higher defense spending for NATO — not to deter Russia, which is using cyberwarfare to disrupt every democratic election it can, but to deter “terrorism,” something that tanks and planes are useless against.3.) Pay us in trade concessions. And it doesn’t matter how lame those concessions are. All that matters is that Emir Trump can claim “concessions.”4.) Pay us by freeing any U.S. citizen you arrested on trumped-up charges to annoy Barack Obama and to intimidate human rights activists.5.) Pay us by grossly flattering our emir about how much of an improvement he is over Obama.6.) Be Russia, and you pay nothing.

[I]f you do any one of these six things the United American Emirate’s commitment to you — and it’s ironclad — is that you can do anything you want “out back.” You can deprive your people of whatever human rights you like out back. You can be as corrupt as you want out back. You can steal as many elections as you like out back. Just keep the arms purchases coming, the NATO dues rising, the phony trade concessions flowing and the compliments gushing — or be Vladimir Putin — and anything goes.

It took us decades to build the Atlantic alliance and it has brought us so many tangible and intangible benefits in the form of security, stability, growth and friendships. Trump could actually break it, not just crack it. 

I would add that like Middle Eastern autocrats, Trump similarly seems only too happy to allow religious extremists to work to trash the First Amendment and its guaranty of religious freedom for all, not just Christofascists.  America's image abroad is being destroyed. 

Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President

Yesterday the New York Times made the case for electing Hillary Clinton as president on November 8, 2016.  Today, as promised the Times makes the case of why Donald Trump should never be elected to the presidency.  It is a strong piece, but, in my view 100% on the money.  Indeed, it is less scathing than it ought to be given the ugliness of Trump's personality and supposed policies. Trump simply is unfit for office - any elected office, in fact.  Here are excerpts from the editorial:

When Donald Trump began his improbable run for president 15 months ago, he offered his wealth and television celebrity as credentials, then slyly added a twist of fear mongering about Mexican “rapists” flooding across the Southern border.

From that moment of combustion, it became clear that Mr. Trump’s views were matters of dangerous impulse and cynical pandering rather than thoughtful politics.  . . . he has demonstrated in a freewheeling campaign marked by bursts of false and outrageous allegations, personal insults, xenophobic nationalism, unapologetic sexism and positions that shift according to his audience and his whims.

Here’s how Mr. Trump is selling himself and why he can’t be believed.

Despite his towering properties, Mr. Trump has a record rife with bankruptcies and sketchy ventures like Trump University, which authorities are investigating after numerous complaints of fraud. His name has been chiseled off his failed casinos in Atlantic City.

Mr. Trump’s brazen refusal to disclose his tax returns — as Mrs. Clinton and other nominees for decades have done — should sharpen voter wariness of his business and charitable operations. Disclosure would undoubtedly raise numerous red flags; the public record already indicates that in at least some years he made full use of available loopholes and paid no taxes.

Mr. Trump has been opaque about his questionable global investments in Russia and elsewhere, which could present conflicts of interest as president . . . 

Mr. Trump, who has no experience in national security, declares that he has a plan to soundly defeat the Islamic State militants in Syria, but won’t reveal it, bobbing and weaving about whether he would commit ground troops. Voters cannot judge whether he has any idea what he’s talking about without an outline of his plan, yet Mr. Trump ludicrously insists he must not tip off the enemy.

Whatever his gyrations, Mr. Trump always does make clear where his heart lies — with the anti-immigrant, nativist and racist signals that he scurrilously employed to build his base.

Since his campaign began, NBC News has tabulated that Mr. Trump has made 117 distinct policy shifts on 20 major issues, . . . . He said he would “loosen” libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations that displease him.

His plan for cutting the national debt was far from a confidence builder: He said he might try to persuade creditors to accept less than the government owed. This fanciful notion, imported from Mr. Trump’s debt-steeped real estate world, would undermine faith in the government and the stability of global financial markets.

Numerous experts on national defense and international affairs have recoiled at the thought of his commanding the nuclear arsenal. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell privately called Mr. Trump “an international pariah.” Mr. Trump has repeatedly denounced global warming as a “hoax,” although a golf course he owns in Ireland is citing global warming in seeking to build a protective wall against a rising sea.

In expressing admiration for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Mr. Trump implies acceptance of Mr. Putin’s dictatorial abuse of critics and dissenters, some of whom have turned up murdered, and Mr. Putin’s vicious crackdown on the press. Even worse was Mr. Trump’s urging Russia to meddle in the presidential campaign by hacking the email of former Secretary of State Clinton. Voters should consider what sort of deals Mr. Putin might obtain if Mr. Trump, his admirer, wins the White House.

[V]voters should be asking themselves if Mr. Trump will deliver the kind of change they want. Starting a series of trade wars is a recipe for recession, not for new American jobs. Blowing a hole in the deficit by cutting taxes for the wealthy will not secure Americans’ financial future, and alienating our allies won’t protect our security. . . . . The list goes on . . .

In all these areas, Mrs. Clinton has offered constructive proposals. He has offered bluster, or nothing. The most specific domestic policy he has put forward, on tax breaks for child care, would tilt toward the wealthy.

Voters attracted by the force of the Trump personality should pause and take note of the precise qualities he exudes as an audaciously different politician: bluster, savage mockery of those who challenge him, degrading comments about women, mendacity, crude generalizations about nations and religions. Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want for them?

Should Trump win on November 8, 2016, it will be proof to me that America is utterly morally bankrupt and that it might indeed be time to consider emigrating before America slides into fascism or worse.. 

Trump Has Taught Me to Fear My Fellow Americans

If one is a LGBT American, one knows all too well that hate and bigotry that continues to flourish in America, particularly among those who see themselves as "godly Christians" and to a lesser extent "patriotic Americans." The hatred at times is palpable and we gays know what it is like to fear for our safety at times simply because of who we are. With the rise of Donald Trump and so-called Trumpism, more Americans are coming to grasp just how prevalent hate and bigotry is in America. Yes, the GOP has fostered racism and homophobia for years as a means to rally the bigoted to the polls, but with Trump, we are seeing something far more blatant and willingness to use threats of violence against those deemed "other."  A column in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon and just how scary some of our fellow countryman are in fact.  Here are column excerpts:

What word comes to mind when you see the name Donald Trump? For some people, it might be “anger,” since he provokes it and stokes it. For others, it might be “ignorance,” since he knows so little and, like many unburdened by knowledge, is untroubled by facts. Some might say “fear,” since it would take some scary police tactics to push 11 million people over the border to Mexico. For me, none of those words suffices. I would say “betrayal.”

It is the word that comes to mind almost on a nightly basis when I see some Trump surrogate defend Trump’s positions on one of the cable news shows. How can you? I want to ask. Do you believe that the government should apply a religious test to let people into this country? Christians? Yes. Jews? Sure. Buddhists, Hindus and Zoroastrians, step this way. Muslims, not so fast.

Do the people who support Trump realize that they are betraying not merely Muslims but the principles that the United States stands for? We don’t apply religious tests to anything. In that way, we are different than some other countries. In that way, we are better.

I can abide policy differences but I cannot abide indifference to bigotry. And neither should any of Trump’s supporters.

I felt that same, awful feeling of betrayal when Trump mocked a physically disabled reporter for the New York Times. Did Trump’s people notice? Did they care? Aren’t Americans supposed to stick up for one another?

Donald Trump has taught me to fear my fellow American. I don’t mean the occasional yahoo who turns a Trump rally into a hate fest. I mean the ones who do nothing. Who are silent. Who look the other way. If you had told me a year ago that a hateful brat would be the presidential nominee of a major political party, I would have scoffed. Someone who denigrated women? Not possible. Someone who insulted Mexicans? No way. Someone who mocked the physically disabled? Not in America. Not in my America.

When I see these Trump supporters on television — the commentators, the Politician’s Puttanesca (a dish to poison the body politic) — I have to wonder where they would draw the line. The answer seems to be: nowhere.

Muslims and Mexicans are merely collateral damage in a war that must be fought. What about blacks or Jews? Not yet.

Maybe the talking heads on TV would draw the line at some mild version of fascism, but would the American people do the same? Here, I must hesitate. The easy yes of yesteryear has given way to awful doubt. Trump could win. . . . When Trump insisted that he could compel a military officer to obey an illegal order, I heard the echo of jackboots on cobblestone.

History nags. It admonishes. “American exceptionalism” is a phrase that refers to the past, not necessarily the future. Nothing is guaranteed. I’d like to think that Americans really are exceptional, that we have an exceptional faith in democracy and the rule of law. I now have some doubt. I always knew who Trump was. It’s the American people who have come as a surprise.

With Donald Trump set to meet this month with a who's who of the leaders of anti-gay hate groups, I cannot help but wonder if gays will be added to Trump's list of enemies of :real Americans."  It is indeed frightening.