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Trump Has Done Us a Favor: He’s Reminded Us of the Values BOTH the (Better and Saner Parts) of the American Right and Left Share

July 10, 20171 commentFrank Schaeffer

Trump has done us a favor.  He has reminded anyone patriotic on the left and right — that has even part of their brain working — that we “enemies” share common ground. Trump did this by relentlessly spewing his sham huckster version of a bleak worldview rooted in white nationalism, authoritarianism, hatred of ethnic variety and religious difference. And Trump seems to just love authoritarian dictator types. Trump shows more public liking for journalist-murdering Putin, terror-sponsoring Muslim-extremist Saudi princes and the anti-Semite Catholic-fundamentalist white nationalists in power in Poland than for pro-democracy pluralists such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron. He berates journalists yet coddles dictators who share his fear of a free and open press.

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Trump’s dire view of the world should remind us (small -d) freedom-loving democrats of the left and the democratic freedom-loving right that while we have disagreed on just about everything recently we share some deep beliefs in what it means to be an American.
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Here are just some of the best of our American bedrock beliefs many of us on the moderate sane Left and moderate sane Right share:

  • an appreciation for what the modern world has achieved from antibiotics to women having a right to work
  • an optimistic vision of what could lie before us if we use our brains well for everything from new energy tech to education
  • a commitment to democratic truths as the basis of the free and open lives we want mirrored by a free and open press
  • a belief that ethnic diversity and religious tolerance are things to defend rather than to be feared
Trump’s rhetoric has rejected these concepts of the American community most of us belong to however we vote. He’s expressed an odd belief that the United States should want “better deals” rather than stronger democracies. He has repeatedly attacked our free press. He has attacked our best allies and refused to work with them on reducing our human impact on climate change. As a result the United States is now isolated globally among democracies that are our best friends. Trump has forced the G-20 to back off of commitments to reject nationalistic protectionism and policy on climate change.
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Trump does not hold faith with Americans who support defending our free and open democracy.

Trump sides with dictators and people who fear open societies.  Trump chose — mere hours before meeting with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin — to cast doubt on judgments of the U.S. intelligence community regarding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
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Trump does not represent the sane right or left.

Trump only represents his own pathology. On the brink of the most important set of international meetings of his presidency so far, he put forward the absurd idea that a main G-20 discussion item involved Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, in the process making demonstrably false assertions about Podesta’s role.
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A corporate chief executive whose public behavior was as erratic as Trump’s would already have been replaced.

Trump’s Cabinet and the Republicans in Congress should remember that the oaths they swore were not to the defense of this president or a political party but to the defense of the US Constitution. And we of the sane moderate left and right should remember that under all our differences we would rather live in America than in Putin’s Russia, or in journalist-arresting Turkey or the murdering drug takers’ Philippines, because we Americans are allergic to the very sort of anti-democracy trends Trump admires.

Please Watch my 11 min video as I ponder these ideas a bit more…

What the Left and Right BOTH Don’t Admit About the Inconvenien…

What the Left and Right BOTH Don’t Admit About the Inconvenient Truth Concerning HOW We Found Ourselves in Trumped AmericaBuy My BookWhy I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: http://amzn.to/1QNuGuQRead my Blog: https://frankschaefferblog.com/

Posted by Frank Schaeffer on Sunday, July 9, 2017

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Frank Schaeffer
Frank Schaeffer
Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and painter. Click here to buy Frank's Multi-Touch book, "Letter to Lucy: A Manifesto of Creative Redemption—In the Age of Trump, Fascism and Lies" on iBooks.
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1 comment. Leave new

Dean Stevens
July 11, 2017 4:07 pm

Frank, Would you be interested in a speaking engagement on a Sunday morning? $400? Community Church of Boston, a Peace and Justice Congregation since 1920. We have hosted a speaker series every sunday for 97 years. Chomsky, Zinn, MLK, Kozol, Kunstler, Berrigans, Medea Benjamin, (most recently, Dukakis) many wonderful speakers. It would be a great thing to coordinate with a Sunday visit with your grandkids to the Science Museum. I have been really inspired by your blog posts and youtube ruminations. We are just starting to put the Fall program together. I hope you will be in touch. Very Best Wishes, Dean Stevens 617-869-3014

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