Donald Trump Cares

     The words moving left across the bottom of the TV screen on cable news channels are sometimes more interesting than the audiovisuals above.  In their spare descriptions of events they can evoke wonder, often making me think the really important story is contained in the moving words, not in the stuff dominating the screen.
     This afternoon, on MSNBC, these words flowed: "Donald Trump travels to Scotland to open new golf course."
     Turnberry.  Trump, against the wishes and needs of residents, has developed this place in southwest Scotland into the United Kingdom's freshest location for the typical rich man's practice of hitting small white balls on a fantasy landscape.  Give me a politician who isn't a golfer or a lawyer, and I just might vote for him, but such a person is rare.
     Trump, amid "campaign woes" caused entirely by his own vocal cords, has jumped the pond, not to work the malfunctioning levers of his campaign machine, but to promote a business interest costing him millions.  It begs the question: if or when he's president, will he carry on with business ventures during his administration?  Will he promote policies that profit his own business concerns?  Would it surprise anyone that such a craven lout will probably engage in such corruption if given the chance to hold the highest office?
     What do Trump supporters think of their candidate going to Scotland?  I haven't heard anything on the subject, but as always I can only wonder why anyone capable of rational thought (let's assume there are a few Trump supporters who are thus capable) would find attractive the idea of their candidate, who bellows simple-minded pro-America slogans at every rally, evidently more concerned about a golf course in a foreign country than working to secure the support of Republican VIPs and delegates going into the Cleveland convention, where he'll likely need help from the Party's traditional workings and methods so common to political machines.
     For Trump, though, golf courses are easier to deal with than politics.  To American voters, he can tout the course as a "big success," while those in the United Kingdom continue to find him loathsome.  A petition to prevent Trump from entering the United Kingdom achieved 586, 935 signatures from British citizens.  I've never heard of such a thing before the Internet era: techno-identified mass disgust for a human being coming from citizens of a foreign nation, expressing their desire to never allow a certain person to taint their land with his presence.
     586, 935 Brits think Donald Trump is on a par with banned imported food carrying some disease-causing parasite.
     Even Prime Minister David Cameron doesn't like him.  Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric rubbed Cameron the wrong way.  Still, Trump has claimed that Cameron invited him to 10 Downing Street, except Cameron said he really didn't.
     Is Trump capable of telling the truth?  I think he is, and when he tells the truth it's sometimes unsettling, as when he said he wants to practice torture, or his suggestion that suspected terrorists' families be killed.  He's also said that if he weren't her father, he'd want to date his daughter, Ivanka.  Is that a lie?  That he wants to fuck his daughter?  No, I don't think so.
     Many Trump supporters I've heard on television say they like him because he speaks his mind, "he's honest."  Speaking one's mind is not necessarily a virtue by itself.  Listen to any interview with Charles Manson and you'll probably realize he also speaks his mind.  I speak my mind, too.  When I write this blog, my words comprise a model of what I think.  I have no political agenda; I'm not on any one politician's side.  I point things out, comment, examine, give insight as it comes to me.  Unlike Trump (and Manson), I'm not self-interested in manipulating people into believing that which may harm them and others.
     Even an agnostic like me recognizes the truth of Matthew 7: "...by their fruits you will know them."  In other words, what do people do?
     I know of a presidential candidate who, instead of tending to his troubled campaign, flew to Scotland to give his blessing to his new golf course, an artificial landscape nobody in that country wanted, just as hundreds of thousands of them don't want the soles of the candidate's shoes to touch their homeland.  He's deaf to the hatred directed at him--if anyone doesn't like him there's something wrong with them.  Trump's grandiose self-esteem must conceal a hollow space where insecurity's smoldering fears drive him to be "great," partly by saying words like "great," "tremendous," and "amazing," whenever he describes anything he's connected to.  I've never once heard him say the word, "compassion," and I admit, I have none for him.

                                                                                Vic Neptune