Who expected Donald Trump to
be a choirboy? Wasn’t his past history
of womanizing common knowledge? Why then
were so many people shocked when they heard his locker room banter? Did listening to his words make such a difference?
My first reaction was to
recall the movie Casablanca. In it, the
French police chief expressed shock that gambling was going on in Rick’s
cafe. Meanwhile he was collecting his
winnings on the side. Who among us was
truly shocked by Trump’s words?
I also thought about the
movie Patton. One of the episodes
recounts how Patton was relieved of duty because he slapped a soldier for
cowardice. The Germans, on the other
hand, could not imagine that the Americans would hold back their best commander
for so trivial a reason.
Nonetheless, there were
calls for Patton’s scalp. His affront to
American democratic traditions was considered more important than winning the
war. Although our egalitarian heritage
would have been destroyed if Hitler triumphed, this consequence was
disregarded.
Next, I tried to imagine the
repartee between Trump and Bill Clinton when they played golf together. Would they have recounted their amorous conquests? Would they have done so in pristine
language? I can even picture them
laughing about these things.
Then I thought back to the
nation’s reaction to the Nixon tapes. Millions
of voters were distressed to learn that their president used foul language in
the oval office. So offended were they
that when the transcripts came out they were riddled with the phrase “expletive
deleted.”
Apparently Americans are
more concerned about the words people use than the deeds they perform. No, let me take that back. They are more troubled by what conservatives
say than by what liberals do. Thus, when
Bill Clinton was caught with his pants down with a White House intern, we were
urged to “move on.”
Back when Bill engaging in
indiscretions, the liberal establishment told us this was a matter exclusively between
the president and his wife. If she was
okay with it, so should we be.
So let us turn to
Hillary. It is now clear that she was
aware the Russians and Chinese were hacking into privileged
communications. Nonetheless, she ordered
that her official emails be transmitted by way of a personal server. How could she not have known this was extremely
dangerous?
Hillary currently tells us
this was a mistake. If so, it was a
mistake she deliberately tried to cover up.
Let us remember that Nixon was driven from office for something more
trivial. He was scourged for eighteen
minutes of missing tape, whereas she deleted over thirty thousand messages.
People have been calling
Hillary’s behavior illegal. It was much
worse than that. It was treasonous. Had she hand-delivered her communiqués to the
Russian embassy, this is exactly how it would have been branded. Why then was intentional carelessness—about vulnerable
secrets—any less treacherous?
So here we have somebody—in
an official capacity—exposing our nation to peril and the pubic is more
outraged by private peccadillos. Trump’s
temperament is deemed unacceptable, whereas her judgment is okay.
But it is worse than
that. Hillary has assured Wall Street
insiders that her private beliefs differ from her public pronouncements. What she essentially said was that she
endorses lying to voters. Because she
knows that if she tells people the truth, they will turn elsewhere, she
deliberately deceives them.
We already knew Hillary is a
liar. We knew it just as much as we did
that Trump is irreverent. But now we are
stunned by the Trump revelations, yet take hers in stride.
Where is our sense of
proportion? Don’t we understand what is
important for our national survival?
Shouldn’t treason and habitual dishonesty count for more than sexual talk? As has been said, we are electing a
president, not a pope.
Let me be clear. I too find Trump’s behavior distasteful. But Hillary has harmed our collective security
and may do so in the future. She is so
corrupt that she might not hesitate to sell us out on the altar of her
ambition. This really scares me!
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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