Introduction

...and worse, to listen to my critics.

In one of the most agonizing political decisions of my life, I voted for Trump in 2016. Agonizing because of the 17 Republican candidates in the Republican 2016 primaries, Trump was my 18th choice. He made despicable comments about Megyn Kelly’s period on National TV--then denied them. Also on TV, he called candidate Carly Fiorina “horse face.” Most unforgivable to this Vietnam Era Army Veteran was his demeaning comments about John McCain’s being shot down over North Vietnam, and his subsequent capture and years of torture at the hands of the enemy. 

I would have rung doorbells for a Scott Walker/Carly Fiorina ticket. Ten or eleven of the other candidates would have made a world-class Cabinet. Yet the Republicans, in the words of my spirit animal, the late Charles Krauthammer, nominated a clown. I am officially registered as an  Unaffiliated voter, and in 2016 I faced an unappetizing choice between Trump and Clinton.

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode. 

Continuing

I am not going to take any part of this episode and make it into a lengthy critique of Hillary Clinton. Try to respect me and my hours per day of fact-finding and analysis, using multiple sources from all points on the political compass. After all, I do strive to be a common goals-oriented podcaster. That analysis, despite my low opinion of Trump, did not make my voting choice any less ugly, but it did make it clear. I could not vote for Hillary, and did not want to waste my vote on a 3rd party candidate.

In the 3+ years Trump has been in office, I do not have a better opinion of the man. I do favor many, certainly not all, of his policies, but my regard for him as a man is unchanged. In 2016, I was a Trump voter, not a Trump supporter. My wife is a strong Trump supporter. BTW, do you remember one of the many reasons that Democrats felt that Trump got away with winning was because the man in the house basically told the woman in the house how to vote? Whoever came up with that one has never met my wife.

Today’s Key Point: I am moving into the Trump support camp, and the anti-Trumpers are the driving force behind that movement. I am being told that because I voted for Trump, that I am worse than merely deplorable, I am despicable. And the more I am called deplorable, hateful, a racist, sexist, a xenophobe and an Islamophobe, the more I get my back up in my own defense. Tell me to shut the “F” up while drowning me in insults, and I want to buy a MAGA hat, put it on and dare you to knock it off my head. Is that the best part of me responding to a stream of insults? No. No, absolutely not. But I am completely done with walking away.

Okay, Will, how could it be that you feel driven to be more of a Trump supporter than merely a highly reluctant Trump voter? With apologies to Elizbeth Barrett Browning, let me count the ways:

I am constantly being told that lack of education is one of the reasons that the great unwashed (a quote from more than one analyst on election night in 2016) voted for Trump is due to a lack of education. I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy, and an MBA from Harvard; my wife had two Masters degrees from UNC.

I am also being told that I voted for Trump because I am white, and Trump appeals to racists. Was it racist when 90% of blacks voted for Obama in his two elections, while only 70% of whites voted for his opponents?

Decades-long friends, friends where I thought the ties of friendship were unbreakable, are turning their backs on me. Yet we blame the destructive and growing divide in our country on politicians and the media.

Free speech is under attack almost everywhere, and I am fed up, fed up to my gills with having to hide my 2016 ballot in order to maintain peace.