By Richard Pennington
There was no excuse whatsoever for my having failed to vote in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. The United States is a participatory democracy, and expats only have to take a few simple steps in order to cast a ballot. Thrice I did not, but it would be different in 2020.
Four years ago, I was as amazed as anybody when Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president. I assumed that he would lose badly to the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. Surely he could not win, since he was a businessman with a sleazy reputation, and he had not held any sort of office ― never on a city council, never a governor, congressman or cabinet minister. Trump ascended to the White House due to the electoral college, having received 46.1 percent of the votes, against Clinton's 48.2 percent.
Unlike some of my leftist friends, I was willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he would grow into the job, I told them.
A bare-bones assessment of his presidency follows. On the upside, he has slowed illegal immigration, he has confronted China over its decades-long habit of stealing American intellectual property, and his policies (pre-COVID, at least) kept unemployment low. His risky engagement with North Korea's Kim Jong-un produced neither dramatic breakthroughs nor nuclear war.
The downside is considerable, starting with his mishandling of COVID-19. Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on mitigating climate change, he has seen the national debt increase to $26 trillion, he has bent laws to help his family's interests, he has contributed to an unraveling of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, his plan to "drain the swamp" of Washington lobbyists has failed, and he tends to trust his instincts rather than do the hard work of studying issues and coming to well-reasoned decisions. While the middle class has struggled, his financial policies have mostly benefited the wealthy and big corporations.
So why did I vote for Trump late last month rather than his Democratic opponent, Joseph Biden? Issues of economics, geopolitics and the environment are irrelevant. My concern is what I call the American devolution which began shortly after a black man named George Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25. That was unjust, but let's acknowledge that he was a career criminal, was high on fentanyl, was trying to pass a fake $20 bill and refused to cooperate with the police. Of the four cops on the scene that day, two were white, one black and one Asian. Yet it was cast as an example of white racism, catalyzing protests and riots in more than 200 cities.
The U.S. has had its share of riots, but this is on an unprecedented scale. Raging hate mobs have destroyed and plundered businesses, and defaced and torn down dozens of statues, not excluding those of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I remind you, those are two of the founding fathers. Churches and courthouses have been targeted, and anarchy has reigned in Seattle and Portland, both of which are a long way from Minneapolis. The cost of all this rioting ― I hear that the Associated Press now urges its writers not to use the term, as it is considered "racist" ― is close to $2 billion.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan has suggested that the ongoing vandalism and destruction of monuments and memorials resembles what happened in China during the Cultural Revolution. Few objective scholars would deny that those events of 1966 to 1976 had a long-lasting and devastating effect on China.
I do not pretend to know how much of the current civic unrest in the U.S. is a spontaneous reaction to perceived injustice and how much is orchestrated and paid for by some shadowy groups. It does seem that the worst of it has happened in cities with Democratic mayors, people who were willing to stand by and let the riots happen. One reason they may have done so ―although it seems to defy logic ― is to embarrass Trump or hurt his chances to win re-election on Nov. 3. The extremism on display may prove to have the very opposite effect.
It has done that for me. As indicated above, I was no great fan of Trump before the start of what radicals depict as a long-overdue uprising. But frankly, I fear for the land of my birth. What has transpired in these last few months has been so awful, so over the top, so indefensible, that I wonder what the future may hold. Trump, who so often makes me cringe, is a modern-day Hans Brinker. That young boy, a 19th century fictional character, saved Holland by putting his finger in a leaking dike to hold back the sea.
My forlorn hope is that by doing so, Trump can buy time and sanity will prevail in the U.S.
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