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| Made in Vietnam. |
There I was in Vietnam, an ambassador to all things American in a communist country, when the Vietnamese tour guide asked the inevitable. Please note, these are the abbreviated and sanitized version of my reply.
What do you think of Trump? Here we go. I don't like him and I didn't vote for him.
Why not? He seems like he's doing a good job so far, our tour guide adds. Obama is still the president until January 20th, which is why things haven't changed, yet. And as of right now, Trump is doing a good job of stocking his cabinet with sketchy characters who appear likely to not only threaten, but completely trample, existing civil liberties and rape the environment. Also, Trump is a despicable human being.
But he's such a good business man! That's debatable. First of all, he got a head start on business with a $1 million handout from his daddy in the 70's. In the 80's he owed his daddy and his daddy's companies $14 million from bad business decisions. If it wasn't for his nepotistic safety net, he would have been out of business. Plus, I doubt if the people Trump employed over the years who didn't get paid for their work would say he's a good businessman either. Sure, he's made a lot of money, but I don't agree that that alone makes anyone a good businessman. How you get things done matters. And so does contributing to the betterment of society by paying your fair share in taxes, which he doesn't do either. Especially when you're a billionaire, because that adds up to a lot of betterment to society. In addition, being a good businessman doesn't necessarily make for a good politician. After all, you have to serve all the people in the entire country, not just those that you like because they contribute to your own personal wealth. ALL OF THEM. Even if they have a disability or are a different race, gender, religion or sexual orientation from you. He's publicly ridiculed all of these groups of people, which constitutes the majority of Americans.
But lots of people must've voted for him because he won. Just because America is a democracy doesn't mean people aren't apathetic and don't vote. Over half of the population didn't get off their lazy asses to get to the polls, or even use a convenient mail-in ballot to vote from the comfort and privacy of their own homes, to exercise their right to vote. Instead, they flushed the opportunity to help choose our next leader right down the toilet. So, Trump got elected by a measly 19% of all Americans. N-I-N-E-T-E-E-N percent, I said! And we had more than 10 candidates representing different political parties with vastly different views of the world to choose from. Which is probably shocking to you, living in a communist country with only one political party, where you don't even have the privilege of voting directly for your own Prime Minister. Because, I know it's shocking to me and it's my own countrymen we're talking about.
I think he's ok for Vietnam though. I don't agree. I don't think he's ok for Vietnam or the rest of the free world for that matter. With the exception of maybe Russia, but only because Putin's deluded too. But, I'm getting off topic here. Trump wants to bring back jobs to America. Jobs that got sent overseas to places like Vietnam by businessmen like him in the first place. In order to make products for less cost with cheap sweatshop labor. So people like Trump, whose ties are made in Vietnam for his very own clothing line, could sell those products for a huge profit. But, now that he's going to be president, and because he's a huge hypocrite, he wants to take those factory jobs from the Vietnamese and give them back to Americans, most of whom don't even want these kinds of excruciatingly labor intensive jobs. At the same time, he'd like to raise the minimum wage for workers here in America which is great. Except that products made by Americans with higher labor costs added in to the cost of products will make lots of products unaffordable to lots of Americans. Especially, when he repeals Obamacare and makes medical care more unaffordable and gives more tax cuts to the rich, making the poor even poorer. And trickle down economics won't solve anything, just like it didn't when Reagan was President. But, don't worry, in the end, he's going to screw far more Americans than Vietnamese.
There you have it.
You've been Trumped.
ADDENDUM: This was not one isolated incident of being asked about Trump. We were asked several times by people of all different nationalities we encountered while traveling in Vietnam. The whole world is talking about Trump and waiting to see what he'll do.
Amen. (Not to above comment but to article - I hope you delete above comment which has nothing to do with anything). I would even say, who says that he's made a lot of money? Even that is debatable. He has built mostly everything on credit. His actual wealth is probably much lower than what people think. Having the tax returns would no doubt shed some light on that. Good businessman, ha! Just ask Michael Bloomberg or Warren Buffet, who are two of the best businessmen living, they both have strong opinions on that. He is a good showman, I'll give him that. And his only interest over the next four years is to practice this showmanship. Nothing more and nothing less. In fact, I suspect his interest might be to do it for less than four years, because he is likely to get bored with it. Some of what he's doing now seems to me that he is wanting to undermine his own presidency and bring it to a speedy end. Having won and having beat everyone else is enough fodder for his inflated ego. To think that we will have to call him "president" still feels utterly weird and unreal.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, who is that nut job above (the first comment)?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, my favorite line: ' Please note, these are the abbreviated and sanitized version of my reply.' I hear you completely. I can't talk about DT without saying at least 3 cuss words and the words 'moron', 'idiot', 'stupid' and the various iterations of that concept. God help us all.