So I'm Going to Reveal a Secret

I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016.

People seem to assume I voted for Trump in 2016. I did not. But I never wanted to clarify that mistake because it outraged me that the so-called compassionate liberalism in and out of the media in today's America demonized working class Americans for hoping Trump would address their legitimate needs that were long ignored and even mocked.

I grew up in Deplorableville (Detroit). And despite living in Ann Arbor for the vast majority of my adult life, now, I have never forgotten where I grew up. Nor have I learned to have disdain for the people I grew up with (and who raised me). I refused to throw them under the bus.

And it was easy to do this because I was (and remain) truly overjoyed that Trump defeated the thoroughly corrupt and over-hyped ("most qualified evah," my ass) Hillary Clinton.

But I have a long history of really despising Donald Trump, who I viewed as personally flawed and just another liberal who associated with the Clinton family. He was literally the last person I wanted to win the Republican nomination.

And once he won the primaries (with a lower percentage of the Republican voters than Bernie Sanders got in an essentially two-person race against Hillary, please note), I was depressed that the Republicans seem to have nominated the only candidate who Clinton could beat.

Little did I know that Clinton was so not the most qualified evah that she could blow even that advantage on top of all her other advantages--including her Electoral College "Blue Wall."

You could have teased out my position if you closely read this blog. My view was that if I thought the polls meant that my vote might matter in Michigan to the outcome here; and that Michigan mattered to the outcome of the election, that I would vote for Trump. Absent that, I'd punt.

I couldn't vote for the corrupt Clinton but I could not bring myself to vote for the clown Trump in a losing race. So, being fully capable of reading political analysis and polling data, I assumed Clinton had it in the bag (please, don't tell me that you think the Russians had so much superior insight into our politics that only they knew a little nudge of crude Facebook propaganda would sway the election), and so I voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate.

But as I said, as the election evening coverage refused to give Clinton the win, I began to get hope that Clinton might lose. States that didn't go to Clinton early gave me hope, and then I discovered the New York Times predictions dial as it left its 99% Clinton victory position and began to shift to Trump.

I was overjoyed that people who long wanted nothing more from the federal government than to have the ability to work for a living had their choice--however flawed--chosen despite the thumbs on the scale against him by virtually everyone in the news/entertainment/government complex.

And so in solidarity with Trump's voters--who I deeply resented being portrayed as deplorable people by so many on the left in and out of the media--I refused to avoid being lumped into the Confederate/Klan/Russian/Nazi mob of haters that the liberal institutions painted them as.

I did push back against the Russian stooge issue because it was so easily refuted by my history. And because I thought it was so mind bogglingly stupid to make.

But now, Trump has governed beyond my hopes. The economy is going fine and foreign policy is going fine and governance is going fine and rule of law and democracy are going fine--despite the panicked cries of doom and impending tyranny that Trump would bring about, according to the unhinged people on the left who continue to claim resistance despite the complete lack of tyranny to resist. And Trump's ratings are going up. Not to Bush 41 post-Desert Storm levels, but up.

So I can safely reveal my true vote without it looking like I am bailing out to save my reputation. It seems like the Trump Hysteria Condition (that is doing far more damage to America than Putin's clownish intervention achieved) could finally break as the lack of doom finally sinks in.

Remember, it took me all of overnight to get over President Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012. You simply did not find on this blog (or in person for that matter) the kind of unhinged resistance to Obama that is common today with regard to Trump. So I am deeply disappointed in our resistance brethren who seem like the far right's "black helicopter" league during Bill Clinton's tenure or the "birther" fanatics about Obama.

So there you go. And what pray tell, did you assume about me since November 2016, perhaps thinking I was just "another" Trump bigot? Was that your conclusion from assuming I had voted for Trump?

I will continue to blog on national security issues. And I will continue to address those issues as issues and not to defend or attack Trump, just as I have done with Obama and Bush 43.

And I will continue to try to resist commenting on the unhinged people on mostly the left side of the aisle who can't seem to discuss Trump without flying spittle. I have a hope that people in the resistance will at long last be a little embarrassed (and happy) that their predictions of tyranny and death camps under Trump aren't in danger of coming true. 

But if not, I'm embarrassed for you people. Get a freaking grip at long last.

And I will continue to hope things go well at home and abroad even if Trump has to be given credit. I'm weird about wanting America--and so Americans--to do well, apparently.

But if things are going fine in 2020 and Trump runs for reelection (although I tend to think he'd want to go out "on a high note" after one term, claiming to have fixed America to make it great again rather than risk second term gravity), I will most likely vote for him over whatever actual or near-socialist the resistance-addled Democrats put up against him. I'll still think Trump is a clown, but he'll still be better than the alternative. If things are going well I should have the decency to suck up my views about the man personally and vote for him for the political effect.

Anyway, that's my secret.

UPDATE: Yeah, basically.

UPDATE: Very related.