Dear Bruce

January 13, 2021

Dear Bruce,

Magnanimous is not exactly my middle name, but I too wrestle with the conundrum posed by friends, who are Trump supporters. I will try to provide my perspective, but the reality is I will never look at these people in the same way again. They may be saying the same thing about me. I am not a confrontational type of person so I will most likely let things pass as I struggle with trying to understand what the fuck they were thinking. These are reasonably intelligent and successful people, who would never have considered hiring Donald Trump for even a menial job in their places of employment. Yet, they hired him as President of the United States and then rehired him after his job evaluation.

I think one group belongs to the Republicans for life camp. They were probably raised in deeply Republican families, and can’t conceive of any situation where voting for a Democrat is even a remote possiblity. I was raised in a Democratic household. My parents were Roosevelt Democrats. I don’t know if they ever voted for Eisenhower, but I am confident that they had voted for Republican John Volpe for Governor just as I had voted for Republican Charlie Baker. These people can almost be forgiven. They don’t know anything else. They would vote for Attila the Hun if he was Republican, and they apparently did. I believe many of these people are genuinely embarrassed, and will not defend him.

Then there is the “Anyone but Hillary” group. I don’t believe these people liked Trump, but their hate for Hillary Clinton was so deep that they couldn’t see or reason straight. There were a lot of reasons for these feelings, some real, but many imagined. I have a problem with these people because their basic argument was that there was just something about her that they just didn’t like. Because of that puerile analysis, they were okay selling the rest of us down the river. These people suck. They are not embarrassed because they still believe he was the better alternative.

Lastly, there is the “All in for Trump” group. These are the ones that are truly dangerous and heinous. They bought the whole racist, nationalist, and misogynist story, and had no problem with it. These are the people, who attacked the Capitol. They didn’t care about tax cuts and judges. They just wanted to get even.

The first two groups suffer from what the psychologists would call cognitive dissonance. They made a bad decision, and it is now too uncomfortable to consider any alternatives. I worked for Smith Barney and predecessor firms for over thirty years. One of the hardest things to do is to sell a stock on the way down. You made a mistake, but you convince yourself despite all the evidence to the contrary that things will get better. They rarely do, and you hold on until it’s a total loss. For a lot of people, Trump is a bad stock. The initial analysis was flawed, and subsequent evidence to the contrary is inconvenient.

I am okay with my friends who are real Republicans and/or Conservatives. They made a mistake, and they are sick about what happened to their party. I have little patience, however, for the other knuckleheads, who are guilty of either voter malpractice or sedition.