I recently received an email from a reader who has been on Slope for nearly a decade and very politely asked me to lighten up on Trump. His letter was well-crafted, well-reasoned, and courteous. I wrote him back, and after doing so, I thought I’d share my thoughts with you, since it doesn’t cross any privacy lines. I wouldn’t want to waste all that typing without making a post out of it. So here goes:
It’s good to hear from you, and I appreciate your readership all these years.
Slope isn’t a political blog, but there is some political talk from time to time, and I certainly use it to express my own point of view.
My political leanings tend to be quite libertarian. I grew up as a child of Reagan, and he, for me, exemplified Republican values (more or less).
There were, regrettably, no honest-to-goodness Republicans in 2016, and party affiliations aside, politics are a bigger mess now than they ever were.
In the course of the election, my strongest desire was for Hillary to lose. However, I didn’t want
Trump to win. It was kind of a no-win situation. I didn’t HAVE a candidate. But I was glad she lost. I don’t know where you live, but I would wager it’s not the Bay Area. Suffice it to say, a person with a Trump sign in Palo Alto would probably find their Tesla covered with eggs the next morning and the sign burned down.
Myself, I don’t feel strongly about the guy. I honestly do think that most of the bad stuff people say about him is true, and frankly I’d be surprised to see him finish up his 4 year term. On the other hand, I felt Obama would be a one-term President too, so what do I know?
From a moral standpoint, I was a Bernie supporter. I actually was pretty passionate about him, except I set aside the fact that there probably wouldn’t be a special exception for financial bloggers when it came to cranking up taxes.
The bottom line for me is that we didn’t pay for our sins in 2008, as we should have. That was a golden opportunity to do so. The aftermath, as you suggest, is going to be FAR worse than we would have suffered if we had allowed ourselves as a nation to pay for our sins. As it is now, it’s going to be the apocalypse.
As you’ve surely gathered, I tend to prefer tumultuous, downward-pointing markets, so I’m quite sincere in saying that if Trump’s actions bring it on (although that’s surely not his intent), that’s just fine by me. I honestly don’t feel hatred toward the fellow – – – I think the entire situation we’re in is sort of tragi-comic. And it certainly keeps life interesting. But although I’m not a supporter, I can certainly assure you I’m not with the proverbial other side either.
As George Carlin said, when you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show, and if you’re born in the U.S., you get a front row seat. So, quite truly, I am simply in my front seat, enjoying the spectacle, and writing about my perception.
