Trump, America’s Long Shot Hope

To the Editor: 
I can’t remember reading a more biased column than the Aug. 4, 2016 “Trump Reflects White Male Fragility” by Charles Blow of the New York Times.
During the Vietnam War Bill Clinton and Muhammad Ali both took advantage of or “gamed” the Selective Service System to gain deferments from the draft. I was drafted in 1969. So why pick on Trump?
Regarding Trump’s history with the “babes,” is his background more infamous than Bill Clinton’s? The last time I checked Trump owned quite a few places of lodging. Bill Clinton used the taxpayer’s mansion for his dalliances. And JFK, LBJ, and the ladies, well that’s history.
Regarding the slogan “Make America Great Again,” my mental picture is the Eisenhower years. Then there was prosperity, domestic tranquility, economic growth, factories hummed along, racial integration of the military, and the beginning of the end of Jim Crow. Northern and midwestern cities were manufacturing strongholds. Blacks in large numbers moved north. Brown versus Board of Education ruled that racially “separate but equal schools” were unconstitutional. Eisenhower got 36 percent of the black vote in 1956. America was a net exporter of products and the federal government had a balanced budget. The interstate highway system was under construction and America kept its nose out of foreign wars like Vietnam and the Middle East. Gasoline was 25 cents a gallon. Texas and Oklahoma were producing our oil, not the Middle East. Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were heroes. Nat King Cole and Bishop Sheen had their own TV shows.
Now look at the current mess. “Charley’s War” in Afghanistan was 100 percent misguided. We should have let the Russian’s win. Our involvement there created the monster who was Osama Bin Laden. We know what came next. So the attempt by Mr. Blow to reduce this year’s presidential election to a referendum on race and racism is bogus.
Trump has raised all the right issues with the possible omissions of income inequality and the breakup of the big banks. The problem is Trump’s answers are either off target, poorly articulated or incomplete.
The election is not about “white male fragility.” The election is about how to address illegal immigration, how to reset national security, how to respond to current and emerging threats, how to respond to the loss of jobs for those without college degrees, how to trade successfully when competing with countries whose wage scales are a fraction of ours, how to ensure that constitutional rights are guaranteed to all citizens, how to keep the courts from inventing rights that are not found in the Constitution, how to elect a Congress that will actually go to work instead of bloviating and posturing while raising money for their own reelection, who to select for lifetime Supreme Court judgeships, how to address the rocketing cost of higher education and child care, how to protect citizens from unwarranted violence from either the police or fellow citizens. Yes, black lives matter. The election is not about protecting anyone’s “cultural heritage.” The “stars and bars” is not the American flag.
Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican nomination. But Trump won the primary fair and square. Mr. Blow asserted that a vote for Trump is an “unfiltered primal scream of the fragility and fear consuming white male America.” Like Mr. Blow, I don’t dance around an issue either. Blow’s New York Times column is racist. A vote for Trump may be no more than a long shot hope that America’s pressing problems can be fixed by someone who is not an “insider.”