Donald Trump Doesn’t Care About You
By: Ben Gilmer
Tags: Impeachment, Family, Trump, Appalachia, Election

Russell County, Virginia (Credit: Ben Gilmer)

I do not hold a public office or a high profile corporate position. I am not a social media influencer or a religious leader. I grew up on a farm in a small town in southwestern Virginia. My dad was a coal miner, my mom a school teacher. Though I have closely followed politics for as long as I can remember, publicly debating sticky topics, including our elected officials, was never really part of my upbringing.

But then again the country never really felt so on fire. There was no Facebook, Roger Ailes was still sketching out Fox News on his whiteboard, and Donald Trump was just a bankrupt, flashy, fast-talking New York businessman with dyed hair and a fake tan. He embodied the type of person I, and most everyone else back home, was raised to never trust or pay much mind to. He fit the general description of those men from long ago who made out like bandits with all the timber and mineral rights, or, during my childhood, the coal bosses who helicoptered in and out of the Pittston Coal headquarters up the road from my house during the 1989 strike.

And now here we are. The bandit is our president and he won 81% of my home county’s vote for re-election.

I have many friends, family, and acquaintances who continue to support Donald Trump. Here is the thing you need to hear right now: Donald Trump didn’t care about you back then, he doesn’t care about you now, and he won’t care about you in the future. He has used our families, friends, and a racist system to rise to power, while shoveling out policies that benefit the super rich, increase our risk of becoming sick and unemployed, and further erode our country’s standing, security, and influence in the world. Your continued support for the Trump regime is simply dangerous.

I have watched as many decent people — people I love — have found themselves lost in a vast wilderness of deceit and misinformation. People who have forced themselves into positions of extreme tribal allegiance — an allegiance to a man, political party, and ideology — an allegiance that requires unending moral and mental gymnastics. These acts of gymnastics have unfortunately rendered many folks unable to distinguish between fact and fiction when interpreting current events.

Many people I love and care about should be struggling to reconcile how the actions of Trump and his band of grifters fundamentally conflicts with the values they lift up in prayer on Sunday mornings, the life lessons they teach to their kids on the little league team, or the wisdom they share with loved ones around their supper tables at night.

As of yesterday morning, President Trump’s first public statements about last week’s events at the Capitol made it clear that he feels exactly no remorse or accountability for inciting the insurrection, the consequential loss of life, the continued erosion of our democratic processes and institutions, and the compromising of our shared safety. Credible threats of armed domestic conflict remain for the coming days and foreseeable future. Yet these events have not been enough to stop powerful Republicans in their effort to curate demonstrable lies about election fraud — all in a bid to leverage this chaos and division to rally political power and influence.

If still today you remain in support of this president, his enablers, and their treasonous actions — after these domestic terrorists stormed the Capitol at the continued urging of the President and other Republican leaders — it is well past time for you to ask yourself many hard questions and undertake the uncomfortable work of seeking truth and self-reflection. I believe that there is still an opportunity for you to emerge from this dark fog which has engulfed you, but this is a journey you must initiate. I recall the lyrics of an old gospel song that I used to love singing at church: Mercies abundantly wait / Turn back before it’s too late / You’re drifting too far from shore.

We have a fragile, fleeting window of opportunity to build a democracy that serves us all — a country that lifts up the underserved and disadvantaged. As I type these words, this window is rattling and about to slam shut.

The political system is indeed broken. However, the self-serving false prophet at the helm has demonstrated very clearly that he is not the one to fix it. His team has shown through their policies that they do not care about your family’s well-being. Trump’s many disciples, from Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, all the way down the food chain to some of our state and local representatives, are members of an elite class of gamers. These are masters of a tried and true methodology that harnesses the weapons of white supremacy and disinformation to build and control political power. You’re a pawn in their game.

These political gamesmen, their corporate bankrollers, and their misinformation news channels know exactly what they are doing right now. They know who it hurts and the lasting damage that will remain in their wake. These people are the machine behind the fog.

Some of these elected officials openly play political poker with your healthcare, black lung benefits, or unemployment payments. Others simply stay silent in fear of upsetting the Trump complex and losing votes from his supporters. This game has been a constant thread throughout our country’s history. A recent social media post by the comedian Ziwe Fumudoh succinctly captured how our modern American fabric is woven from the same needle and thread as other pivotal moments from history, such as the Civil War, where the majority of southerners who fought and died couldn’t even afford slaves. They were convinced by the white aristocracy that Black liberation would negatively affect them.

Last week Donald Trump sent his followers to seize the Capitol while he eased on back to his recliner in the West Wing to watch from his TV. He’s the foreman who stays at the office and sends you back into the coal mine knowing the roof bolts aren’t stable, or the boss who sits in the work truck with his Hardees biscuit while you fix a broken water line in the dead of winter.

Donald Trump’s public escalation of racism, greed, and deception have been very present for us all to see since well before the 2016 campaign. As Trump garnered more and more support during his first election season, I repeatedly told myself a quiet story about how this was “not who we are, not who my people are.” But I knew in my heart that this was not true. Even the most cursory review of American history shows that this is indeed the same America that Black people know.

If you are still supporting Trump and his administration, when did you declare “Despite all I have witnessed from this man, yes, I will endorse this”?

What did you tell yourself the day he made fun of a disabled reporter on live television? I know a lot of people who would have knocked someone out cold in aisle 5 of the Food City if they heard someone talking like this about a disabled person. And then there was the audio recording with Billy Bush where Donald Trump admitted to and explicitly endorsed sexual abuse. And the time he said that the late Senator John McCain was not a hero because he was captured and served as a prisoner of war. And the grotesque child separation policy at the border where babies and young children are separated from their parents, nearly all of whom have fled war or other impossible circumstances in pursuit of any chance at stability and opportunity. I remember many Sunday sermons with stories of weary refugees looking for safety and shelter. “I was a stranger and you invited me in.” — Matthew 25:35

And now here we are in the season finale of this administration, sitting on top of a towering pyramid of observed atrocities. Here we are in a global pandemic where basic approaches to protecting our communities like wearing masks have been openly ridiculed and politicized by the President and his enablers. I still can’t get past the fact that I can log onto Facebook anytime to find friends — the same friends who I have seen wearing full face masks in the woods during spring gobbler season — taking their righteous stand against the tyranny of face masks, all in the name of freedom and liberty (read: all in the name of fragile masculine egos), while many of our family members actively battle COVID.

The season finale has culminated into an unbelievable story arc stretching far beyond what the most creative Hollywood studio could write. It sure is a lot to take in and to know what to do with it all.

I understand some of the thinking. I want to break the system too. Our government doesn’t provide the fundamental goods and services in a way that matches my values either, and the incremental steps offered by traditional candidates will not build an inclusive, equitable, and democratic system that meets our needs.

But this man and his enablers are not on our team. Do not think for a moment that they understand or care about you. Donald Trump continues to cannibalize everyone in his orbit once they prove unwilling to do his bidding. Most recently Vice President Pence was added to Trump’s sordid blacklist — the man’s VICE PRESIDENT.

You know in your heart that Donald Trump would toss you and your family into the hog trough like a burnt skillet of cornbread if you no longer served his needs.

At this very moment, the House is barreling toward a second impeachment. Senator Mitch McConnell, Rep. Liz Cheney, and others are pulling their support of Mr. Trump and quietly acknowledging that his most recent betrayal amounts to an impeachable offense. They are cutting bait because the GOP’s hourly political calculation is showing the cost of keeping Trump as the face of the Republican party now exceeds the benefit. These power brokers have acted as the president’s henchmen since the day he announced his candidacy from his golden escalator in New York City. Like a scene from a Netflix political drama, the whole gang is looking to remove the emperor, shed their political and personal liabilities, and regain their funding streams in the final hour of the show.

But they do not get to reset after enabling Trump and this criminal network for the past four years. This should haunt whatever is left of the GOP for an entire generation, and all of the elected officials who have been complicit in this scheme must be held accountable.

My Trump-supporting loved ones, you definitely have played a role in the damage this man has caused, too. And though I have never supported this man, I own my share as well.

I am a privileged white man who has actively parlayed my silence and privilege into various streams of power and opportunity for many years now. Like many others, I have spent the last years of the Trump presidency asking myself a lot of uncomfortable questions about my whiteness and my white privilege, starting with the very basics: How have I personally benefited from our country’s vast infrastructure of white supremacy? At whose expense have I benefited? What have I done to help in the fight for racial justice? And, perhaps most relevant to the moment we find ourselves in, when have I chosen to remain silent so that I might benefit from this racist system? The questions and the answers have been both devastating and unending — the more you dig, the more you find.

So if the good Lord or Elon Musk or anyone else blasts me off of this ancient rock today, I want to exit the troposphere knowing that my two sweet little girls, and everyone else I know for that matter, understand that I will no longer be silent. If my speaking out makes you uncomfortable, costs me some opportunity, or inspires you to cut me out of your life, so be it.

For the people I care about who continue to rally behind Donald Trump, I realize there is probably not much that could move you if you are this far in. I am happy to talk with you on this topic but I won’t sit back and silently accept your dangerous actions or your willingness to check out from our shared reality, as your decision greatly affects us all.

I hope you’ll give it all some thought in the coming days, though, because after Donald Trump leaves office and returns to his life of private jets and golf courses, you should know that he still won’t care about you.