Most successful people have lived through multiple failures because, ironically, our failures help guide us to success. We learn which mistakes not to repeat, and we learn to avoid those paths that lead us to places where we are not comfortable, not at our best. Thus we avoid becoming braggarts or bullies, thieves or lazy ne’er-do-wells. We may adopt such a label at one or time or another, but those with noble achievements don’t accept their character flaws. They recognize and discard them.
Everyone exhibits poor judgment sometimes. Moral dilemmas force an ethical and logical internal examination that leads to a better understanding of the surprises life presents us. Making the wrong choice in a situation forces an internal examination of one’s motives and goals. Learning from our mistakes is what eventually and collectively contributes to our overall wisdom. The kind of stuff that we don’t learn from teachers or books.
When someone claims to never lose, to never need to apologize, to never having made a mistake, that person is rationalizing his decisions, perhaps lying, and living a selfish existence. And someone who rationalizes most decisions he makes, or blames others for his own misfortune, or who professes to always be a winner is concerned only with his image, not the reality of who he is.
Not only have we all known braggarts, bullies, and boneheads, but at times many of us have filled one or more of those roles ourselves. We assume many personas as our conscious and subconscious selves try to establish who we are to become. We don a mask and behave accordingly only to discard it later for one good reason or another as our characters evolve. As we become who we are destined to be.
Unknowingly, I wore the mask of a braggart into my teen years. I can only hope I’ve long since removed it. I know I’ve been a bonehead but I’m fairly sure that my current life choices don’t reflect boneheaded-ness. And it’s with more than a little shame that I admit to having been – for a very short time, less than a day – a bully.
This episode from my past involved a high school classmate of mine, Bill, who disliked me as much as I disliked him. Our animosity may have arisen from our different backgrounds and simply being thrust together in the crucible of public schools. As our surnames began with the same letter, we shared homeroom for a few years as well as a number of other classes including science, English, and social studies. We had more in common than we realized because we also gravitated to the same electives, including Creative Writing, and it is there where we had our most pitched battles.
Our teacher required us to write a short story for every class. Every one. We met twice a week for ninety minutes, and that offered the small number of students the time to read their fictions aloud and offer critiques. At the time I was taken with science fiction and fantasy, and in the space of 350 words, my characters found themselves experiencing all sorts of drama, like protecting the Earth from aliens or exploring undersea caverns filled with as yet undiscovered creatures. Bill’s stories were invariably about a set of parents arguing, verbally clawing at each other while their children cowered in fear or distanced themselves in confusion at what they witnessed. He’d never seen any plots as ridiculous and inane as mine, and I’d never seen any so unappealing as his. Our critical commentaries were often the stuff of rancor, insult, and disdain.
But by the time of Creative Writing in our senior year, he and I were at least equals in each other’s eyes. Two years earlier that wasn’t the case. Growing up in the west end of town, I admired some neighborhood toughs and had learned the importance of standing up for myself. I also learned that arrogance and bluster sometimes played a role when fisticuffs were imminent. And all by myself, I learned that such an attitude also worked in kowtowing those who had difficulty in standing up for themselves. In short, I believed that I could, with a little bravado and the threat of force, get some people to back down.
Some months into tenth grade, with Bill and me already disliking each other, I apparently concluded that he was not the type to stand up and fight. Sitting in class, following an exchange of insults, I began periodically punching Bill from behind. Nothing too hard, I simply punched him in the shoulder every so often. My air of superiority was evident, my “courage” on display before everyone but the distracted teacher. And my tough guy attitude continued right up until another student quietly intervened and ended my bullying forever saying, “If you hit him again I’m going to punch you in the mouth.”
I was hot with humiliation, immediately and thoroughly. The shock of the statement landed like the promised fist. His few words made me realize that my own abhorrent behavior had cast a spotlight on my corrupt soul. The noble classmate simply opened my own eyes to what was already on display before all. Awash in shame, I knew my behavior was detestable, and I’m thankful to this day another teen had the courage and character to point it out to me.
It took a righteous young man to stop my behavior, and the dishonor and embarrassment I felt that morning forever ended any thoughts I might have had about bullying in the future. My embarrassment was wholly the result of accepting the truth of what I’d evolved into. It still distresses me that I became such a person, if only for that morning, that memorable ten minutes. I cringe just a bit as I publicly share this memory.
My experience as a bully taught me more than just regret and shame; I learned that in making mistakes, we all have a chance at redemption. The enmity Bill and I shared never devolved into anything resembling the earlier situation in that classroom – I certainly never considered anything remotely similar – though we didn’t become friends. Two years later we would verbally spar in that Creative Writing class, our dissimilar interests on display, with each playing the part of the other’s foil. And I grew to like Bill. Meeting on occasion in the years following graduation, my regrets led me to apologize for that episode in class, and gentleman that he is, he whisked the memory away with a wave of his hand.
The experience taught me to challenge bullies as I was challenged. I learned that in accepting the truth of what I had become, I had the freedom and ability to change myself. I learned to recognize my faults, and through effort and honest apology, to end them. That may be the secret to life: Always do what you think is right, and when you’re wrong, learn from it, recognizing and avoiding the earlier behavior. The first time you make a poor decision you commit a mistake. Repeating the same mistake over and over may not be insanity, but it does reveal shortcomings in one’s character. Or as Donald Trump might comment, “Those people are bad dudes.”
By age 70, such bad judgment is part of one’s character, but even at 70, people can change. The epiphany of Ebenezer Scrooge from “A Christmas Carol” may be fiction, but opportunities occur often to change for the better. Still, without accepting the truth about oneself, any evolution of character is hit and miss at best. Donald Trump denies any and all accusations that he has a flawed character. He flaunts his extra-marital affairs; he lies with a consistency that is shocking; he makes blatantly racist comments, betraying his anathema toward minorities; and he accepts no responsibility for his failures, whether it is bankruptcy, losing court cases, or being unable to get a Republican-controlled government to successfully pass any bills. He won’t improve in any of these areas – family, finances, racism, government – because he denies he has a problem in these areas.
I would argue that he has a flawed character because he’s never accepted the truth about himself. The spotlight of his words and actions continues to make Americans and the world aware of his flawed character, but does nothing for Trump except make him lash out frenetically against the truth. And this is the most dangerous aspect of Donald Trump’s tenure as president; it is no longer enough for him to live in his own land of make believe. Trump now demands that the entire nation subscribe to his version of reality.
Donald Trump believes that actual facts can become untrue as long as he doesn’t acknowledge them as true. That’s when terms like “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and “doublethink” spring to mind. The examples of dictators actually using “fake news” are easy to find. Most of the time, the propaganda targets the home populations to keep them in line. Trump, who bristles at the slightest criticism, would feel at home in such a regime. Some of the most egregious lies came from dictators like Stalin who had historical photographs edited to amend the collective memory of an entire nation. Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Yezhov, and others were erased from well-known photographs after their falls from power. Such censorship and lying continues in Russia to this day. These are same Russians for whom Trump has such lofty praise and never a word of disparagement.
Donald Trump refuses to admit he is wrong on even the slightest of facts. He was willing to derail the focus of the US citizens by maintaining his lie that President Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped. His own Justice Department eventually dismissed this claim. Like a petulant child, he hangs onto his lies because never backing down is more important to him than the truth, as if by not backing down he has somehow molded reality to his vision of what he wants to be true. In the days following his inauguration, he expected people to dismiss what they saw with their own eyes as the White House claimed more people attended his inauguration than any other, this despite the photographic evidence to the contrary. I don’t understand why supporters of Trump accept the idea that he is never wrong. They must recognize the blatant arrogance and condescension he has for seemingly all other people.
Donald Trump’s rejection of the truth is at the core of why I cannot support him. It corrupts his character, it endangers society by introducing scatter-brained ideas in place of rational thought. Millions of illegal aliens did not vote for Hillary Clinton, and it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money to spend millions on trying to prove this idiotic conspiracy theory. He will not apologize for his abominable behavior even when that behavior replays repeatedly on TV. Thus, he must approve of his abominable behavior.
Trump lies and lies and exhorts us in almost every public statement to “believe me.” Only liars and exaggerators feel the need to earnestly persuade their listeners to “believe” them.
That he is a bully is widely accepted. Trump admits to bullying behavior and seems proud of it. It means he’s winning doesn’t it? As a result, he cannot improve his character. How can he? Why bother improving if you never accept that what you do is wrong? And he insists he’s never wrong even as he insults the mayor of a city (London) who had a day earlier experienced a terrorist attack. Even as he insults the mayor of a city (San Juan, Puerto Rico) who is waist-deep in the mire trying to save people from dying in the aftermath of a hurricane. Even as he coddles white supremacists, even as he pardons a racist sheriff who ignores a ruling from the Supreme Court, and even as he repeatedly lies to the public about his campaign’s involvement with the dictator in the Kremlin.
Russian involvement with the election? Just fire the FBI Director Comey under the pretense that Comey’s comments regarding Hillary Clinton during the campaign is the reason. Given that Trump praised Comey’s actions in this regard during the campaign, only reinforces the position that Trump really eliminated Comey in an effort to end the Russian investigation. Hell, he admitted as much on a national news broadcast. The trail of lies and untruths from the White House is long indeed, and this is more than sad when the leader of the nation relies on untruths to make his points and defend his dishonorable comments and actions.
We have a bully in the White House, and that bodes ill for the Republic. He slaps America’s allies and neighbors (Mexico, Australia, S. Korea, Germany) and compliments and/or rewards corrupt dictators (Russia, Putin, China, The Philippines, N. Korea). Like any bully, when faced with firmness, he backs down. China is no longer a currency manipulator, a term he used against China during the campaign and which his supporters praised as evidence of his toughness. I wasn’t tough when I abused my classmate, and Trump isn’t tough when he refuses to shake the hand of Angela Merkel, president of America’s most important ally in Europe. As president of the United States, he is in position to be a bully to every single country on earth because bullies target those weaker than they. As a bully, he is the worst possible role model for children. As a person who claims to make no mistakes, he is the worst possible role model for adults.
There have been three intense hurricanes this season, devastating Puerto Rico as well as parts of Florida and Texas. Weathering the storm that is Donald Trump may prove more damaging to the United States than were those cataclysmic events. Until Trump evolves into the beloved Ebenezer Scrooge of Christmas morning, the entire world is reduced to waiting out this overgrown child for whom having the last word is more important than whether or not the planet falls into the abyss of nuclear war.
Trump supporters wanted a tough-talking, tough-acting head of state, someone who spoke to allies and foes alike with frankness and hard-as-nails common sense. But this guy? Donald Trump may talk tough at times, but how effective is such talk when the words coming out of his mouth are untrue? When his views are racist and his ideals absent, who really wants this guy to be the one who speaks for us all?