The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?
~~ Dale Carnegie ~~
I leafed through a copy of Chris Matthews new book “Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit” and glanced through the book’s Prelude, I read Matthew’s words, “That Bobby’s background was different from his own didn’t matter; only his principles did.”
I was eight years old when Bobby Kennedy was killed. Not completely unlike today, between March 16, 1968 and June 5, 1968, the country survived a series of events. Bobby Kennedy challenged his brother’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, for the Democratic presidential nomination. To which, LBJ withdrew. April brought the brutal assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., followed by urban rioting. And June 1968, the national would have to grieve again, as Bobby Kennedy would be assassinated.
Pushing democracy aside, our nation has not had to endure political assassinations. However, years of The Black Lives Matter movement, a Presidential race touting body parts, racial discord of white supremacy, sexual discrimination and the utter inability to work as members for a common good suggests our society has fallen behind the ideology of all men being equal.
Another small snippet led me to compare Trump to Bobby Kennedy. In reality, Matthews noted Joseph P. Kennedy (Bobby’s father) thought Bobby was devoid of any valuable qualities. Anguishing for a moment, I sat in a bookstore chair, closed my eyes and thought of Trump as he told FOX News “I’m the only one that matters.”
What Trump doesn’t understand is that Kennedy knew vulnerability alongside privilege and power. I fear this unwelcome gift the Trump children have applied well. For instance, Ivanka Trump seems unwilling to acknowledge that there could, hypothetically, be a difference between what’s good for women and what’s good for her brand. In The Trump Card, Ivanka broadcasted her similarity to the President. “That’s what you get from this particular Daddy’s girl,” she wrote.
“As the first daughter goes around touting herself as a champion of women,” Sarah Newell, a representative for International Labor Rights Forum told Newsweek, “women are literally facing abusive conditions as they stitch her [brand name] into her products, and they aren’t being provided a structure where they can advocate for themselves.” NYT Opinion writer Lindy West phrased it well.
You’d think that a passionate anti-wage-gap crusader like Ms. Trump would relish a broad, ever-expanding data set illuminating her pet issue so that she could go after it with laser focus, but no. The first daughter strode into Washington with two big promises: She was passionate about helping “working women” and she was going to close the gender wage gap. However, Ms. Trump endorsed the President’s decision to abandon an Obama-era initiative.
But remember, Trump is about brand – Trump brand. Not your brand. Not my brand. It’s as if Trump has been repeating, “I’m the only one that matters.”
The Trump brand will never intermingle with our brand. I’ve never heard President Trump ever express outrage at hunger in in the inner cities, mistreatment of blacks, or unfair work conditions faced by migrants, regardless of how legal or illegal they be. Yet he will discuss nuking North Korea while simultaneously and unapologetically stating he received a high draft number and never served. Damn those bone spurs. And lastly, I’ve never heard Trump having the same empathy for white workingmen and women for blacks, Latinos and foreigners.
Trump’s true soul showed and we ignored it. As such, former Barack Obama voters swung the election by supporting Donald Trump. “It’s now the accepted wisdom,” Matthews wrote, “that the interests of the discarded factory worker and the ignored inner-city youth cannot be met together, so why try?”
As a Buddhist, I find peace in Robert Kennedy’s sympathetic words from the night Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.
“For those of you who are black and tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed — but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times.”
Contrary to Trump, we are “that” which counts. And returning full-circle, I would much rather borrow principles from Socrates, swipe them from Chesterfield or steal them from Jesus versus living by Trump’s. Accordingly, every day, each of us must choose which principles to honor. Trump’s values are not my true north. Neither should they be yours.
America must make an effort … an effort to understand, to get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times.