My Middle-aged White Lady Perspective: Every Tom, Ricardo and Hasid

A friend posted a letter on Facebook, ostensibly from an 'everyday American' to the Republican National Committee (RNC), explaining why people are rallying behind His Hairness as the leading candidate for President, and why the RNC is basically looking for love (or money) in all the wrong places.

The author of the letter is allegedly an 80-year-old lifelong Republican; I doubt that's the case, given that he never mentions serving his country, but proudly calls out that he has "a great deal of respect and influence with hundreds of senior ball players who network with thousands of others around the country" but then fails to explain why his influence with old ballplayers should be noteworthy.

While he agrees with the positions of the GOP, he's tired of them not listening to the people that elected them, and he shares an analogy to make the point of why people like him are supporting Trump. 

You've been on vacation for two weeks, you come home, and your basement is infested with raccoons. Hundreds of rabid, messy, mean raccoons have overtaken your basement. You want them gone immediately...You call the city and four different exterminators but nobody could handle the job. There is this one guy however, who guarantees you he will get rid of them, so you hire him. You don't care if they guy smells, you don't care if the guy swears, you don't care how many times he's been married, you don't care if he was friends with liberals, you don't care if he has plumber's crack...you simply want those raccoons gone! You want your problem fixed! He's the guy. He's the best. Period.

Trump, you see, is the raccoon-catcher: the smelly dude you call when no one else can or will do the job. The writer continues, describing the raccoons - or the outcome of having them in the basement:

This country is weak, bankrupt, our enemies are making fun of us, we're being invaded by illegal aliens and bringing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees to America while leaving Christians behind to be persecuted. We are becoming a nation of victims where every Tom, Ricardo and Hasid is part of a special group with special rights, to the point where we don't even recognize the country we were born and raised in. "AND WE JUST WANT IT FIXED" and Trump is the only guy who seems to understand what the people want.

So, can I say that I'd love to hear from any Christian who's been left behind here in America to be persecuted? Or even from someone who personally knows a person who's been persecuted as a Christian here in America? President Obama might be one, since he's been forced to defend his faith against accusations of being a Muslim since before he took the oath of office. Hell, even his American birth was questioned. 

For the purposes of this post though, POTUS would not count, unless he reached out to me directly to discuss his persecution.  Which would be cool, for sure, but is about as likely as it is that anyone else will contact me. 

Maybe the persecuted left-behind Christians are the ones who weren't voted into office? 

The folks most recently sent to Washington, and to statehouses around the country, are probably the single largest group of self-proclaimed religious politicians ever elected. They're happy to tell us over and over again how Christian they are, as they cut safety net programs, abolish women's health care, try to get us into another war or three, pretend that they really think man and dinosaur strolled the earth together just a few short years ago, denigrate Americans who don't look like them, cheat on their spouses, their constituents, or both, and create an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have nots. But they're darn good Christians, they say.  

Another question: the author says that our enemies are making fun of us. I don't know about you, but I wonder when we started worrying about that?  

And isn't it much worse that our friends are embarrassed by the activities of this election cycle, and of our elected officials over the past several years (anyone remember freedom fries?) and are afraid of the outcome of our election and what it means to our standing as leader of the free world, and to them as our allies?  If I had to pick one, I'd sure rather our friends were ready, able and willing to stand with us against our laughing enemies than I am about the laughing enemies themselves. 

And finally, since you're having such a hard time recognizing the country you were born in, would it help if we re-segregated schools, buses and water fountains? Maybe instead of having an all-volunteer military, you'd prefer we went back to the draft where we might offer deferrals for rich white folks, and send everyone else off, allow us to sacrifice 58,000 American lives fighting someone else's civil war? And go back to a set of special rights for white men, and a lesser set of rights for women and people of color? Or send all the black athletes back to their own leagues, and maybe not let them play senior ball with you?

I'm not suggesting that Trump will take us back there, to those times. I'm questioning if, as the supposed 80 year old writer of this letter says, we really want to go back and recognize the country in which he was born and raised.

From my middle-aged white lady's perspective, my answer is no, thank you, but thank you very much for asking.  

Oh - and tell the plumber to pull up his pants, will you?