When two degrees of separation are not nearly enough
Kris Connor/Getty Images/ Taken from http://www.cnbc.com/
I want to add a prologue to this column to say that I hate politics, and hope I don't offend anyone with my thoughts about this candidate although I know that is inevitable. My goal was to show why he scares me and to bring many of the facts about him together in one place, something I haven't really seen in the regular media.Twenty-two years ago, before Facebook and megalomaniacs running for president, I posted a flier on the walls of college financial aid and student services offices’ bulletin boards to find child care for my baby and my toddler. I worked nights on a newspaper copy desk, and back then, all-hours daycares didn’t exist yet either. My husband was a resident who sometimes came home after 14 hour days and sometimes did not when shifts extended to 24 hours and more (this, too, was a prehistoric practice that governments have now regulated to more manageable hours). I couldn’t count on him to ever be there. We were from another state and didn’t know enough people to find a babysitter. So, I turned to the colleges. As luck would have it, I found two great sitters – one studying nursing and one studying elementary education.The first, Wendy, came from a needy family and was sponsored to go to college. She was making the most of her opportunity to escape poverty, working hard in nursing school. She drove a beat-up old Datsun that I would often take to work so she could use my Isuzu equipped with car seats if she wanted to take the kids to playgrounds and events. The second was a Phishhead (the then-modern Vermont version of a Deadhead) who along with her giant-sized boyfriend not only followed the band to concert after concert, but really and truly sold bean burritos from the trunk of their car. They were vegetarians who broke the rules only when their Husky had a stomach virus for which the vet prescribed lots of ground beef, which they dutifully sautéed and fed to the ailing dog. My kids loved Sierra the dog, the boyfriend, and especially they loved their babysitter, who did arts and crafts, showed them wildlife, and read to them.One summer, Wendy went to work as a nurse at an exclusive tennis camp. When she returned, she was excited to share stories about her campers, particularly that Ivanka Trump had been at the camp. Donald and Ivana were in the midst of marital woes then, but I had never cared to follow their lavish trials and tribulations – until then. Now, I could kiddingly brag to friends that my children had been cared for by the same person as Donald Trump’s kids. Haha!Haha?! I thought it was just a joke, but it seems that now the joke’s on me. I’m guessing Wendy no longer shares that story either as we try to figure just how this happened. How did a reality TV star, bankrupt and cheating businessman sell himself so that people desperate for change would vote him to the Republican candidacy for president of the United States?In the early 1990s, when I was hiring babysitters, Trump was cheating on his first wife Ivana, mother to Ivanka, with Marla Maples who he married later in 1993 after she gave birth to their daughter. He also filed for bankruptcy for the first time in 1991 for the Trump Taj Mahal for which he borrowed too much money at rates he couldn’t afford. He filed for Chapter 11 again in 1992 for the Trump Plaza, again for borrowing too much money at rates he couldn’t afford. In 2004, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts went bankrupt because – you guessed it – Trump borrowed too much money at rates he couldn’t afford. After a reorganization and name change to Trump Entertainment Resorts, another bankruptcy followed in 2009, but this time, Trump and his daughter Ivanka resigned from the board just before the bankruptcy filing. Hmmm. Chapter 11 filings, which all four were, allows businesses to continue doing business while paying down debts to banks, employees, and vendors. Trump sold off airlines, yachts, and used his personal fortune to stay afloat.Trump has filed other types of suits as well. He has filed suits against his own corporation (quality wasn’t up to the Trump name) and against Native American tribes, rivals in casino development, saying that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 discriminated against him. Odd that he should have worried about being discriminated against or cheated since he has cheated regular people who had hoped to improve their own careers out of money and degrees at his ill- and illegally-named Trump University. Some Trump University certificate holders have sued for losses of more than $200,000.He has married two immigrants with thick accents, yet he mocks Mexicans and claims he’s going to build a wall to keep them out. His current wife, Melania, is a legal immigrant thanks to misuse of the H-1B visa, which is supposed to be given to highly skilled workers like engineers, but was given to her, a college dropout – for modeling. Trump has condemned “rampant, widespread H-1B abuse.”Everyone always swears he or she is not going to turn into that cranky older person who reminisces about the past. The present is always better than the past. Technology moves us forward not backwards. We are more accepting, more open, safer, more advanced, more everything in the 21st Century, right? I know I'm being nostalgic, but isn't Trump staking his campaign on nostalgia, asking Americans to"make America great again"? Voters can't be fooled by his revisionist view of the past. He was not a part of the American values he is using to fuel his campaign. He was a failed businessman and a failed husband. Voters should try to find balance between his message and his reality.I often have to remind myself that I am glamorizing the past, carefully forgetting the bad parts and gently padding my memories with the good ones. In the simpler world of the '90s, I found two of the best babysitters in the world to help form my children’s early impressions of the world, and I found them thanks to a flier with 10 tear-off tabs listing my name and phone number hung on college bulletin boards. I could brag that my babysitter had also put a bandage on the injured pinky of Ivanka Trump because back then, Trump was just a joke about fame, fortune, cheating, glitzy wives, spoiled children. It’s time to stop joking. Thanks to the Republican primaries, we are now dealing in a very real way with a person with “a condition or mental illness that causes people to think that they have great or unlimited power or importance.” It was funny when it was relegated to the pages of the National Enquirer in the ‘90s. It’s no longer funny.
Works Consulted
Collins, Lauren. “The Model American: Melania Trump Is the Exception to Her Husband’s Nativist Politics.” The New Yorker. 9 May 2016. Print.Gold, Hannah K. “Donald Trump’s Life and Career: A Timeline.” Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone. 9 Sept. 2015. Web. 17 May 2016.King, Wayne. “Trump, in a Federal Lawsuit, Seeks to Block Indian Casinos.” New York Times. The New York Times Company. 4 May 1993. Web. 17 May 2016.McNichols, Tom. “The Art of the Upsell: How Donald Trump Profits from ‘Free’ Seminars.” The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group. 17 March 2014. Web. 17 May 2016.“Megalomania.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster.com. n.d. Web. 17 May 2016.Williamson, Kevin D. “Trump, Lies, and Bankruptcy.” The National Review. National Review. 16 Feb. 2016. Web. 17 May 2016.