Throughout this presidential campaign we have seen political behavior that is unprecedented throughout our modern political history. We have seen a shocking breakdown in both tone and decorum. The primary perpetrator of such is Donald J. Trump. His set of shockingly inappropriate behaviors can be broken down into two distinct categories. The first being his immature nicknames for his political opponents. The second being his patent falsehoods he has attempted to sell to the American people, for sake of brevity, only a portion of such comments will be covered.
The first disturbing set of behavior that Donald J. Trump has engaged in his unprecedented use of inappropriate nicknames to refer to his political opponents. During the Republican Primary Election he referred to his opponents by nicknames such as "Little Marco", "Lying Ted", "Low Energy Jeb", "Crooked Hillary", and has referred to Elizabeth Warren by racist remark "Pocahontas". Never once has he genuinely apologized for such comments and promised to chart a different course. Instead he uses them repeatedly, almost as if it was their actual legal birth name. Our officials have stark public policy differences and vigorously debate the correct path forward. This is part of democracy. Vigorous debate over issues is healthy and a treasured right in this country. Many individuals have thought this type of behavior on the part of Donald J. Trump was going to be significantly reformed or changed; this author personally lacks confidence in forthcoming change as of this moment in time.
Second, in addition to his immature nicknames he has assigned to his political opponents he has engaged in making outrageous and patently false statements that undermine confidence in his political campaign. In the interest of brevity I will only briefly summarize only the most outrageous of actions. This article is in no way a complete summary of his deeply disturbing statements. The author urges the reader to read more. One of his first and most inappropriate remarks was his reference to undocumented Mexican immigrants as rapists and killers. He was not narrowly confining his statement to a small segment of undocumented immigrants which commit violent crimes and are worthy of strict legal penalties. He sought to cast a wide net pitting the American people against undocumented immigrants by perpetuating unjust stereotypes. Among other patently false comments made by Donald J. Trump was that President Obama is founder of ISIS, and that Hillary Clinton is the co-founder along with falsely claiming that President Obama along with Hillary Clinton is ISIS's MVP. One can legitimately disagree about foreign policy and whether and to what extent the United States acted appropriately or inappropriately and how they would act retrospectively and prospectively. However the statement that Donald Trump made fulfills none of legitimacy standards. The statement is nothing more than a patent falsehood in which he seeks to exploit the anger and confusion of the American people. Even as I sit here writing this article Donald J. Trump makes the unfounded accusation that if he loses the election in Pennsylvania it is because Hillary Clinton cheated. This is an unfounded claim. Of course if any evidence is obtained that any unlawful conduct appears to have been perpetrated in any way, shape or form Donald J. Trump has full recourse to the state and federal judiciaries but based on prior history, it should not be cavalierly claimed that election misconduct has occurred simply because a particular candidate appears to be losing. This undermines faith in our democratic system of government and respect for the rule of law. Collectively such behavior and statements are reprehensible and are emphatically not worthy of the dignity of the office that Donald J. Trump seeks to hold. The American people; Democrats, Republicans, Independents, etc., deserve better.
In sum, these are very difficult times. People are angry with a system that they perceive does not work for them. Donald J. Trump has appealed to such anger through his disposal of political decency and truth. The American people expect better.
