To the publishers of the Backshop:
There’s an old Buddhist instruction that everyone is just trying to be happy, and it is bad form to get angry. Here’s what I feel.
This column has been a support to me, since I voted for Trump.
I think he’s a human being who is being demonized. I do not agree with all his actions or rhetoric: sometimes I turn him off, but I pray for the success of many of his actions. I do not understand the scolding tone of one of your readers. She scolds you because you denigrated her cause. All I heard of the women’s march was giant-sized vagina outfits and Madonna wanting to blow up the White House.
If the march had been better focused from the first, and included Republican women, I might have been supportive, but the idea from the start was too diffuse for me. The original call to action was to wear pink hats because we’re women. Democrats want to complain because they feel bad. I think they feel bad because they like to complain. The women’s march left me cold.
I felt they were marching against me and the jobs I lost to NAFTA. I did not hear any president or even governor or mayor cry crystal tears when I lost the first, (Olin Brass in Indianapolis 1999), second, (Daimler Chrysler Indy Foundry 2005) or third, (Firestone Rubber 2009) in Noblesville, a factory job after Clinton signed NAFTA. I heard that giant sucking sound Ross Perot talked about. I see Obama as a hateful, vindictive man, too, and I felt bad when he was in office, but I was happy for so many of my dear black friends and co-workers who were lifted up by the idea that he was black.
But I think he also hated America, could not forgive its slave-holding past and attended Reverend Wright’s Church for many years, don’t forget. Obama often made knee-jerk idiot comments, too, before he had all the facts. Many times, I turned his rhetoric off. I blame him for all the cops that have been ambushed and shot recently. He could have said more to help them, instead of encouraging social unrest. If the Democrats want to feel good about something (…) they can feel good that he didn’t have Monica Lewinsky shot.
I also have a T-shirt depicting the Twin Towers collapsing in balls of fire. It says “Never Forget.” I place that loss at Clinton’s door. Here’s where I drop my mike.
Beth Mink, Fishers