How To Play The Trump Card

If it was possible to jump inside a person’s head I would strongly urge people not to wander the giant hall between my ears because that joint is dangerous.

There are monsters lurking in the deep and they aren’t the warm fuzzy types you find hanging out on Sesame Street.

Most of their lives are spent in hibernation but every now and then there is enough chaos to rouse them and they pull off their chains and go looking for food.

I don’t pay much if any attention to them because after a lifetime of living with them we have an understanding but that agreement doesn’t extend to others.

Since there aren’t any tours scheduled to visit the deep recesses you’ll have to take my word about this and accept that if there were you would be encouraged to stay with the group and not wander off.

Teaching Moments and To-Do Lists

Got Kenny Chesney singing Ain’t Back Yet and a million memories flowing through my head.

Back in present day I am looking at a To-Do list that has more empty boxes than check marks in it and know it is not going to shrink any time soon.

Not because of a lack of productivity but because there just aren’t enough hours in the day so every few hours I’ll review it and prioritize based upon what I see.

Somewhere in the midst of the general chaos surrounding me I’ll try to sit down with the kids and talk about their days.

That will include a conversation about the coming election and what is going on.

We’ll talk about Clinton and Trump and why they say what they say and what we can trust to be true.

And I’ll probably tell them it is the strangest election year I can remember and I’ll mention that Trump seems to be the thinnest skinned candidate I have ever encountered.

I’ll talk about how he seems to be unable to ignore anything he considers to be an insult or a slight and how they are not to act like that.

I want them to feel free to defend themselves when necessary but to have enough common sense to know when to ignore someone.

But I won’t limit the conversation to Trump, I’ll bring Hillary into it too and talk a little bit about why her integrity has been questioned too.

Might as well make it a teaching moment and cover as much as we can.

How To Play The Trump Card

Had a long conversation with an old friend about who we’re voting for and why.

It was nice to be able to agree to disagree and to feel like compromise is possible because that is something that often feels like it is missing.

One of the reasons I got the kids into team sports was to learn about how to be part of a team and to figure out how to work together with different kinds of people.

In some respects I am more concerned about whether our government can figure out how to work together than who is elected president.

If we are constantly at odds and refuse to accept a position that is different than ours we make life significantly harder for all of us.

Circle back to the presidential election and ask me why I don’t support Trump and I won’t hesitate to tell you it’s based upon my perception of his inability to get along with people who hold differing opinions.

I am open to being wrong but very skeptical about it because from what I have seen playing the Trump card means attack, attack and attack.

Never admit fault and keep attacking.

The sad thing is it wouldn’t be hard for me to continue to poke holes in his background and lack of experience in key areas but I’ll save that discussion for a different day.