My Vote in November 2020

Thoughts and Feelings

I like to listen to Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. Besides liking his comic strip, I appreciate his conservative-leaning viewpoint and his honesty. I dislike his cursing, but not enough to stop listening. He sometimes talks about those who disagree with him, noting that most of the most vehement disagreeing listeners are artists and writers, not business people or engineers. Those who in general rely on feelings more than facts or logic disagree with him the most.

As I think about my friends, relatives, and acquaintances who dislike President Trump the most, I conclude they generally fall into a category of those who are more creative, more “feelings” oriented. Those, including myself, who like Donald Trump enough to vote for him again are generally not musicians, artists, writers, and teachers. 

This idea helps me understand why some people who I admire and respect can reject Donald Trump completely. Their negative feelings towards him seem to obscure anything and everything else. What he has done and what he says he will do is irrelevant. What the opposition has done and what they say they will do is irrelevant.

Here are a few examples of what is relevant to me but not to those who intensely dislike the President: 

1. President Trump is trying to get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq, even though many of his generals and many in his party do not support him.

2. He is working to lower taxes and limit business regulations. I am a capitalist and do not support efforts to have governments run more and more of the economy. Work should be rewarded. Socialism always ends badly.

3. He is trying to control our borders.

4. He supports funding the police. I absolutely support a person’s right to peacefully protest, but riots and destruction are not right. 

5. He clearly does not support limiting the availability of guns for law-abiding people. 

6. He tries to choose conservative-leaning federal judges.

7. He supports ending late-term abortions.

This is not to imply that I think everything he does is right. I would like to see our country’s expenses match or be less than our country’s income. I would like to see schools controlled at the local level (not by the state or the federal government) with more school choices, less standardized testing, less homework, more recess time, and less student indoctrination. I would prefer he be more thoughtful in his tweeting. I would like him to use the teleprompter less and to not repeat himself so much.

For me what he has done and what he plans to do far outweigh my policy disagreements or the flaws in his character. Especially when I factor in what I think the progressive left would do if he were not in office, my decision to vote for him again is an easy one.