The Birthday Bully Pulpit

 September 18, 2020

My feelings about the current president are well-known to my family and friends.  As a result, I have a few fewer friends and family on my Christmas card list.

I didn’t vote for him for reasons that were both political and personal.  Politically, my views did not comport with the agenda he put forth for the country.  There were other moderate Republicans whose policy positions I could agree with; however, politics being what they are, those folks didn’t make it through the primary—he did.  So I voted for another candidate, with reservations.

Politically, as president, it turns out that I have disagreed with almost all of the policy decisions he has made.  That’s what I expected and why, politically, I didn’t cast my vote for him.  “When people show you who they are, believe them,” said Dr. Maya Angelou, and that’s proven true.  

But my reasons for not supporting him were more than political. They were (and are) personal. So today, on my birthday, I am claiming the day and the space to explain why.

I believe Donald J. Trump is everything my family and friends learned not to be in Sunday School in the small Texas town where I grew up.  More than anything, he’s a bully.

In Sunday School at our United Methodist Church, our preachers and teachers taught us about the love of Jesus Christ, the Golden Rule, and how “family” was more than the people who lived in the same house with you.  We sang songs about how Jesus loved the little children, regardless of whether they were “red, yellow, black or white,” and that we were all precious in His sight.  We were taught to be gentle with one another and with the world.  We were taught to recite the Ten Commandments by heart, and to live by them, too.  Do not covet.  Do not bear false witness. I did not and do not see any of how he shows up in the world exemplifying those values.

This is why my head spins when I see Christian pastors and leaders fawning over him and falling on their knees before him as though he is their Savior. My mind is still blown after seeing this behavior repeatedly these past several years.  I read the words of Jesus in scripture and I don't see them reflected in his leadership.

But the most important personal reason—and I mean very personal—was and is the bullying.  Name-calling.  Urging supporters to assault others. Mocking disabled people.  Disrespecting war heroes.

I’m well-acquainted with bullying.  Because we lived in a town where elementary schools were still essentially segregated through the mid-60s, I attended classes with the same kids I had gone to church with.  All of the children who looked like me went to the same elementary school, regardless of where they lived in town or out in the country. They had known me since I was a baby and, although I was almost always last to be chosen for anyone’s playground football or baseball team, I didn’t get picked on in grade school too much for being “different.”

Junior high and high school were altogether different.  Some of the bullying started with kids who had joined us from other elementary schools.  But it wasn’t long until others I’d known from early childhood joined in.  By the time I got to high school, I had become skilled at avoiding certain areas of the campus where I knew I might be targeted.  In all my years as a student, I never went to the restroom during the school day (except in the Band Hall).  Not once in four years of high school did I enter the cafeteria or the building known as the “vocational wing.” I was convinced I wasn’t safe in those spaces.

My primary tormentor was Stephen.  Daily, he and another student named Bubba yelled “homo,” “faggot” and “queer” in my direction in crowded hallways during class changes.  Many teachers heard and did nothing.

Once, Stephen and Bubba defaced the restroom at the Dairy Queen where we all ate lunch with all kinds of graffiti about me. A good friend saved me the humiliation of seeing it by telling me to just not go inside—of course, everyone else had gotten an eyeful already.

The worst was the night they crank-called my mother, who was struggling through the loss of my Dad and worried about how his death was taking a toll on me.  I, on the other hand, had been determined to shield her from what was going on at school, was embarrassed by the things Stephen and the others were saying, and planned to soldier on and shoulder that on my own.  When I came home and my mother told me about the call she had gotten, we were both heartbroken for our own reasons.  She was worried.  Me? I was just ashamed.

There are all sorts of lingering effects of being bullied.  Being a survivor of bullying shapes the way you see the world, what situations you confront or avoid, and how you interact with others for the rest of your life.  As much as you try, bullies like Stephen are always in your head, trying to destroy your confidence, especially when you need to be built up.

I’m an old(er) man now. I can see now that there must have been some great suffering in Stephen's life that he didn’t know how to work out, other than to transmit it to someone else. I always wondered how he turned out, and I even thought about what I would say to him if I saw him again. But in the 40-plus years since high school, I never saw or heard anything about Stephen again…until last week.

That's when a large sign appeared outside my hometown:  “Robstown For TRUMP.”  A photo of the sign was shared on social media.  One local news source posted an article with a quote from—yep, you guessed it—Stephen.  His one-word assessment of the Trump-loving sign was that it was “badass.”

There are still many reasons I’m not going to vote for the current president this November.  Most of those are the same political reasons I didn’t vote for him in 2016.

But I have to say that, more so personally than politically, he’s not the kind of man my Sunday School teachers told me I was supposed to become or that the people should choose as a leader.  Their lessons really worked-- I’m just not down with his Stephen-like ways, “badass” or not.