Dear “Mr” Trump

“Absence of respect, courtesy, manners, or admiration creates a state of poverty irrespective of the amount of money you have in the bank.”

Deepak Chopra

While I understand I don't speak for all men, I'm quite certain there are a majority of us who actually like women. 

During my entire lifetime, I have never spoken of a woman in the manner which you, "Mr" Trump, have in your recently released video debacle, whether publicly or privately. Nor have I spoken in this manner with a group of other men. The vast majority of your remarks when speaking of women are not only rude, but also smack of a person who hasn't grown out of his truculent, ill-mannered teens.

Your remarks and actions toward women are childish.

There are a great many men, of which you are not one, who respect women. Not respect because women are better or are different or are shapely, but because we recognize they are as much a part of who we are as we are of ourselves. These men cry and laugh and have feelings. These men care deeply for their spouses and mothers and sisters and daughters. These men don't assault women and brag about it. These men share their lives with women.

These men are men, not childish little boys in suit and tie.

Real men have no need to “keep anyone in their place”.

Real men have no reason to denigrate women physically or verbally to feed their ego.

Real men cook and clean and do laundry.

Real men have discussions with their spouses.

Real men don't use their position to cop a feel.

Real men behave as adults.

Real men understand the strength of a woman makes them better men.

Real men do not walk in front of women nor do they follow. They happily walk by their sides.

You, sir, are a child.

There are many men and women who will vote for you in this upcoming election. Unfortunately, I am not one of those who is able to counter those votes. I am not American. However, I am a man and, as any man from any country would be, am appalled by your remarks, whether they are current moronic tirades or idiotic remarks from a decade ago. I suspect there are men across the globe, some with as much affluence as you, who are disgusted by your actions. It seems that those whom you would respect for wealth and power are beginning to turn their backs on you.

Speaking for myself, I have little interest in your twisted apology nor your lame excuse that the video was shot “over a decade” ago. I have little interest in your attempted deflection of your behaviour toward Bill Clinton. I have little interest in your bashing of Hillary's relationship. I have little interest in you what-so-ever.

For women who may read this, please know “Mr” Trump's example is not normal behaviour for grown men. It isn't how we speak about women when we are “with the boys”. He is an example of what we, as men who love women, are not.

I would expect women to rise against you. I, for one, will be beside them... cheering.

From one Canadian to “Mr” Trump, please don't come to my country for a visit or vacation or official business, whether you are elected President or not. I would be forever grateful if you would stay within your own borders.

My point is you are a dangerous, uncontrolled, truculent teenager with far too much means to cause irreparable damage to anyone unfortunate enough to be in your presence. And not damaging just to women, which you clearly have done, but also to your country and potentially my country. 

Please, please, please...

Find a cave in the bowels of the Earth and live your life there.

I can only hope there are others who share my view.

The Global Dream

You want to know what the American Dream is?

Opportunity.

That's it. There is nothing more to it.

[The American Dream is] that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

James Truslow Adams

From “Epic of America” -1931

Nowhere does Mister Adams say the American Dream is to lay around swilling beer like some incapable lout bitching about someone not handing you a job on a silver platter. We're all out of silver platters largely because the price of metals have gone through the steel corrugated roof.

You notice Adams says “for everyone”? Did you see that? Everyone. Not for a select few but for every person residing in America. It seems Americans (and many others around the world who claim the same ideals) have lost touch with this simple sentiment.

I find it interesting that some Americans (not all inclusive, obviously), have done such a stellar job exporting those ideals (and Walmart and McHappy Meals and iPhones and the Almighty Buck) to the world and then lay around bitching while slouched on the sofa, during another rerun of the Price is Right, that the world has taken their dream of a forty year job at some mundane-jobbed smoke farting factory. The world has done no such thing. You gave it away by demanding more and more while other country's citizens claimed they could do it for less.

You priced yourself out of your own market.

That's point A. Point B is this...

Some Canadians and some Europeans and some Asians and... and... and... aren't any different in their lousing. Everywhere on the planet there are people who want more opportunity. It's not as if Americans are the only ones grousing about loss of jobs and high living expenses. You ain't that special.

So... America... you have accomplished your mission. Bitching and complaining because someone else won't keep you in beer and Cheetos has gone international. The American Dream hasn't stayed confined within the thin red borders of the good ol' U.S. of A. It's dribbled into Mexico and Canada and European countries and African countries and Middle East countries and South American countries and Asia, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And yet, each of those countries and America all blame the other for doing what they, themselves, are doing.

Huh?

The dream of opportunity and recognition is not an American dream. It's a global dream. A human dream. Get over it.

Point C is this...

“According to ability and achievement”

If all you're achieving is moving from your sofa to a lawn chair to the bathroom to the lawn chair all while emptying another case of Bud Light, then you'll be treated like a lazy, drunken slob. Because, Sunshine, that's all you've achieved.

Somehow the American Dream has been twisted over the past 5 decades or so to mean, “You owe me a job and an easy peasy life because I'm American.”

There are people out there with real issues who struggle daily to make ends meet doing whatever they can to survive and keep their family going. People with two or three part time jobs. Single moms and dads mopping floors. Unemployed people washing the windows of cars at stop lights. Other people in beat up old cars and trucks who are cutting lawns or painting decks or shovelling driveways or doing odd jobs. There are young folks in their twenties and thirties willing to take any job just to secure their own independence... despite a college or university education. There are people from foreign countries filling niches most home grown people scoff at as beneath them. These people are trying.

These people still believe in the dream.

The American Dream has never been about a government “bringing jobs back to America”. In actual fact, the American Dream has never been exclusively American. The American Dream has always been about the individual having the opportunity to try to do something on their own. Somehow, since Adams coined the phrase in 1931, we have bastardized the term to mean someone else is going to give us the opportunity.

The jobs didn't go away. The Dream... the term... became global.

It's not about bringing jobs back to America. It's about being innovative in your own life. That's the opportunity!

The opportunity has always been there. Whether you choose to take it or not is your choice. It's not the problem of big business or governments. Big business's job is to make money and they don't care where the jobs are. The government's job is to provide an atmosphere where opportunity exists.

It's your job to create your life the way you want it.