Dear Mr. Donald J. Trump: First I want to say your resounding victory, while most likely saving the nation I grew up loving, cost me two steak dinners in a bet with my retiree friend Hank Thompson. He (and Pat Flippo) predicted months ago that Hillary would never become president.
I took Hank's bet, sticking with mendacity-soaked media polls and their bias spewings. Will anyone ever believe these paid "pollsters" again?
Hank said he'd spent months this year speaking to friends and others across the nation. The common denominator he discovered was a deep and seething anger over the failures of government, pervasive corruption and the mainstream media who'd surrendered its constitutionally protected standing as the nation's watchdog to become lapdog ministers of propaganda for one political party.
"Everyone I spoke with was just mad as hell," said Hank. "I realized that anger translated into a national movement and driving widespread rejection of the corrupt government."
As our 45th president you clearly detected Hank and Pat's "Do you hear the people sing?" Les Miz refrain. Not only did you hear these pleas of an irate and distraught country, you became one with them in a refreshingly plainspoken (albeit often needlessly crass) manner that reflected anything but yet another word-parsing, telepromptering, status quo politico.
In the process of setting high expectations with huge promises to the people, you amassed powerful political enemies among the elite of both parties and those mainstream apologists.
The American people here in "flyover country" who observed the schemes against you chose instead to place faith in your pledges and unorthodox delivery. It didn't matter whether your opponents were playing the same self-serving game of dirty-trick politics. The misdirection didn't work.
Most from the establishment of your own party shunned you. So did the Democrats and those responsible for objectively reporting about you. This was never more clear to me than when only two major endorsing newspapers of 57 favored you. Expect the slanted, nitpicking mainstream media bias to continue, but the people are onto their obvious slanted agenda.
I shudder to think of the enormous tasks that await. After all, you've promised to (take a deep breath): Erase all Obama's executive orders and replace the bankrupting Obamacare; build a wall and restore legal and common sense immigration into this nation; pause the influx of Islamic "refugees"; reform crippling tax codes and bring jobs back to America in an economic renewal; strengthen and support our military, police and veterans; protect the First and Second Amendments; and appoint only objective Supreme Court justices who will follow the letter of our Constitution rather than robed political hacks playing favorites.
I'm certain the millions who placed blind faith in your promises expect you to see these reforms through.
Mat Staver with the LibertyAction group rightly says our culture "has been in a free fall for decades and the past seven and a half years have accelerated the decline of America. Politicians have become drunk with power. The media has lost its moral compass and can no longer be trusted." And he quotes George Washington saying religion and morality are the twin pillars that hold up the republic.
Here's some of what I hope for you.
• That unlike others before you who have deceived and outright lied, you will always remain honest with those who elected you to lead. Like most Americans, I'm flat fed up with self-serving politicians putting party, big-contributing lobbyists and special interests above citizens.
• You will represent us with dignity, integrity and utmost sacred regard for this nation and the way it interacts with others in the world.
• You will appoint truly honorable men and women without radically political and surreptitious agendas to manage and lead alongside you inside our sacred White House and crucial Justice Department. Credibility and confidence have been sacrificed to raw, ugly politics in this department devoted to ensuring blind justice.
• Above all, you'll always humbly seek divine guidance in your difficult decisions that affect our country. Like all the rest of us, Mr. Trump, your days are mortal. Most of yours, at age 70, have passed. You have earned such a precious trust and responsibility to uphold for all Americans, our children and theirs to come. I and the nation expect you to act with wisdom, courage, leadership, honor and compassion.
Finally, I'm sure after all you've endured and overcome during this brutal campaign, it's dawning on you in the quieter moments that you're in this position because you asked for such crushing responsibilities. You've now come to represent the sincere longings and deep desire to return to more logical times where truth and common sense prevail rather than promoting radical ideology.
Please bear this letter at the forefront of your mind as you take your seat inside our Oval Office to preside over some adult leadership over these United States of America.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 11/13/2016