by: Marceline Donaldson
Life is amazing. The older I get the more my life, my past history, delivers amazement to me. It has given me an exposure to people, power, things that today I realize does not ordinarily happen. We shield our children from those outside of the box in which our families have put us. I am very grateful for what I have been given even though it keeps me in trouble because that background means I have had the experience to see what others don’t and since I am black and female, that seeing is always denied by society and its inhabitants.
Seeing what surrounds Donald Trump and how he has lived has been one of the amazements of my life.
I saw how my life circled around my family even when I thought I was living new experiences in new territory. I had to acknowledge I was a continuing part of my mother, grandmother, father, grandfather, etc. History is never very far away.
I keep seeing Donald Trump circle back through his family history. It was not pretty and was, apparently, majorly experiences of criminality. Donald Trump did not deny those influences, he lived into them and now they have circled around and he is ending his life walking the path walked by one of those who were most influential in his creation.
What is most amazing, as I look at his life, is not what he or his family or his mentors have done, but how the society in which we live has rewarded them for evil, ugly, criminal acts, lies, and so much more. This United States society is supposed to be so much better than any other in the history of the world. In reality, it can’t be, because too many millions of people have given the lie to what we pretend to be. For someone like Trump and his family having succeeded financially to the level on which they live says there is something very wrong in these United States. When I look at the people so greatly rewarded, inside of me is the whisper – why! Is this that on which this society has been founded? Is this what happens to a slave-owning society which has grown through the work and lives of people they have used to build fortunes without recompense of any kind? Without even humane treatment? Is this why racism, sexism and more are so hard to eradicate? Is it in the souls of those who have pushed their way to power? Certainly Donald Trump’s life says that is true. A man mired in criminality became president of these United States. A man who rapes, abuses women and more, brags about it and millions vote for him.
We have racism, sexism, and all the other ‘isms’ by which we live and give our obsequious “ok” to without a moments thought as to how much evil we are bringing into this world by so doing. It is difficult to be in business in these United States without criminality being involved somehow and without doing to others in this society what was done to the slaves of yore.
To trace back through Donald Trump’s criminality over his entire career, we find it is “in your face” and we all know that family and from whence they have come, but so many rush to be a part of what the Trump’s are doing, including their criminality.
Looking at the race he ran against Nikki Haley is what started this line of thought back over my history and his.
Who -in Iowa – amongst all you Evangelicals – voted for such a man? Who is New Hampshire? What did you do with your religion when you went into that voting booth???? Have you looked at your family history to see why you were able to vote for him and support what he is about? Or were you arrogant enough to engage in much justification and denial of what you were doing and what you were bringing into this world because you saw worldly, financial, power accruing to you?
Donald Trump is from an immigrant family and yet he shows his hatred for immigrants and his belief that he is ‘better than’. How could he be that arrogant, assumptive and unaware. Some say it is his sense of inferiority. – As I look, I see a sense of entitlement and lack of caring that has allowed Trump and his ancestors to cross lines which we know hurt others without any sense of the fact that God is a just God and one day his turn to pay will come. That God comes not just for the Donald Trump’s of the world, but for those who tried to benefit by being a part of his evil.
His grandfather, the first of his family to come to these United States, was a German immigrant. At first Donald Trump and his future generations dressed up his background and his coming to these United States from Germany, calling Germany by other country names, because of the Hitler/Nazi connections. That connection slips out every now and again – like during his divorce from his first wife when it became public that Trump slept with a copy of “Mein Kamps” and other Hitler writings on his bedside table.
Once here, in these United States, whatever was his grandfather’s history before coming here, once arrived he was immediately into criminality and extreme abuse of women. His grandfather’s history certainly explains Donald Trump’s treatment of women. It did not start with Trump’s generation, that use and abuse of women goes back quite a few generations.
This is a man in whose family women were the means to wealth. He feels very comfortable with that because he is in a country where the lives and work of African slaves was the way to wealth. It even created the wealth on which English royalty sits and uses power from that historical founding.
Trump’s grandfather earned his living and his substantial estate by prostituting women – the Trump family’s way to wealth and power. First, he used women as street prostitutes and then, when his grandfather acquired enough to own a hotel, the rooms in the hotel were occupied by prostitutes who entertained the men who came to see them (for a price) in their rooms and other parts of his bordello
Sometimes, others have questionable backgrounds tinged in criminality, but the Trumps’ were quite forth coming and proud of their background and so we have Donald Trump who has no problems raping, assaulting and generally letting the world know that his “better than” feelings, attitudes and more are historical and he acts as though he is proud of that history. He certainly has shown – in very arrogant ways – his pride in physically attempting to destroy women for his own enjoyment and feelings of power.
That is one of Trump’s family legacies. The money that made him who he is today came from that history of his family abuse of women. But what about all of the “evangelicals” who helped to make him who he is today and who continue by voting for him; contributing to his campaign chest; and so much more. How do they justify that with who they call “God.” Trump’s grandfather’s wealth is the basis of Trump’s father’s wealth and therefore of the – what was it – $250 million he inherited of this money acquired via this criminal immigrant family? His family made it very clear, as Trump’s father built his wealth in Queens that he was doing it by treating African Americans the way they were treated by the majority of the society in his day. Court records are clear with law suits the Trump’s had to fight to maintain their racism in housing.
As a young person, I left New Orleans, LA. for New York. I wound up at New York University. My New Orleans background opened me up to the world able to see things others just seemed to miss. It took awhile for me to understand that. Donald Trump was a part of that opening up.
A part of my time in New York was as part of an Ashram, which was in an apartment on Central Park. An exquisite place with beautiful views out of the windows of the park. I didn’t live there, but I did show up frequently and my dress at the time was a sari. Mostly, during that time you saw me in an Indian sari. When I married my ex-husband the wedding was in that Ashram/apartment and it was a glorious affair. It was officiated by a Jewish Rabbi, since the man I was marrying was from a Russian Jewish immigrant family. That certainly connected to my family and my upbringing which was back and forth with the Sam ZeMurray family – a Russian Jewish immigrant family.
I didn’t know Donald Trump personally. He was not a friend. He was not even an acquaintance. He was someone I saw as I moved around New York. Often, it was seeing him having dinner at one of the restaurants – very elegant restaurants – on the sidewalks of New York. He was always with a Jewish man and the two of them were ‘spooning’ over a candlelit dinner.
As I saw him and got to know who he was I was amazed at what I saw. He and his ‘mentor’ were all around places I happened to be. His ‘mentor’ was Roy Cohn – a Jew who hated Jews and a gay man who hated gays and there was Donald Trump whose life has shown that he also hates Jews and was and is rumored to be a gay man who hates gays.
Trump migrated along the path laid out for him by his family, his mentor and those he chose as companions. All of the things we see today can be traced back through his family. He has not been one open to society – to learn – to grow – to understand – to give or to give back.
The way he treated Roy Cohn is an example of who he is and is becoming. Besides his family path he has and is walking down the same path as his mentor, Roy Cohn. After being a very strong, influential and not very nice person, but very partial to his “friends,” Cohn gave Donald Trump a very large part of his life. Cohn brought Trump from Queens to Manhattan and helped bring him into the society, seats of power, the money he has today. Trump used Cohn to move ahead and from what I saw gave back to Cohn – nothing.
At the end of Roy Cohn’s life he was broke, ill and not in a good place. At that point in time, at the end of Cohn’s life, among the missing in Cohn’s circle was Donald Trump. Trump saw Cohn almost not at all during the time when Cohn needed him the most. He did turn up for his funeral in a Jewish funeral home, but only for a minute or two, stood in the back and shortly left.
This is the man to whom millions of Americans are giving their vote, their confidence in his leadership, their obeisance.
What always strikes me about that – Roy Cohn could not have risen as high as he rose with as much power as he wielded in New York and Donald Trump could not have done the same without the people who financed them, who worked to make them even more powerful, who saw in them leadership that they wanted to follow. Many of those people who follow and support Donald Trump, if not most of those people call themselves Christians. From what we have seen, actually, many of them are mafia related – others just don’t have an ethical base to carry them through life, but share Donald Trump’s criminal lifestyle albeit on a much smaller scale.
God forgive!
