Kelly Quelette describes herself as a 25-year-old stay-at-home mom and also as “a white female. A victim of sexual abuse. A Republican. A Christian” who is voting for Trump. She published her views on her blog at https://kellyquelette.wordpress.com and it gained a wider audience for a few days by getting picked up by some other web sites.
I was not impressed by her writing. She comes across initially as sincere and earnest, but a closer examination shows her to be naïve, dishonest, even deceitful.
She looks at four areas to justify her support for Trump:
- National security (especially immigration policies)
- Economy stability
- Supreme Court
- Abortion
In these areas, she usually misrepresents Clinton’s position while naively seeing Trump as having the better solution.
Quelette claims that Clinton wants “open borders”, that she would “allow anyone and everyone into our country.” Quelette does not say how she gets this idea of Clinton’s policy. Yet a little research (for example, http://www.cfr.org/campaign2016/hillary-clinton/on-immigration) shows that Clinton’s immigration policy says nothing about letting in everyone, no matter what. It’s certainly a more liberal approach than Trump’s walls since it includes provisions for humane treatment of detained illegal immigrants, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and the acceptance of refugees from places like Syria. It also includes a focus on deportation for trouble makers. And when Quelette asserts that we must screen immigrants, she shows her ignorance of the fact that we do this already. Trump’s walls would be an unbuildable boondoggle.
Someday this country will need to change its immigration policies to be more restrictive. But this will not be because of terrorists sneaking in and killing people. It will be because of a recognition that at a certain point we cannot keep absorbing a large number of people without causing our own country to get overpopulated like too many other countries are now. Right now we’re caught in between isolationist, fear-mongering, xenophobic policies of rightwingers and the more generous, yet ultimately unsustainable policies favored by the Democrats (and many businessmen who want cheap labor).
On the economy, Quelette believes Trump will be better because he is a businessman. The fact that a government and a business are very different does not deter her here. She also naively believes that Trump has been a model businessman; she foolishly believes the ones he stiffed did not do good work. She offers no evidence in support of that, and since the evidence is rather that it was a routine policy on Trump’s part signals that the quality of work had nothing to do with it. Her faith in the hard-work of the rich and how they deserve their wealth, and thus shouldn’t pay more taxes would be quaint if it didn’t lead people to accept economic policies like lower taxes for the rich that have proven to be a failure. Some of the rich have worked hard and come up with great ideas that allowed them to become wealthy. Others simply inherited the money, and others simply got into a lucrative position through family connections and then could basically scam the system (think, hedge fund managers who earn insane amounts of money, amounts that reflect in no way what little value they might bring to our society). She doesn’t understand the common sense workings of the rich. If you give rich people more money, why would they hire more people if there is no demand for the goods or services their company provides? If you give them more money, where will they invest it? They will invest it maybe in this country or maybe in some other country, thus not helping the average person on the street, but just helping themselves get even richer.
Trump is someone who, because of the money he started his adult life with, could take advantage of the leverage that wealth gives in the business world and then also use the tax and bankruptcy laws that benefit big businesses. Leading a government is a wholly different ball game for which he has no skills and little knowledge. Blustering and bullying on the world’s stage will lead to disaster for this country and maybe much more of the world.
Her biggest reason to vote Trump is the chance that the next president will get to select up to 5 new judges. Certainly, from a purely conservative approach (that is, totally disregarding all the negative factors about Trump), this is a reason to vote for Trump. The problem here of course is that the conservative-dominated court that we had until Scalia died made horrendous decisions, especially those that favored corporations over real citizens and those that hurt voting rights and 4th amendment protections.
Finally, she gets into the abortion debate, where she thinks the issue is “plain and simple.” This is an absurd and ignorant position from the get-go. Abortion will never be plain and simple. Just ask any women who has had to make the choice or any woman who lived in a country that didn’t give her any choice. There will always be times when an abortion is necessary, but those times can be greatly reduced (and progress has been made here) with good education and the availability of contraception and medical care. Quelette lies when she claims that Clinton thinks that fetuses have no rights even a few minutes before birth. Clinton clearly accepts the existing court decisions that limit late-term abortions.
Quelette comes across as a young, sincere person whose yearning for certainty causes her to fall into the trap of simplification. She simplifies Clinton’s view so she can pretend she is evil and she simplifies the abortion issue so she can pretend she is on the side of all that is good and right. Sorry, life just isn’t that simple. You need to look at all the facts, which means you can’t just accuse Clinton of something without showing the evidence for your view. You can’t ignore Trump’s unpresidential temperament, sleazy business tactics, and general moral failings.
