TIO Public Square

What Kind of American Are You?

by Robert P. Sellers

“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.” This quip was attributed to American humorist and newspaper columnist Robert Benchley, who before his death in 1945 was well known for his particular style of humor in essays and articles he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. The observation makes fun of simplistic categorizing, as if there are only two alternatives, and the suggestion that people are entirely one way or the other.

Nonetheless, the penchant for pigeon-holing has spawned many amusing, clever divisions of the world into only two kinds of people. For example:

There are two types of people: people who use commas correctly and those, who, don’t,
There are three types of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
There are two kinds of people: the ones that pack six days before a trip, and the ones that wake up, day-of, and realize they need to do a load of laundry. And they marry each other.

But I recently heard a declaration about two kinds of people that is much more serious. It was written into the 2022 series on Disney+ titled “The Old Man,” a complex drama and spy thriller featuring intriguing performances by Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow and Amy Brenneman. Much of the story is set in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War. In one episode, a young woman – the wife of Faraz Hamzad, a powerful Afghani warlord – declares: “There’s two kinds of Americans. The kind so determined to be better there is no progress they believe to be out of their reach. And the other kind, the monsters, so determined to be right, there’s no violence they believe to be unjustified to secure their ends.”

Here are the alternatives: the kind of Americans determined to be better; and the other kind determined to be right. One group is committed to improving their circumstances and optimistic about future progress; the other group is focused on justifying their position and willing even to use violence to win.

Did the screenwriters of “The Old Man” consciously insert a critique of contemporary America in the mouth of an Afghani woman in a storyline set in the 1980s? The observation this fictional character made sounds as if it could have been the subject of a political ad during our current presidential election season.

It is tempting for me to talk about how I associate these two portrayals of Americans with the two political parties and their presidential candidates, but that might be considered taking unfair advantage of my position as a regular contributor to The Interfaith Observer. On the other hand, my goal is precisely to reflect upon what is happening in “the public square” in America, especially now in this election year. Therefore, I will try to be objective in the conclusions I draw, although it is difficult to do so given such a radical choice between two distinctly different candidates and their messages.

First, there are Americans who are “so determined to be better there is no progress they believe to be out of their reach.”

This description, it seems to me, reflects the history and vision of Vice President Kamala Harris. According to a Politico.com article from 2020, she has spent:

the better part of two decades in public life notching up a long list of things she was the first to achieve: the first Black woman to be elected district attorney in California history, first woman to be California’s attorney general, first Indian American senator, and now, the first Black woman and first Asian American to be picked as a vice presidential running mate on a major-party ticket.

**Kamala Harris — Photo:** **Wikimedia**

Add to that record, now, the first Black woman and first Asian American to be the presidential candidate of a major political party in America.

It is a fair assumption that throughout these impressive steps in Harris’s career, she has exhibited genuine determination and tried consistently to better her own life circumstances and those of the people she serves. In a rally recently in Wisconsin, Harris explained:

In my career, I’ve only ever had one client: the people. When I was a young courtroom prosecutor, I stood up for women and children against predators. As attorney general of California, I took on the big banks [and] fought to deliver $20 billion for middle-class families who faced foreclosure. I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by for-profit colleges. I stood up for workers who were being cheated out of the wages they were due, stood up for seniors facing elder abuse.

Born in 1964 to Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher from India, and Donald Harris, an economist from Jamaica, Kamala was taken in her stroller to civil rights protest gatherings at UC Berkeley by her graduate student mom and dad. Regrettably, her parents divorced when Kamala was seven, but not before their daughter had witnessed the commitment and passion for justice they had lived out before her. Living with her mother and younger sister Maya in a predominantly black, lower-middle-class neighborhood in Berkeley, young Kamala was bused to Thousand Oaks Elementary School in an upscale white neighborhood, where she began learning about the disparities in the way she and her classmates lived.

As a child, Kamala attended both a Baptist church and a Hindu temple, which helped her to understand both her Black and South Asian identities – a desire Shyamala had for both her girls. Although today Kamala is a Christian and a member of a black Baptist church in San Francisco, her involvement in two religious communities as a child helped her to become an adult who celebrates our national ethnic diversity and religious pluralism.

She attended middle school and high school in Montreal, Canada, after her mother became a professor at McGill University. “In Montreal, a 13-year-old Harris and her younger sister, Maya, led a successful demonstration in front of their apartment building in protest of a policy that banned children from playing on the lawn.” Even as a young teenager, Kamala was becoming aware that unjust regulations and laws could be challenged and even overturned by peaceful protest and public opinion.

While attending law school in the Bay Area, Kamala lived with Maya and helped raise her young niece, Meena. In 2014, Maya – also a lawyer like her older sister – officiated the wedding of Kamala and corporate lawyer Doug Emhoff at the Santa Barbara, California, courthouse. While Kamala has no biological children of her own, she is beloved by Meena and also by Doug’s children, Cole and Ella Emhoff, who refer to her affectionately as “Momala.” It is clear that Harris cherishes these three young people as if they are her very own, and that she wants for them a brighter, better future where their dreams can become reality.

According to one Democrat website, Vice President Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz,

are charting a New Way Forward – to a future where everyone has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. …
They know that prices are still too high for middle-class families, which is why their top economic priorities will be lowering the costs of everyday needs like health care, housing and groceries and cutting taxes for more than 100 million working and middle-class Americans. Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will create an Opportunity Economy where everyone has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed – from buying a home to starting a business and building wealth. They will bring together workers, community leaders, unions, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and great American companies to remove barriers to opportunity, revitalize communities, create jobs, grow our economy, and propel our industries into the future – in rural areas, small towns, suburbs, and big cities.

These plans are ambitious, it is true, yet they reflect a determination to help the Middle Class live a better life, where no progress is believed to be out of reach.

Then, there are the Americans who are “so determined to be right, there’s no violence they believe to be unjustified to secure their ends.”

As objectively as I know how, let me say that I believe this observation accurately describes the history and vision of former President Donald J. Trump.

Encyclopedia Britannica begins its biographical article about the former Republican president and current candidate with this paragraph:

Donald Trump (born June 14, 1946, New York, New York, U.S.) is the 45th president of the United States (2017–21) and the Republican nominee in the U.S. presidential election of 2024. On May 30, 2024, Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a crime when a New York state jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush-money payment in 2016 to the adult-film star Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had an affair with Trump in 2006.

Trump was later indicted on dozens of other federal and state charges in cases relating to his efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election and his removal of numerous classified documents from the White House on his last day of office. Trump was also found liable in a major civil suit alleging business fraud in New York state and two civil suits accusing him of sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.

These are not political opinions. They are facts, reported in a source respected because of its rigorous, unbiased research process and long viewed as a trusted reference work which is regularly used by educators and other professionals.

Donald John Trump was born to Mary Anne MacLeod Trump and her husband, Frederick C. Trump, Sr. During Trump’s childhood, the family lived in a wealthy neighborhood in Queens, known as Jamaica Estates. Fred Trump owned and operated a successful real estate company “which developed properties for middle-class white families in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island.” From his childhood, Trump was accustomed to a life of wealth and privilege, perhaps also a life segregated from persons of color or those with little money, power or influence.

Donald displayed behavioral problems as a child, which may have helped to shape who he is as an adult. “He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small,” his father admitted. That’s the reason his parents enrolled him, at age 13, in the New York Military Academy, which proved to be the last involvement he would ever have with the military until he became Commander in Chief.

After completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, he joined his father’s business in New York. However, “public criticism and scandal marked Trump’s early career. In 1973, the US Justice Department accused the Trump company of discriminating against African American would-be renters. Although the company did not admit wrongdoing, it settled the matter by agreeing to rent more apartments to Black tenants.” It is likely that this run-in with the Justice Department more than 50 years ago already began to mark Trump as a racist and opportunist and one who felt he was above the law or found it hard to admit wrong.

Donald became a major real estate developer in the 1980s, but before the end of the decade the Trump Organization was facing severe financial problems, as the Brittanica recounts:

The situation grew so severe in 1990 that Fred Trump, then in his 80s, purchased more than $3 million in casino chips at Trump Castle so the casino could make an interest payment. That purchase was later judged to be an illegal loan, and New Jersey assessed a fine of $65,000. Two Trump-owned companies filed for bankruptcy during this period: the Trump Taj Mahal in 1991 and the Trump Plaza Hotel in 1992. An unflattering biography of Donald Trump, published in 1993, was titled Lost Tycoon and declared that he has become a “public laughingstock” in the wake of his business failures. In the years that followed, Trump used bankruptcy protection to reconfigure the debts of the many companies that comprised the Trump Organization, successfully making debt payments even as he accumulated more total debt at higher interest rates. As he explained, looking back in 2011: “I’ve used the laws of this country to pare debt.”

When Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, the Trump Organization’s real estate holdings had about $650 million in debt. “As a candidate, Trump boasted about his high levels of debt and his ability to reduce or eliminate his income tax liability, despite his very high personal net worth. … Avoiding taxes, he said during a debate with Hillary Clinton in the fall of 2016, “makes me smart.” Perhaps his own skirting of tax laws has prompted Trump to give large tax cuts to billionaires.

During his presidency, Trump frequently advocated violence or praised those who were violent. Here are just a few examples:

July 2017: During a speech to law enforcement officers in Long Island, New York, Trump seemingly encouraged police officers to be rough with people they were arresting, per ABC News. "Please don't be too nice," he told the audience.
October 2018: While speaking at a Montana campaign rally, Trump publicly praised Montana's then-Rep. Greg Gianforte (R) – the state's current governor – for previously assaulting a reporter. "Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!" Trump said.
October 2019: A New York Times report outlined various strategies Trump had allegedly deliberated to keep migrants away from the U.S. southern border, including a water-filled trench with snakes or alligators and shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down.
June 2020: Trump threatened to use the U.S. military to quell Black Lives Matter protests across the country. "If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” Trump said.

The BBC reports, “For nearly two years, a special counsel probed alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. Thirty-four people faced criminal charges – on matters such as computer hacking and financial crimes – but not Trump. The investigation did not establish criminal collusion.” This good fortune seems to follow Donald wherever he goes. Others take the fall for him and he somehow escapes each time.

Soon after this investigation closed, however, Trump was impeached by a Democrat-led House of Representatives – only the third U.S. President in history to be so treated. But he was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate, thus dodging the shame of having been successfully impeached.

He then ran for a second term as president against former Vice President Joe Biden.

Though he eventually received 74 million votes - more than any other sitting US president - he lost the race to Mr. Biden by more than seven million votes.

From November 2020 to January 2021, he amplified claims of stolen votes and widespread electoral fraud – claims that were knocked down in more than 60 court cases.

Refusing to accept the results, Trump rallied supporters in Washington on 6 January, urging them to converge on the Capitol as Mr. Biden's victory was to be formally certified by Congress.

That rally devolved into a riot that placed lawmakers and his own vice-president in danger and led to a historic second impeachment. Trump was again acquitted by the Senate, albeit more narrowly.

His actions on the day are now the focus of two criminal cases.

Trump is a man who likes to get his own way, and is not accustomed to being defeated. He likes to be proven right, and is willing – as the actions of January 6 certainly demonstrate – to use violence if that will secure his desired ends.

I return to the forced choice offered by the character in “The Old Man.” There are Americans who are determined to be better, and other Americans determined to be right.

To use an idiom that has been around for hundreds of years, I suppose I have “tipped my hand.” As much as I wanted to remain objective in my analysis of these two types of Americans – recognizing that not all our fellow citizens may identify with one or the other of these alternatives – I find that I cannot remain neutral in my assessment.

In my mind, Trump is obviously one who feels he is always right and is willing even to use violence to accomplish his goals. Harris, on the other hand, is someone who hopes for a better future and plans for the kinds of progress that will help all Americans realize their dreams.

Since the earliest days of Harris’ work as a prosecutor, she has declared that she works “for the people.” And from his youth, Trump has made it clear that everything he does is “for himself.”

If there are indeed two kinds of Americans, the question then becomes, which kind are we? Do we identify more with Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

This is a crucial question. Despite the power that the president – whoever that might become – will wield, the peaceful future of our country lies in the hands of all of us. We don’t have to react negatively, harshly, hatefully, condemningly, or violently to one another just because we don’t agree on these two political candidates.

Photo: **Chiara Coetzee, CC 2.0 UNIVERSAL**

A friend of mine had a remarkable experience last night which gave him hope for our collective tomorrows. Flying from Seattle to Chicago, his plane landed at midnight at O’Hare in a terrible lightning storm. Since the plane was unable to park at the terminal gate, no staff members of the airline were allowed, by federal regulation, to go out to the plane in a lightning storm. Even though the plane sat only 30 yards from the gate, the passengers were not allowed to deplane.

Those passengers on the extremely crowded flight sat an additional three hours on the tarmac after their bumpy four-hour flight. The air conditioner was not working adequately. They were served only one cup of water during the wait. Shoulder to shoulder, they sat…and sat…and sat. But amazingly, no one complained. No one argued with the flight staff. No one attempted to deplane despite the regulations. No one cursed or yelled. Everyone – no doubt having originated in many different places throughout the day, comprised of many age groups – these white collar, blue collar and no collar travelers, no doubt representing both political viewpoints – treated one another with understanding, courtesy, even kindness.

The experience frankly startled my friend. He is as aware of the differences in Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as anyone who has been paying attention. He has seen the ugliness of so many rallies and Facebook posts. He knows that our country is as divided along partisan lines as it has ever been, at least in our lifetime. Yet, these 160 or more passengers – tired, sleepy, thirsty, hungry, frustrated, disappointed – were nonetheless pleasant.

What if their responses were a signal that we are going to be okay, no matter who wins? That the kind of Americans we all are is the sort of Americans we have always been? Could that possibility be almost too good to be true?

So, I ask again: what kind of American are you?

Header Photo: Freerange Stock, LLC