The Angry Phone-caller

“Are you Mr. Hanson? F**k you! F**k Trump!”

Dear (anonymous) Angry Phone-caller,

I did not get a chance to say a word in answer to either your question or exclamations.

But I’m always amazed about the ingenuity of people who can find one’s cell phone number—from retailers to ad men to lost souls like yourself. But seriously, what is it about Donald Trump that drove you to such obscenity—and to such cowardice, since under the guise of a phone call, you waited until I answered, only to shout obscenities and hang up?

Really, I would have taken a minute or two to discuss your “issues”—a venom that we see is acting out in riots and demonstrations (and in blue cities of blue states of all places, rather than out at Ground Zero of Trumpland on the Interstates of Appalachia or southern Ohio), and, more passively, on campuses like my own at Stanford, where adults are reduced to teary infants in need of grief counseling (did such a thing happen in 2008 or 2012 for traumatized conservatives in need of psychological mentoring to assuage their trauma?). Is passive-aggressive cowardice integral to anti-Trump outbursts—ambush obscenity, breaking windows in Liberal Land but not Bismarck or Boise, pouting rather than proud defiance?

In my defense, I don’t think I have ever in some 63 years shouted (even anonymously and by distant phone) “F**k you” to someone, unless when provoked I was prepared to fight. In the Central Valley such epithets are synonymous with fisticuffs and so I never employed them unless I was ready for blows or worse. But how strange the Left is today: it habitually uses the F-word, but also in cowardly fashion seeks shelter in psycho-dramatic counseling. What is the message of the F-word, Jacksonian anger or a weepy retreat to the fetal position, a roaring lion or a teary mouse?

As far as “F**k Trump,” I could only ascertain your gender by your voice (male), not your class, status, ethnicities, race, or religion, so I am not sure in our nation of victims what exactly Trump has done to you or your tribe.

So far he has not said anything like “typical white person,” or told his rallies “to get in their faces” or “to bring a gun to a knife fight.” Did he rouse his supporters against you, on orders “to punish our enemies”? Did he call Latinos “needy” or make fun of the first names of African-Americans or relegate Catholics to little more than medieval nuts?

Did he stereotype blacks as clean or normal speaking as a Joe Biden or Harry Reid? Did he refer to “white Americans” as did Hillary in 2008? Or perhaps you are furious because you think he likes Justice Ginsburg, who quipped once that the right of abortion was at least leading to the aborting of the right sort of babies (e.g., poor and inner city denizens).

Trump has not talked of “them Jews” in the manner of Obama’s spiritual advisor Rev. Wright, or Hillary’s often close political ally Al Sharpton who ranted once about “homos.”

So what is your beef—his economic plan will turn a prosperous Democratic managed inner city into a right-wing moonscape of joblessness? His health care plan will have such high deductibles, premiums, and copays that it will be virtual insurance that never much can be used? That fracking and horizontal drilling will drive gas prices too low? That “the wall” will force lawbreakers here illegally back to their countries of origins without the perpetual right to continue hit and run driving?

Such mystery when a caller shouts eight words only to hang up.

Sincerely,

VDH