The glass ceiling was not shattered Tuesday night, but one thing Trump’s election ensures is that any man who wants to run for president can do so. No man, save, perhaps, an axe murderer, can ever again fail to meet the minimum character standard required to become America’s president. Donald Trump, a man endorsed by the KKK and the American Nazi Party won election by appealing to the worst in us. He encouraged violence at his events. He continually referred to his opponent as “Crooked Hillary” and led the chant, “Lock her up,” yet he, himself, has been involved in 3,500 lawsuits and goes on trial in a few weeks for fraud involving his fake university. He is a “businessman” who says not paying taxes makes him “smart,” but is currently facing multiple charges stemming from his IRS audit. A totally amoral man who believes risking other people’s money in his failing enterprises rather than his own is the right thing to do. A man who has gone bankrupt six times, but has maintained his lavish lifestyle while stiffing his workers and investors. He employs guest workers (aliens), manufactures his clothing line in foreign countries, uses steel from China in his buildings and says our minimum wage is too high. A business man whose standard operating procedure involves cheating other people and who celebrates people losing their homes because it gives him business opportunities. He is a thrice married serial adulterer who brags about sexual assault, who says it is OK for someone to call his daughter a “piece of (expletive),” who has been acused of raping a woman when she was 13, and calls women pigs and worse. This rich man who gave no money that can be document to charity for the past several years, and who follows none of Christ’s teachings about caring for the poor and the “stranger among us” is now touted as the “family values” and “Christian” president. This draft dodger insults a war hero who suffered as a POW for years in Vietnam, calls Mexicans “rapists” and “murderers” and blacks “lazy,” mocks the disabled, calls a judge unfit because he is of Hispanic descent, and scorns the parents of a soldier who died saving the lives of his men. He is a man who admires foreign dictators and insults our own military leaders. He is a man who knows nothing about anything and lies about everything. If such a man can be elected president over a woman voted the most admired in the world 20 times, than what man cannot be?! As one of the pundits said, not only did Hillary lose but “decency lost!” Trump will make no one’s life better except that of the very rich like himself. The most egregious loser will be our planet — the environment and the likelihood of clean air and water for our children. The debt will balloon. And among the people likely to suffer most from his inevitably failed promises will be the more economically disadvantaged people who voted for him.

Lonna Gooden Van Horn

Northwood