My NYT Response to a Knee Jerk Frank Bruni Column on Donald Trump.

One quality I share with Trump is that I care not what folk will think of me. Of course we both care but you know what I mean. We are willing to be called fools and worse. Frank Bruni seems to be a addicted to a predictable style. A declarative sentence along with a knee-jerk diss of Trump. It breeds assent as I can see from the comments here, but it is superficial and fails to see why one could find some good in Donald.

I have been consistently mortified by the way the GOP has treated President Obama. I regard this as a prolonged exercise in near-treason. Therefore my only celebratory goal is to see the GOP in both houses of Congress swept to an ignominious defeat. I see no way to resume progress in America minus this mega-flip. All of my positive Trump thoughts have had this as the subtext. He induces enough revulsion that the entire GOP house falls.

Trump has managed to raise issues that have been swept under the rug by both parties for fifty years and more.

To locate myself in this train of thought, you should know that when I watched Watergate unfold I saw it as a great positive — vindicating democracy. After all we did get rid of Nixon. Scandal? How about just desserts?

Trump could flip the Congress by inducing sufficient fear at the grass roots that Bernie’s revolution might indeed take place. There are other ramifications of examining Trump not in the superficial Bruni manner but in terms of how he might affect other elements of our volatile body politic.