Look, I get it. In the 1970s, I was literally the last student at my small rural high school to support Richard Nixon. I was one of those people who believe what they believe and absolutely nothing you say is going to change that.
It took me years after his resignation to realize I was wrong about Nixon. Wrong to believe that someone titled “president” (and who happened to represent my worldview) couldn’t be deeply flawed, much less criminal. I believed profoundly in the authority and inherent “rightness” of institutions and elected officials, the same way I believed in the “inherent” goodness of other high-status people.
I was young then, and naïve. I didn’t understand a doctor could be a pedophile, a lawyer a crook, a judge a mobster or a policeman a criminal. I couldn’t separate the individual from the position. Even harder, I found it almost impossible to dislodge a belief I was so heavily invested in.
So I get it. I get people who continue to support Donald Trump. I only hope that other people are not as slow as I am.
Scott Bell, West Jordan
