I generally like my local morning talk radio.  They're fairly conservative, but they just won't stop blaming the loss of the election on Trump's meanness.  Somehow, being mean — not election irregularities that no one has witnessed before in living memory — was the reason Trump lost.

Sometimes I just have to ask myself: did these radio men, who I know are about a decade older than myself, live through the same events I did?  Because if they did, they weren't paying attention.  In American politics, niceness gets you absolutely nothing...if you are lucky.  If you're not lucky, it gets lies recorded and accepted as true history, which generations of people will be taught ad nauseam, who will then recite these lies back to people who are too beleaguered to correct them.

As a child, I remember being taught how terrible Nixon was as a president, at least in TV shows, movies, and media.  However, when I asked people who lived through the time of Nixon being president, every one of them told me, "They did him wrong" and "He was a great president!"

Being born during Reagan, I didn't know better about Nixon.  But I do remember George W. Bush.  I was just old enough to vote when he ran for president the first time.  I remember the politeness and kindness with which George W. Bush presented himself to the public.  That did not stop the tarring and feathering he got every day after the decision to go into Iraq.

Bush chose to be classy and never answered his critics one bit.  It was infuriating.  He never verbally responded to his critics, nor did he ever trumpet his successes, which resulted in the following lies becoming truth in the American/international consciousness:

1. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
2. The Iraq invasion was only about oil.
3. Bush lied, people died.
4. Bush was a moronic, trigger-happy cowboy itching for an excuse to start a war.
5. None of the post-9/11 changes prevented future terrorist attacks; we've just been lucky that the terrorists are too inept to pull off another major attack.

While I know that these are all lies made up to discredit Bush and Republicans, the younger generation take them as gospel truth and can't be convinced otherwise.  These lies are constantly used to make jokes and memes online, which may not matter to some of the readers here but is indicative of where the younger culture is going.  Bush never defended himself, and the younger generations will only remember the lies about him.

President Trump is a very different breed of person from other presidents.  He fights back and responds to criticisms.  While some people say they are turned off by it, I simply ask, don't you remember what it was like to have everyone condemning the president you supported and not have anyone but yourself, not even the president himself, defend him?  That was worse than the occasional mean tweet.

Because Trump is "mean" and defends himself we know that the following things are lies:

1. Trump was a Russian patsy.
2. Trump cheated the 2016 election.
3. Biden was elected in a completely normal, fair, and honest election process.
4. Everyone in this country gets treated equally in a court of law.
5. The FBI and CIA can be trusted to do the right thing.
6. The U.S. government represents the people.
7. Social media mega-corporations value freedom of expression and fight government suppression.
8. Trump hates immigrants.
9. Trump is racist.

I could go on, but I want to keep this short.  Because Trump fought back, and fought to win, meaning he may have sounded mean from time to time, the lies the media and Democrats made up about him are accepted as true by half of the population.  The memes and jokes produced by younger generations have half praising Trump and half condemning him.  This means that the younger generations aren't all automatically Democrat.  They can easily be persuaded to be Republicans, if Republicans would simply fight back against the slander and lies.  So, while some people out there may be turned off by a little bit of meanness, it's Trump's meanness and willingness to fight that open eyes and changes the future.

If you'd rather the younger generation become lemmings careening off a cliff, then vote for someone nice.  The inexperienced tend to follow the loudest voices, and nice people don't have loud voices.  Neither do nice voices get heard.  I'd rather have a president who is mean and heard than nice and ignored.  Future generations will be better off because of it.

Monroe Wesson is an airship enthusiast and wishes more people would support this project.

Image via Pixabay.