What the Scouts taught me
The President of the United States and I are two kids who came up in Queens. I’m a mite more than three years older, and lived a tad less than 3 miles away. But we were really in two different worlds.
His Tudor mansion was in a place called the Estates; his wealthy dad built housing for middle-class people who were the envy of my family and friends.
Likely my pop chauffeured some of them around in the yellow Checker cab he drove before returning to our federally subsidized, New York City-managed low-income housing project. That would be around 5 a.m. Sometimes I was fortunate to catch him for a hug as I was rushing off to catch the bus to the trains to Brooklyn Tech from Flushing.
In the projects, teeming with kids, the parents did their best. I joined a Boy Scout troop.
I know what I learned from the Scouts. From his performance as President, I also have a sense of the lessons Trump could have absorbed if he’d participated. If he had, we might all be a little better off today.
Scouting gave me structure and discipline. It opened the door to a world that was multifaceted, and while not being homogenized, could be harmonious. One in which differences were to be celebrated, where everyone deserved to be treated with dignity and respect.
We all had something of value to add to our troop. We had an oath and a code and Scout Law that gave us a blueprint for leading a decent and meaningful life.
It taught us specific survival skills and awarded badges of merit for each skill mastered.
More subtly, and more important than mere survival, it instilled in us the knowledge of how to live decently in a complex and challenging world.
Little then did we realize how fortunate and enriched we were, while some others who thought they had it all would grow up so needy and so deprived.
Trump didn’t appear at the Boy Scouts National Jamboree to demean them. He went, as we Queens kids would say, to “brown-nose” them, in the hopes that their clean-cut positive image of being honest and decent might rub off on him.
He went to change the subject from this week’s scandal, which has its flames licking at his lowhanging red ties. But he can’t change the subject because this week’s scandal is the same as last week’s scandal. It’s always the same. Because he is the scandal and, heaven help him, he can’t change.
So why the outsize rage about Trump’s selfish, indulgent, borderline vulgar talk to the kids if he didn’t outright “diss” the Scouts? Because his act is wearing so thin.
And people are rightly peeved that the President is using their children, children who are supposed to be learning to really care about honor and honesty and duty and country, for his own selfish purposes. He betrayed himself by insisting he wouldn’t make a political speech to Boy Scouts, and went into the most partisan, one-sided, political, self-aggrandizing screeds, which disparaged everything and everyone who might think to question him. It was a master course in bullying: of the media, of the so-called swamp of Washington, of his political opponents.
But I think some good has come out of the appearance: We’ve laid bare a powerful contrast between the ethics of the speaker and the those of the institution to which he spoke.
The Boy Scouts stand for something. Donald Trump stands for nothing. When one thinks of Boy Scouts, the image of helping an old lady cross the street comes to mind, not kicking her to the side of the curb.
When we think “Boy Scout,” we think of being kind and doing good deeds, being patriotic and putting America first.
As more and more people think “Donald Trump,” they think of being mean and being corrupt and thinking greedily about oneself and putting money first.
Americans are furious about having their children being used as pawns in anyone’s political game. It’s not just about being deceitful and disrespectful and boasting and endlessly lying, and distorting the truth.
It’s healthy for people to dream their children could grow up to be President. It’s encouraging to know that it’s a growing majority that understands that Donald Trump can’t be that role model.
Boy Scouts learn to start a fire without matches. It’s a skill that can prove useful.
Our matchless President starts dangerous fires for no apparent good reason. Donald Trump is no Boy Scout.