Clergy, local officials should publicly decry Trump’s behavior

I registered to vote in February 1963, and for the sole purpose of re-nominating JFK in the 1964 primary, I registered as a Democrat. I was really excited about voting in my very first presidential election, only eighteen months away.

By the time the primary arrived, however, my heart really wasn’t in it, but I voted anyway; and I’ve voted in every national election since. I have also gone to the polls for every local election since 1972, the year we bought our first home. I never changed parties because, except for being unable to vote in GOP primaries, I had no reason. I’m not a die-hard anything anyway, and more often than not I split my ticket.

As a teenager and young adult I vividly remember my family’s discussing the importance of defending your beliefs but respecting views opposite your own; being well-informed but applying this knowledge by voting; and most of all, if you have something to say, say it; but make sure you listen when you’re finished. Many a dinner table went un-cleared far into the night because of an intense political, social, or philosophical debate. Our views, like our chairs at the table, were to the left, to the right, and even in the middle.

My father’s family (AlsaceLorraine and Bavaria) had been in the U.S. since the mid1850s, and although I could never confirm this, family legend has it that some of them campaigned for Abraham Lincoln in 1860. True or not, how- ever, I really did have a granduncle named Abraham Lincoln Goldbacher (1886-1942), according to my elders, a highly skilled and vigorous orator and debater, a passionate advocate of the 19th Amendment, and a harsh critic of Adolf Hitler as early as the late 1920s. He lived, worked, and argued in Philly.

In 1903 my maternal greatgrandparents fled Bessarabia’s infamous Kishinev Pogroms with their five children (all girls), somehow managing to escape the czar’s army and violent Russian nationals just before the 1905 revolution; my grandmother was about five. Eight years later in 1911, my maternal grandfather’s family fled Austria-Hungary’s rampant, pre-WWI anti-Semitism and oppressive tyranny; they had seven kids.

The families settled near each other in Brooklyn and in 1915 the four parents joyously became (in Yiddish) machetunim, (in Spanish) consuegros, or (in English) “the joint, co-in-law relationship between the parents of the bride and the parents of the groom.”

In short, America saved my family’s life. Had my desperate yet brave and gracious refugee ancestors not been welcome here, I may have been born in some oppressive, violent place or more likely, not born at all and hence, would never have been blessed with the religiously, ethnically, and racially diverse family I now enjoy.

Now, a departure to my point:

In my 52 years of voting I have never witnessed a candidate like Donald Trump. His hateful, racist, offensive rheto- ric panders to our darkest side, the side from which my ancestors and maybe some of yours fled. He has never civilly appealed to our senses of decency, fairness, or justice, and doesn’t seem to possess the humility, mercy, or kindness common to those with whom he claims to share faith. His hysterical ad hominem rants don’t reasonably challenge ideas, but incoherently attack their owners. His fanatically populist, neo-fascist extremism opposes everything America stands for.

Republican, Democrat, independent, or even abstainer, he is not one of us and doesn’t represent who we are as a nation. He relies not on reason and effective communication to provide leadership, but on well-designed fear and anger to secure personal power.

I voted for some of you elected folks, but not all; I don’t attend services in all your houses of worship, dear clergy. I can’t tell any of you which levers to pull when you close the curtain, and I can only request how I’d like you to vote when some of you represent me in session. I have no say-so in what you preach to your congregations.

But, since morally each of you is my advocate in some way large or small, I ask that you speak up on behalf of me, my family, and every reasonable person of good will. I encourage you all, to publicly decry the behavior of this dangerous bigot, bully, extremist.

We often look to local leaders for help and to speak for us, so I again ask that you all please speak up. It’s the right thing to do.

Harry Goldbacher Upper Gwynedd Township