Patton: Donald Trump's Make-Believe America

Ever the door-to-door salesman, Donald Trump wants to get your vote by describing America as a dark and gloomy place only he can change. Consider some of the things Trump said during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (Politico, 7/21/2016).

"Not only have our citizens endured domestic disaster, but they have lived through one international humiliation after another . . .

"This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction and weakness.

"But Hillary Clinton's legacy does not have to be America's legacy. The problems we face now - poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad - will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them. . .

"I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians have put their national agendas before the national good. . .

"This Administration has failed America's inner cities. It's failed them on education. It's failed them on jobs. It's failed them on crime. It's failed them at every level. . .

"Yet Hillary Clinton is proposing mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness. Her plan will overwhelm your schools and hospitals, further reduce your jobs and wages, and make it harder for recent immigrants to escape from poverty."

Excuse me, I'm going to hide under the bed. From the sound of what Donald Trump is saying, the Apocalypse is upon us.

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Do you suppose that there's another side to the story? I'm sure he must be right, but what if things aren't as bad as Trump alleges? What about the economy? Is the economy really in a shambles as Trump claims?

The Census Bureau reports that median household income jumped 5 percent or nearly $3000 from 2014 to 2015 "Incomes rose for virtually every age and demographic group. Non-Hispanic whites saw gains of 4.4 percent, Hispanics earned over 6 percent more, and low-income families got a boost of nearly 8 percent." (Deirdre Fernandes and Evan Horowitz, Boston Globe, 9/14/2016).

The poverty rate fell to 13.5 percent in 2015 from 14.8 percent the year before. The national unemployment rate dropped to 4.9 percent. Well, what about health care? Trump wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), so health care must be really bad. Hmm. not so according to the Boston Globe.

"The Census report also showed that the number of uninsured Americans continued to drop, as people take advantage of President Obama's health care law. The share of people in the United States uninsured for the entire year was 9.1 percent, down from 10.4 percent."

Okay, okay, so the economy and health care aren't as bad as Trump says, but I'll bet he's right about rampant crime in America.

"The average person in a large urban area is safer walking on the street than he or she would have been at almost any time in the past 30 years." wrote Matthew Friedman, Nicole Fortier, and James Cullen in Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis. Although headlines suggesting a coming crime wave make good copy, a look at the available data shows no evidence to support this claim." (Brennan Center for Justice, 12/28/2015).

Well, so Trump is a little off the mark with regard to the economy, health care, and crime, but Trump says that the United states isn't great anymore. Other nations are passing us. What's this? The number of medals each country won at the 2016 summer Olympics. Let's see. Hmm, the United States won 121 medals. Our nearest competitor, China, won only 70 medals, Great Britain received 67, Russia 56, Germany 42, France 42, Japan 41, Australia 29, Italy 28, and Canada 22. (USA Today). We outdistanced them all, didn't we?

However, in the final analysis, it's all about happiness, isn't it? Trump paints such a bleak picture of the United States that people here must be miserable. What do the facts say? The World Happiness Report ranked the happiness of citizens of 158 nations in 2015. The United States ranked 15th among them - we're in the top 10 percent in happiness.

Okay, so much of what Trump claims isn't true, but he's still a great salesman. If he doesn't win the presidency, I'll bet he'd do a great job selling things on cable television. I can just see him now.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our national security demands that you buy the Cheese-O-Magic slicer. Thousands of people are choking because their cheese wasn't sliced evenly. It's sad. Very, very sad. As a result, the sales of cheese are plummeting, driving the dairy industry in Wisconsin and Minnesota out of business. A chain reaction has occurred because school cafeterias throughout the nation are unable to get evenly-sliced cheese, causing the schools to shut down and our national economy to collapse. The Chinese are taking advantage of our crisis by flooding the United States with cheese that is half sawdust. The sawdust is creating a health emergency and sending millions of patients to emergency rooms throughout the nation.

"Only I, Donald Trump, can save our country. The only way to end this crisis is to do as I say: Go out and buy a Cheese-O-Magic slicer immediately ."

Gary Patton is the author of two books, Selling Mt. Washington, a political satire, and Outtastatahs: Newcomers' Adventures in New Hampshire, a work of regional humor.

Photo by Gage Skidmore