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On Family Men
My dad was a family man. He wasn’t necessarily the warmest of dudes when I was growing up, but he believed then and now in family. He raised his three kids to the best of his ability, and everything he did was for his family. He never cheated on his wife, never divorced (50+ years of marriage), never abused her. He whooped us kids when we needed it, but I can’t say that I was abused.
I, too, am a family man. Family comes before work, church, pleasure. The only thing I put before my kids is my wife, and the only thing I put before her is God. Most of the time anyway. I’ve been married 25 years, never cheated, never abused her or the kids. I’ve always worked to put food on the table, cleats on the feets, and gas in the car. I’m a good dad and husband. I’m a family man.
That’s why it bothers me when I read someone say they think Donald Trump is a good family man. Now, I realize I’ve already lost some of you. You are already typing your response. That’s ok. For the rest of you, let me just put aside politics and Hillary and all that and say: I’m happy with most of the accomplishments of the past 18 months. I’m absolutely glad Trump won instead of Hillary. I do not need a good family man to be President. In one sense, I wouldn’t want one. I want someone who will put his job ahead of his wife and kids. Because we need that in the White House. So, let’s put all the TDS, NeverTrump, Trumpkin, etc., aside. Let’s just talk morality.
Trump may love his kids and the wives he’s had. But he’s not a family man. Good family men don’t cheat on their kid’s mothers. They don’t go for stripper sex right after one of their children is born. We have plenty of evidence that Trump is not a moral man. So it boggles the mind that someone would say he is. Prove me wrong.
Published in General
Just to keep playing the word parsing game, would you extend that to good fathers don’t cheat on their kid’s mothers?
Churchgoers on the wane which may account for some of this. It also doesn’t help that Hollywood seems to glorify it as the norm. I listened to Mona Charen on the Ricochet podcast today who talked about the fact that the educated, well-off women are much more likely to marry, have babies and stay married. Our welfare system almost encourages the poor women to have children in order to increase the check.
“Almost”?
Yeah, pretty sure that was @hypatia.
I’m not playing a “word parsing” game. You sure are welcome to.
The sleezy lawyer is about to get himself disbarred – whatever he’s ducking to allow this to come up must be fairly gross.
I think its the other way around. Clinton has a delusion of his own charms, I havent heard anyone claim that Trump didnt take no for an answer. I know he’s damaged goods, and so forth, but he’s just that inch better than Clinton.
The recent one was a 1 year affair in 2006. This kinda zebra doesnt change his stripes. He doesnt make a mistake – out with the boys meeting a girl who’s looking for … well what ever Trump can offer…
The one thing that makes his whole personal behavior worse for me – is that he’s a teetotaler – he cant blame any of these poor decisions of drink. What he did he’s done on his own…
Then you haven’t been listening:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
Like I said, I wouldn’t make the argument…
I had an uncle who was a major hound dog. He was movie star good looking in his younger years and just loved women. He also fell madly in love with my aunt and loved being married and having children. Despite his “transgressions” he and his wife stayed married for 51 years and raised five great kids. Sometime during her life (I don’t remember how old she was when it was firs diagnosed) my aunt came down with MS which got progressively worse with age. He had to feed her, change her diapers and bathe her, chores he did lovingly until she died at home as he held her and cried. I know this as I watched him take care of her when I visited them in Albuquerque. He had little outside help other than a daughter who came once a week to give him a day off. His children thought he was a saint and adored him. Now Spin, you and others might think my uncle was not a good family man, because he didn’t keep his pants zipped a few times during his marriage, but then there are those in his family and friends who thought he was a wonderful family man.
OK, it was a longer list than I thought.
Trump’s transgressions exceeded more than a few times. And if his wife gets sick, he’ll hire a private nurse.
He’s behaving himself now, because he has no privacy, and his wife would leave him if he humiliates her. Plus he is in his seventies. He’ll never be a saint the way your uncle was.
I have heard “Great Father”, and “Family Man” and “Great Christian” from some of my friends, and I have seen these claims here and other places on the internet. I am bemused by people believing this. As far as his wives go — didn’t at least one of them sleep with the Donald while he was married to a previous wife? I think all the wives knew what they were getting and accepting. Worldly success in business, art, the military, academics, and politics is often aided by a total focus on ones own goals to the exclusion of faith, friends & family — the greater the focus on the goals, the greater and more likely the success. Some people can do both, but not many. Everyone has to balance & prioritize what is important to them. Trump and his wives did that.
At the beginning of the comments section, RA refers to my post as a straw man argument, that nobody is claiming Trump is a “good family man.” There were one or two other comments in similar vein (vain? vane? I don’t know). And yet here are comment after comment either saying indirectly that Trump is a good family man, or saying “Yeah, well, he might be different now.”
I find that…interesting…
When the women started coming out to talk about Cosby, I thought for a long time “It’s nothing. Its all fake.” I was even irrational about in my desire to have it not be true. Why? Because I love Cosby. I grew up on his shows, my dad has reel-to-reel recording of his stand up work. But eventually I had to accept it. One or two women are one thing. But Cosby and Trump are in their own league, along with Billy, and some guys I know from a previous job, in their status as womanizers.
The lengths to which people will go to maintain a fantasy about Trump never fail to amaze me. It would be a lot easier to own up to the ends justifying the means and move on.
We may never know if Trump did this in response to Obama’s ridiculing him at the Correspondents’ Annual Dinner or to receiving a higher calling. But I’m happy we don’t have her.
Reagan said “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Party left me.” And as a sane man, Trump has followed Reagan’s advice.
I’m also happy we don’t have her. I’m happy that we have Mattis, and Gorsuch, and soon Kavanaugh. The cost was high. Some see as it as reasonable. Others less so.
What changed is that he started running for President. And if you’re someone with zero moral or political center, who doesn’t care about policy (except for opposing free trade!), then you can accomplish that. No change needed.
If you listen to the man, he’s no conservative. He just says whatever he needs to in the moment. He doesn’t know jack [expletive] about policy, or conservatism. He has no conservative instincts.
Because people want to cheer morally good men. Being a family man is usually seen as integral to that identity. Since Trump has a terrible history with family and it is directly caused by his poor moral character he is not seen as a family man nor as a morally good man.
Hence people create rationalizations. He wasn’t ever that bad, look at the children (children can behave well despite divorce, I know so from personal experience), or that he has changed, and ignore his long list of promiscuity and other flaws.
Keeeee-rect, O pale venomous serpent!
(Of course, I knew it was me he was trying to get at, but hey, thanks for the shout-out.)
Yes, , so I have said, and so I would still maintain. @spin‘s post amounts to nothing more’n “Lord, I thank thee that I am not as that man!”
Good for him! He sounds like an A+ guy.
I have had the awful experience of practicing the oxymoronically-named “family law” ( it’s really anti-family law) .
So, let’s review:
is it the fact that he’s twice divorced that bugs ya? If so let me tell you that I have seen plenty of misery, infidelity, and abuse between and around long-married couples. Is refusing to untie the knot a virtue of some kind? That certainly isn’t a policy any of our statutes reflect.
It is the facts surrounding Trumps first two wives that first impressed me with his skills as paterfamilias.
He has good relations with Ivana, who helped his campaign effort, and even at the time made positive statements about him. He hosted her second wedding. He has good relations with Marla. She appeared on the View to defend him during the campaign. Tiffany was in my daughter’s graduating class of 2016 at Penn. Marla was there and tweeted out:”Wonderful weekend with the Trump family!”
But that’s nothing, less than nothing! compared to the fact that he has good loving relations with his adult children by those women. I promise you, that is rare. Ivana, Don, Eric, even Tiffany gave a great speech at the GOP convention. They love the guy.
(Please don’t just scoff”Money!” In a bitter divorce situation, in my experience money couldnt buy anything more than a chilly”No comment”. )
And then there’s the sheer number of his progeny. Five kids and I don’t know how many grandchildren. You can’t be a paterfamilias without the familias. He likes the idea of breeding!
I guess you’ll say, but what about the infidelities? In my opinion (see first para of my little review here) that isn’t the very worst thing a husband can do to a wife. It’s also not uncommon among married American adults. No, I don’t have a link, but I do (well, y’know, just cuz it’s on the same page as the comics!) read Dear Abby/ Ann Landers or whoever their successors are now, and it still comes down to : are you better off with him, or without him? A substantial portion of their interlocutors are people who suspect or have discovered an affair involving their spouses. People in general can’t be trusted not to screw around. Yes I’m sure the exemplary Spin has never been tempted, or has heroically resisted, and: bravo! So he’s a Superman! Everybody isn’t like him. That doesn’t mean everybody else is bad.
So there you have it! And as Spin sez, I’m sure a lot of you are already typing your steamin’ hot responses. S’okay. I have made my case.
All of what you have said is valid for any period of someone’s life in which the behavior causing the moral judgement by those doing the judging is observed. Has this been the case during Trump’s time in office? I think he failed as an example of a good family man before this. I also think that much of the ‘man chasing woman’ behavior generally is a characteristic of the natural man. What we call a morally good family man is a man who has brought these behaviors under rational control.
As for some other questionable behaviors, the ‘lying’ for example, it should be recognized that, unlike most all of the rest of us, Donald Trump has never had to answer to anyone in his adult life. This likely has profound effects on behavior and might explain what I call his ‘boorishness’. He may be learning now much that he never had to deal with before.
You have to hand it to the Democrats. They taught us well. They are probably as surprised as you that so many on the right have decided to play by The New Rules.™
And @fredcole please explain to me how you square your disdain for Trump’s private life with your embracement of Libertarian philosophy?
I’m not surprised at all. Understand: this is an apolitical post. I learned well that is the economy, stupid! More so now.
The surprise to me is that while many are willing to say “Yeah, he’s a real heel, but I’ll support him because of policy”, many are unwilling or unable. Again, the comments started off with “Nobody says that!?”, followed by a bunch of comments by people saying that.
I don’t need Trump to be a good man in order to praise him for his political successes that agree with.
I’ll speak for my own domestic Libertarian view point. Being Libertarian doesn’t mean you simply say “everything is all good no matter what.” It means “I may think it’s a bad thing, but if it ain’t hurtin’ me, have at ‘er.” That is to say, just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean I’m gonna call for some law or some societal action to make it stop.
I find this line of reasoning odd. We aren’t attempting to convict Trump in a court of law. I’m not, anyway. But if someone behaves one way for much of their adult life, then for some period of time we do not see in to his private life, why would we assume he’d changed? Especially in this case, where Trump now has a very vested political interest in not getting caught cheating on his wife? I’m less generous than you, I guess. My tendency is to think ill of politicians in high places. Especially ones with a history…
What have we seen that indicates that Trump has been acting well in regards to his family? Does Trump talk in a manner that his children emulate? Have we seen Trump spend anytime with Barron or Melania? Would Trump have the chance to cheat on his wife or to engage in physical relations? I doubt that he does since male fertility and libido is quite diminished, if not gone, by the age of 72. Given this lack of evidence that he has behaved in a morally good way I find it hard that he has somehow become a family man.
By definition the morally good man subordinates his interest to moral principles. One major example of this is being faithful to your wife, which according to evidence he has failed each wife. Assuming what you say is true, and it does seem to be true, then Trump is not a morally good man and has not likely changed his behavior.
Where do you think Trump has improved on his “boorishness”?
Oh, gee, venomous mini-viper, you are on a roll!! Once (Comment 5) wasn’t enough for you, you’re havin’ so much fun!
Awww: ya think you and @spin can , like shame me, or sump’n?
It Is To Laugh.
But, rattle away! I’ve made my case in Comment 53.