Throwing me at Donald Trump

I'm a reasonable man. I do not raise my voice to my wife. If you cut me off on the highway, I do not make rude hand gestures. I do not roll my eyes and sigh if there are other people in line at the grocery store.

So, of course, I don't support former President Donald Trump. He is not a reasonable man. He believes and says unreasonable things. He behaves in unreasonable ways, and he encourages unreason among his followers.

But for God's sake, stop throwing me at the man.

Trump says he will institute mass deportations of illegal immigrants as soon as he is elected, and he will move to "secure" the border.

I'm not sure how you do the first, and I'm not sure what the second means, but it is a plan, even if it is the most illusory, gossamer and non-fleshed-out plan in the history of plandom.

I don't care if drag queens read to children in public libraries. I don't care if "critical race theory" is taught in school. I think every Confederate statue should be dynamited unless it's in a crowded neighborhood, in which case it should be sledgehammered to pieces. I always thought Pizzagate was a load of pepperoni, and I don't think Hunter Biden sits at the center of a huge web of bribery and conspiracy. I also don't think Michelle Obama is a man.

Reasonable. Normal. Quiet. That's me. I like to read. Books. History, literature and poetry.

Still, despite my cardigan sweater and hot cocoa way of life, and despite my dislike of stupidity and ignorance, I've heard the call.

Who other than Donald Trump seems to have any real commitment to grappling with the national emergency that is our southern border?

Frankly, no one, although his Republican challengers ape his opinions pretty well.

I'm a reasonable man. I want existing immigration law to be enforced, and I don't want hundreds of thousands of people who have no right to be here flowing across the border like people walking into a free three-day music festival in a meadow somewhere.

I'll tell you something else for free. You know why a lot of media opinion-makers don't go all frothy at the mouth over illegal immigration? It's because, if you're doing what I'm doing right now, which is writing a weekly column for a living, there is absolutely no chance that you will lose your job to someone with a fake name and a fake Social Security card he bought in a bar in Juarez.

You do not have that same sense of security if you've spent most of your life working on roofing crews or if all the people in your family are hereditary construction workers, carrying a cooler onto a job site.

There has been no real immigration reform in this country for 40 years, and it's harder to get on a high school basketball team than it is to get into America from the south.

If Trump becomes president again, and I pray he does not, it will be because Democrats gave him this issue the way I gave my wife a necklace for Christmas.

"Here, Donnie. Look in the box. Do you like it? It sure is shiny, isn't it?"

"It's beautiful," Donnie says. "I'll wear it every day."

It is beautiful, and he wears it every day, and the people like me, the reasonable people, some of us have noticed the sparkle, if only because no one else at the party is wearing anything shiny.

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