What If Donald Trump Were a Woman -- Nonfiction

image from Open College
"Me! Me! Call on me!"

America, we have a problem. We have addressed the Race Issue, not successfully, I agree, but we've at least addressed it. Most of us recognize that being nonwhite in the United States still presents serious problems. What about the Gender Issue? Do most of us recognize that being female in the United States still handicaps us?

What if Donald Trump were a woman? Would he have gotten the Republican nomination and gone on to become the President Elect?

I know. I know. You're right, he'd be a pretty ugly woman. He's not that great looking as a man. So let's disregard this joke and not minimize the problem.

Let's imagine if Donald were a woman.

To make this a believable hypothesis, the female Donald would need to be as rich as Crassus and star of a TV show. The closest we've got to that is Joan Collins' Alexis Carrington on Dynasty. (I understand Dynasty is available to rent from Netflix if you're too young to remember that particularly glittery soap.)

Okay, just bare with me.

So we've got the wealth and fame in mind. We'll assume that our she-Donald made it through the nominating process despite the way he/she spoke to and of the other Republican candidates. The rest of the tale will be just the real Donald as a woman in a one-on-one contest with Hillary Clinton.

Hillary is a wife, mother, and grandmother. She has been married once which of course got her her first liability. Her husband Bill, the 42nd President, was impeached for lying and obstruction of justice. Not for sexual improprieties with a 22-year-old employee, but for lying about them. There is nothing to indicate that Hillary herself was involved in sexual impropriety.

Our Lady Donald is also a wife and mother. She has five children by three men. That in itself would be a liability in our society. And of her own making, at that. Our Ms. Donald is caught on tape bragging about her own sexual improprieties. She/he is then accused by multiple people of improper sexual behavior, including against underage people. Again, liabilities of her own making.

One of the women running for office could point to being twice elected to the Senate from New York State. Not Mistress Trump. She would be able to point to no service in any elected position. But, at least she's not a politician.

And as Secretary of State Hillary could tout interactions with international leaders, both allies and antagonists.

Not to be outdone, Ms. Trump publicly admired long-time Russian antagonist and threatened to ignore treaties with long-time allies. Did I mention that she espoused the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Hillary, as Secretary of State and recognizing the long-held tradition of "the buck stops here," accepted responsibility for the tragedy that was the terrorist attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The female Donald, rather than accepting responsibility for her/his own insufficiencies bragged about his/her business acumen in using tax laws to avoid paying her fair share of income tax and bankruptcy laws to avoid his business obligations.

Our Mistress Donald disrespected American war heroes and their families. She/he liberally laced public speeches with profanity and easily provable lies. He/she carried on feuds using middle-of-the-night tweets, exhibited aggressive behavior during presidential debates, encouraged violence during public events, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  

Be honest. If Donald Trump were a woman running against anybody and behaved as he has, would he now be the President Elect?

Women, we have a long way to go. Don't let's get caught in a mess like this ever again. Letting men determine our future will never get us or our society where we need to go. We have to take responsibility and actively participate in determining our society's future. This must be the only Unity that counts.

Longitude -- a review



In this day and age with our GPS and our smart phones and our Google Maps, it's hard to imagine a time when the world was being explored and travelled by people who literally didn't know where they were and had no dependable way to find out.

Longitude is well-written and follows a straight-forward path from need to discovery and implementation. Why longitude? Because in the middle of the ocean without knowing what your longitude is, you were lost. And being lost most likely meant death. You could misjudge the nearness of land and like Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell who, on a foggy night in October of 1707, ran his flag ship and three more of his five warships aground on the Scilly Isles, "dooming almost two thousand" of his troops. Or too often a captain misjudged the distance and the direction of land and "missed his mark -- searching in vain for the island where he had hoped to find fresh water, or even the continent."

They knew about longitude, but could not track it at sea. Latitude could be deduced "by the length of the day or by the height of the sun or known guide stars above the horizon." Longitude does not lend itself to these easily recognized and readily available markers. Scientists and mathematicians devised methods to tell where a ship was in relation to its longitude. Their methods like them reflected deep thinking and cumbersome equations, not easily implemented by the general sailing public. Nor were their equations all that dependable when a navigator was able to follow the instructions.

What they needed was a reliable clock. And this is the story of the self-educated English common man who developed just such a clock. For want of just such an instrument, countless lives and fortunes were lost.

The story of John Harrison's development of a clock that would keep time dependably during the rough and tumble of a sea voyage is a cautionary tale for those societies that  circumscribe their people's talents based on class. Or, though not applied in this clockmaker's case, based on race or religion or gender or sexual orientation or any other arbitrary measure of a human's value.