"Charlie Brown ... He's a Clown ..."

Went to a Farm-Team Baseball game, yesterday .... The Reading Fightin' Phils against the Altoona I-Don't-Know-Whats. We stayed four innings ... Middle America ... Not a lot of pretense ... Not a whole bunch of Gilded Foods ... "Peanuts and Cracker-Jax" ... "$1 Hot Dogs" ... was afraid of those!

Mr. Donald talks, apparently, to a majority of Middle America. I don't have much experience there ... never been to a Minor League Game ... hardly been to Major League ones. Friendly, affable ... I bet not all that uncomplicated.

And I sat there thinking: How does that happen?

The comparison was striking for me ... people who work or would soon work or who had worked for a living ... Lots of families and kids ... Lots of retired-looking folk whose hands bore the signs of labor ... sitting with us in General Admission ... $7 with the Senior Citizen Discount! The kids, too, looked straightforward ... full of gratitude for being out on a 90+ degree Sunday with Mom and Dad. Families.

So are their values comparable to a rich boy who well I-don't-know but whose public image includes:

an extravagant history of sexual exploits

self-proclaimed sexual prowess on places like the Howard Stern Show 

gold-plated bathroom fixtures

failed businesses where others picked up the freight on the bankruptcies

multiple failed marriages

bluster ... OMG ... so much bluster

inability to take a punch without calling foul,

nevermind "turning the other cheek") (Matthew 5)

denial of one's own statements or tweets 

('hey, y'didn't hear that thing I just said from me')

unsubstantiable claims

the claim that he, alone, can do it

(apparently, he, alone, can see it)

depreciation of others

intolerance of those who are different

I suppose I could go on but I was struck by the honesty and decency of those folk at the Baseball game ... Middle America with its ethos diametrically opposed to Trump's. 

Even ignoring his lack of knowledge, how can this be? Any case, I was heartened to see reasonable folk, many of whom, I must assume, will go into the voting booth in their districts and refuse to cast a vote for this man whom many (of course, not me) consider a clown!