This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In "Casablanca," Captain Renault said he was "shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on" at Rick's Café. Of course, he was part of the corruption and profited from it.
Reminiscent of Renault's hypocrisy, many of Donald Trump's former partisanship-at-almost-any-cost Republican supporters are jumping off the Trump craze like rats off a sinking ship, claiming how "shocked" they are that Trump spoke so lewdly about his crude, criminal behavior and disgusting attitude toward women.
Among Utah's "leaders" who are fleeing from the Trump bandwagon are Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Chris Stewart, Gov. Gary Herbert and former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. Republican elected officials still shamefully hanging in there with Trump are Rep. Rob Bishop; Speaker of the Utah House Greg Hughes, who awaits an "accounting" and "apology" from Trump (I'm not making this up; just check Hughes's Facebook page); Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, who apparently doesn't understand the inappropriateness of an attorney general condoning Trump's boasts about sexual assaults; and Sen. Orrin Hatch, who, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was informed of torture when it was happening but did nothing to stop the war crimes and apparently has no problem with Trump's claim to "like waterboarding a lot" and that he wants to "do a lot more than waterboarding."
Mitt Romney had the guts and integrity all along to vigorously oppose Trump's fascism, male-chauvinism, Muslim- and Mexican-bashing, violence-inciting and fear- and hatred-mongering.
Can any, like the majority of Utah voters who were going to cast their ballots for Trump, authentically claim they are "shocked" to discover that Trump is a disgusting, narcissistic, dishonest, cheating, racist, fraudulent, misogynistic pig?
The disdain and distrust many people have toward Hillary Clinton is understandable. Her support for the Iraq War and complicity in helping spread President Bush's lies are disgraceful, as are her politically calculated flip-flops on marriage equality and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, her complicity in massive war crimes leading, in large part, to the present disasters in Libya and Syria, as well as the resulting immigrant crisis throughout the world. She lacks credibility after she has lied repeatedly, including about her emails and her journey with Chelsea to Bosnia, where, contrary to her dishonest account, she was not under sniper fire when she landed. And she is clearly beholden to her Wall Street benefactors and the centrally owned mainstream media, where Chelsea, with no experience, was provided a $600,000-a-year job.
This election is such an ugly spectacle that about 20 percent of young people are claiming to support a guy who doesn't know what Aleppo is, who can't name a leader anywhere in the world he admires and who wants to end government protections for the environment, drugs, food and products. Then there are the Bernie-or-Bust folks, apparently willing to let us go "bust" — which is, sadly, an understandable impulse given the corruption fostered by the Democratic Party.
Whatever one thinks of Hillary, however, support for Trump is beyond-the-pale morally reprehensible. We can point the finger of judgment at Trump, but without his supporters he would not stand a chance of being president of the United States.
All who have supported Trump, while having all the information necessary to know how vile, racist, and sexist he is, are responsible. As Noam Chomsky has noted, the most terrifying aspect of society is not the occasional Hitler or LeMay—who we view, often after the fact, as terrifying, cruel and violent—but, rather, the apathy and equanimity of people who are seemingly sane, reasonable, and sensible, but who accommodate and even provide the essential support for those capable of so much evil.
Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson is a lawyer, former Salt Lake City mayor and co-founder and 2012 Presidential nominee of the Justice Party.