"If you don't like pickled onions, you have not been brought up properly" - The truth about Donald Trump

 What is the difference between opinions and facts? My mate's Dad used to say "If you don't like pickled onions, you have not been brought up properly". For years, I believed that this was the absolute truth. If someone didn't like pickled onions, then I simply thought "the poor soul has not been brought up properly".  I was disabused of this, when I started going out with a certain ex girlfriend. She hated pickled onions, but she clearly had been brought up properly. I realised that this was an opinion. I had believed it to be a fact, because I had implicitly trusted my mates Dad. By the time I was 21, I realised that he was more often than not wrong about everything. He shared such information as "Marc Bolan has fleas", "the Archbishop of Canturbury is going to hell because he is not a Roman Catholic" and some other things that were too racist to evn mention in 2025. All he held to be absolute facts. As I was a child and knew no better, I was impressed by this man, because unlike many adults, he was more than happy to share his opinions with us, rather than telling us to play in the other room and not disturb him.

The more I see of Donald Trump, the more I am reminded of him. I listen to Donald Trump speak and his manner is in many ways similar. He speaks as if he is writing the Gospel and his 'wisdom' is handed straight to him from God. In the 1960's and early 1970's, people like me, who were having a Catholic upbringing were taught absolutes. We were taught that subjects such as contraception and abortion were not up for discussion, because the Pope had decreed they were wrong and the Pope is infallible. The problem with claiming infallability is like people who deny the existence of aliens, you only have to be wrong once and you are wrong. When I read about the position of the Catholic Church in relation to Galileo, I realised that the church was being silly claiming the Pope was infallible. 

Which brings us to the claims of Donald Trump, such as that he's personally stopped seven wars. These things are things that it is easy to verify. Trump hasn't. Now it may well be that Trump has spoken to leaders in countries where there are tensions and border disputes. It may well even be that the leaders of the countries, on hearing Trumps claims, have gone along with his idiocy, to curry favour with a man who can wreak huge damage on their economy on a whim. But it doesn't make it right. Until I met my ex girlfriend, who was well brought up and disliked pickled onions, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable 'fact', but once I realised it was complete nonsense, the scales fell from my eyes and I started to assume that everything else he ever told us was just his opinion, and more often than not, it was ignorant and ill informed. As he was a mates Dad, I had believed that he was deserving of respect. I liked pickled onions and I liked to think I was well brought up and I was taught to respect my "elders and betters". Then I realised that racist, sexist, misogynists are not my betters. They are blinkered fools. 

Which brings us back to Donald Trump. When I watched him berating the United Nations, I couldn't help thinking this is a man who's dating advice was "grab them by the pussy". This is a man who said John McCain wasn't much of a war hero, as proper war hero's don't get captured. Here is a man who has a string of convictions for crimes which in normal times would see him become a pariah. Here is a man who has countless pictures with a former friend who was a sex trafficker and a paedophile. Here is a man who has had multiple businesses go bankrupt, which means that he's left people who trusted him out of pocket.

It is my opinion that Donald Trump is not fit to be President of the United States of America. It is just an opinion, but is based upon the facts I stated in the last paragraph. All of which are verifyable. Whether or not you like pickled onions, facts are facts.