Sun Tzu wrote, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – written and published about 512 B.C.

Now it is time for us to learn who our enemy is so we can win this war.

I recently read a rant that alleged that half the country voted for Donald Trump, and those voters were the deplorables.  But the claim that half the country was deplorable is wrong unless we expand the definition of who those deplorables are beyond who just voted for Donald Trump.  Half is 109.5 million if we only look at eligible voters.

I also read “Essay: Fake news, faith and reason,” and it provided a good definition of exactly who those deplorables are, how they think, and/or their empty-headed lack of thinking.

Here’s what I think is deplorable.

As I write this post, we learn from US Election Atlas.org that Trump has 45.99 percent of the popular vote with 62,916,237 votes (that is not half). Hillary Clinton has 48.07 percent of the vote for 65,758,070, and it’s deplorable that she lost.

It’s deplorable that only 132.9 million Americans voted. There are almost 219 million eligible voters, and 86.1 million didn’t vote.

It’s deplorable that the @realDonaldTrump on Twitter has 17.2 million followers, but he only has 45 likes (when I checked today). How does anyone have that many followers and only 45 likes?

It also helps to define how deplorable Trump’s thinking is by just looking at the 40 Twitter pages he follows.  Click the link and discover how many times he follows himself and far-right hate media sites and/or talking heads.

It’s deplorable that according to the Pew Research Center, 33-percent of the people that voted for Trump did it because “He is not Clinton,” 27 percent voted for him because “He will bring change (does that mean burning the U.S. Constitution),” 26 percent voted because of “His policy positions (does he really have any),” 19 percent voted for him because “He tells it like it is/His personality (like his locker room talk),” and 10 percent voted for him because “He is for American people and values (Huh!).”

It’s deplorable that Trump claimed he’ll bring back manufacturing jobs that were lost to China, because how can Trump bring back jobs from China that never left?

Quickly, China doesn’t just trade with the United States. It trades with the world. The OEC reports China exported $2.37 trillion to the world in 2014, but only $432 billion of that went to the U.S, and the U.S. exported $134 billion in goods back to China, goods produced by American workers and/or automation in American factories. Discover what Forbes says China buys from the U.S. Automation took away 88 percent of the 7 million lost jobs in U.S. manufacture since 1979. Who became president in 1980?

So let’s discover how many deplorables there are.

First, the 16 – 17 million that follow Donald Trump on Twitter and on Facebook (probably the same people) on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst deplorables, this group earns a 9.

After we subtract the 16 – 17 million that follow Trump on Twitter and Facebook, that leaves about 47 million voters that earned an 8 on that scale of 1 to 10.  Arguably the ones that voted for Trump because he wasn’t Clinton should earn a 7, but Essay: Fake news, faith and reason explains why they should be ranked higher so maybe I’m wrong and that group should be a 9 too.

Who earned a 10 on the deplorable scale?  The 86.1 million that didn’t vote, and the answer is more than 68 percent of Americans eligible to vote are deplorable. More than 50 percent.

One thing we can look forward to from a Trump Presidency is all the new Star Wars films with him as the Emperor while he’s still the president of the U.S. I heard that Disney is already in negotiations with Donald Trump. If the deal goes through, he’ll be the first sitting United States President to star as an emperor in a series of films wearing pink cotton candy on his head instead of a crown or a hoodie.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

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Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy followed by his award winning memoir Crazy is Normal.

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