I have spent most of my letter and blog writing life as an unabashed liberal. I am still a liberal, but I have gotten to the point where I can see and, to some degree, empathize with conservatives. Donald Trump’s candidacy had something to do with it. So has the liberal doctrine of today, which tends to be preachy and self-righteous, wears blinders, and has no tolerance for differences of opinion.

I think that one mistake I have made is failing to differentiate between the soldiers and their commanders. One thing the Donald Trump candidacy has brought out in the open is that many rank-and-file Republicans are not in favor of reducing social spending. Of course, Trump’s tax plan heavily favors the wealthy, and I think that his supporters choose to overlook that. It’s mostly that his supporters, largely but not only white men, feel like they have been left behind and are being alternately ignored and manipulated by their elected representatives. The jobs are not there anymore. Of course, Trump demagogues the issue, claiming that it’s all about wrongheaded free trade agreements. And his followers believe him. They feel like he is giving them a voice. They believe him when he says that immigrants and minorities are taking whatever jobs there are, as well as committing most of the crime. What Trump’s supporters fail to see is that Trump is manipulating them as well. Trump is blaming Obama for the lack of good jobs that can support a family. Rather than Obama, Trump needs to look at his own party. They have refused to work with the President to create a jobs and infrastructure bill that would kill two birds with one stone. Thanks to Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who has forced all Republicans to sign a pledge that they will never vote to raise taxes, Republicans refuse to raise any revenue that would be needed for such a program to work.

The collegiate left of today has “left” me cold with their microagressions, trigger warnings, and denial of free speech for conservatives invited to speak on campus. The Black Lives Matter movement has left me lukewarm as well. It was started after Trayvon Martin’s death at the hands of a neighborhood vigilante, George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was an idiot, and he never should have followed Trayvon Martin. He seems to have had a major case of cop wannabeitis. So he’s to blame for the genesis of the whole thing. But there is evidence that suggests that Trayvon was in the process of beating George’s head into the pavement. What was he supposed to do, let him kill him? That’s assault with a deadly weapon. Zimmerman was justified in using deadly force in that situation. So the movement itself was founded based on a narrative that has problems. BLM really shifted into high gear when a neighborhood small-time gangster named Michael Brown was shot while trying to take a cop named Officer Wilson’s service pistol. At least that’s what the investigation by Eric Holder’s justice department deduced. Of course there have been other incidents that are much more clearly unjustified shootings by police officers. But the left, for the most part, does not differentiate. A cop shooting is a cop shooting is a cop shooting. Never mind any inconvenient facts that get in the way of their narrative.

The thing that makes me unsupportive of today’s left is that, like I said, there isn’t any tolerance for differences of opinion, even opinion based on evidence. If you post a comment in a liberal forum saying that Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown bear some responsibility for their own deaths, you will be called a bigot. You will be savaged. I really have no respect for any movement that is heedless of the facts unless they support their narrative.

I am a liberal because I say I am. My belief is in economic justice. Not equality. Justice. The Republican legislators are against economic justice. I am in favor of social justice. The Republicans give lip service to social justice. I am, most of all, in favor of the truth. Not the “truth” as in a political narrative of the left or the right, but real truth.

In all of the current presidential candidates’ stump speeches, there is a large part that is devoted to demonizing free trade. Democratic nominee loser Bernie Sanders and the Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump have made opposition to virtually all trade agreements a cornerstone of their campaigns. Hillary Clinton is smarter than that, but she is a savvy politician and she knows which way the wind is blowing. If she had allowed Sanders to demonize her on that front, she might even have lost the Democratic primary. And she certainly will lose the general election if she is honest about how she feels. She called TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) the “gold standard” of trade agreements, and I think that she still believes that. Having said that, though, Hillary gets a bad rap for dishonesty. She has been vetted by PolitiFact and found to be the most honest candidate in the race. So much for all the garbage thrown at her by the right and regurgitated by Sanders followers.

The fact of the matter is that trade is a bogeyman. A straw argument that hints at a simple solution to a complex problem. It’s possible that there could be some jobs saved were it not for free trade. But those would be only temporary. And as much as the populist right and left like to scream about saving the middle class, how would the middle class feel about paying three or four times more for their clothing and other consumer goods. That would happen if they were produced by American labor earning a minimum $15.00/hr. wage, and even more if you throw in union protection and benefits.

The most significant factor in the erosion of good-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector has been technology. In fact, technology is even displacing relatively low-paying jobs in China and in other emerging economies. And for all of Sanders’ gasbagging about the gap between the world’s rich and poor, how would that gap be affected by foreign workers losing their meager jobs to well-paid American workers? Sounds like another disguised version of Trump’s America First agenda.

Technology is, and always has been, a double-edged sword. It is values-neutral and always has been. Technology follows the money, and usually ends up supporting the many at the expense of the relative few. For example, the automobile has enabled the world a standard of mobility that could scarcely have been imagined in the horse-and-buggy days. But people die in car crashes. Ditto airplane crashes. I don’t fly, period. I took a flight to Holland back in 1992 and felt like a sardine in a can, and it’s only gotten worse since then. And of course, you have the socially inept cell phone users, as well as the deadly ones behind the wheel.

All technological advances have pitfalls, but money has no soul. Business has no heart. It never has and it never will. There will always be bottom-feeding politicians selling phony solutions. It’s up to the voters to see through the smoke.