2016 Postmortem

My dad is a rugged, resilient person. He was orphaned in WWII under the Japanese occupation of the Philippines when my grandfather was taken away by Japanese Soldiers never to be seen again and my grandmother died shortly after he was born. He was shuffled from relative to relative and worked as a house servant for US Navy sailors in the barracks and then in homes, he was taken in by a Navy Chaplin and his wife at 15 who tutored him. During that time there was a program where Filipino citizens could join the US Navy but could only be mess stewards. The family officially adopted him at 17 giving him legal resident alien status so he could enlist without that restriction and the next day he enlisted as a Machinists Mate.

He left the active Navy after 15 years and did 10 more in the Navy Reserve to retire, and worked in the textile industry as I said above and faced a ton of racism there. The only place he really found frequents who didn't judge him based on skin color were the veterans groups he joined in 80's and still spends a lot of time in.

His path was never easy since he was born, and as a result very little bothers him. He dismisses so much as just "talk" as he puts it. His responses to Trumps sexists talk was "people offended by that would have a heart attack on a Navy ship and what we said". He dismissed his outlandish things like Mexico paying for the wall as "That is just how New Yorkers are they exaggerate everything and you can't take them literally".

He has long griped about the decline of US manufacturing and told me the other day that even if Trump doesn't have all the answers at least he sees and acknowledged it was a problem and said he would help, instead of how he characterized "Democrats walk around talking about how we all just need to relearn how to have some sort of bullshit green jobs".

It is what it is. He took Trump seriously when he spoke on the issues he cares most about and didn't take all his problems seriously.