I got to thinking about this the last couple of days, and I managed to figure out a few minutes ago how to go find this Tweet from 2011:
This young man, Eric Miller of Chapin, is passing out Donald Trump literature. He likes his “common sense philosophy”… http://t.co/9IrMsrn
— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) May 7, 2011
I Tweeted that during the SC Republican Convention on Saturday, May 7 of that year. By that time, if I recall correctly, we knew Trump wasn’t going to run for president — in 2012. This young man was the only person I encountered at the convention who expressed his wish that that would change.
I distinctly remember debating with myself whether to post that. I didn’t want to seem to be holding the young man up to ridicule for advocating for something outlandish. But it seemed newsworthy, in something between a man-bites-dog and take-note-of way, that someone was actually pushing this position. So I compromised with myself. I merely noted the fact, with his explanation of why he was for Trump, without comment from me of any kind.
The Tweet was mainly ignored. One person reTweeted it, I now see. Probably not approvingly, given what I see on her feed.
Look how far we’ve come now. That one young man, we now know, was a harbinger. The first robin of spring (or, if you’re of a more apocalyptic mind, the first White Walker of Winter.) Something that everyone but him regarded as an outlandish idea has come to pass — Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America.
We just need to hope, and if it’s not blasphemous pray, that another thing that we have regarded as even more impossible does not happen today…
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Yeah, I know… the link on that Tweet doesn’t work.
I think it was originally to a picture of Mr. Miller.
I’ve searched back in my archives to May 2011, and found what I believe is that picture. But I’m not positive, more than five years later, that that’s him, and I don’t want to post it in case I’m wrong. (The old journalism rule is, “When in doubt, leave it out.”)
I thought it would be fairly easy to CONFIRM it was him, but I can’t seem to find this particular Eric Miller on Facebook or anywhere else.
If you’re out there, Eric Miller, please weigh in and let us know what you’re thinking today…
I thought y’all would find this more interesting. I guess events of last night sort of overtook this topic.
What interested me was that I was sorta kinda trying to identify Patient Zero of this epidemic which has now consumed our country. I was thinking, “I actually MET him…”