The Long Night Ahead
The big problem we face in the Trumpocalypse is not Donald Trump. One tiny-handed demagogue can't upend the entire American system of democracy. And he can't do it in just a couple of years. The mess we're in took decades to happen.
The problem is not Donald Trump. He's just the guy who figured out how to take advantage of the problem and use it for his own gain. The problem lies in American society. The problem is us.
And when I say "us," I mean the people who look like me and had a similar upbringing to mine. Good ol' wholesome apple pie white "Christian" America. We're the ones who did this. We're the ones who are enabling it to go on. It will continue for as long as we allow it to go on - and the end of Trump himself, one way or another, will not necessarily be the end of it.
I keep saying it's going to take us at least a generation to recover. A generation in which the US is seen as a backward, laughingstock of a nation, similar to the Ottoman Empire when it was called "the sick man of Europe." Only we'll be a sick man with nuclear weapons. I'm sure the world is going to love that.
The problem is us. The problem is that we've become so selfish that simple human compassion is now a partisan issue. We've become so enamored of our own opinions and our own view of the world that we reject observable facts that are staring us in the face - and we take pride in it! We've become so concerned with "winning" that we'll abandon any principle and overlook any moral failure in the pursuit of "victory."
And perhaps worst of all, we've let America's Original Sin - White Supremacy - back into the room. Some would say it's never left the room, and they may very well be right, but today it's regained a level of political respectability that it hasn't had in decades.
We have become so selfish, so narcissistic, so callous and so hypocritical that many of us who call ourselves "Christian" have stopped believing in the real Jesus, who told us to do hard things like love our enemies and welcome the outcast and the stranger. Many of us have traded in the real Jesus for a cheap knockoff who looks and thinks more like we do. But that's not going to work. A false idol never holds up for long.
And do you know what all that does? It makes us afraid. If we can no longer trust our government, if we can no longer trust our community, if we can no longer trust the facts we see with our own eyes, and we can no longer trust in God, what can we trust in? We'll flock to anyone who can put on a show good enough to make us think he might protect us. We'll tell ourselves that such people are "the right people" to make all the decisions and take all the fear and anxiety away. We'll hate who he tells us to hate, bomb who he tells us to bomb and even build stupid walls. And once we've committed to this kind of "strong leader," we'd darn well better stay loyal, no matter what happens. Otherwise, we might be next on the list of people to be hated, cast out or even bombed.
Trump didn't make all this happen. It started decades ago, with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and thousands of mini Nixons and Reagans filling up the city councils and the state legislatures and the halls of Congress, telling us that government was bad, that our tax money was being wasted on lazy brown people, that untold riches would trickle down to everyone if we just trusted the wealthy to use their money in ways they'd never used it to get wealthy in the first place. We had to be carefully taught, guided and nurtured through the years. And the only way it's going to change is with another such effort, applied in the other direction.
I didn't vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. I liked his message, but he didn't have the political infrastructure behind him to make any of it happen. Now I feel like I made a mistake. True, the infrastructure isn't there, but it's never going to be there without the message first. Bernie probably would have ended up a very frustrated president - but he's been and can still be the start of something new. Something he probably won't live to see completed. Something I may not even live to see completed. But still something worth doing. Something that needs doing.
There's a long, dark night ahead for this country. But it doesn't have to be the end. Martin Luther King once said, "Even the most starless midnight may herald the dawn of some great fulfillment." We must all do our part to make that happen.
The problem is not Donald Trump. He's just the guy who figured out how to take advantage of the problem and use it for his own gain. The problem lies in American society. The problem is us.
And when I say "us," I mean the people who look like me and had a similar upbringing to mine. Good ol' wholesome apple pie white "Christian" America. We're the ones who did this. We're the ones who are enabling it to go on. It will continue for as long as we allow it to go on - and the end of Trump himself, one way or another, will not necessarily be the end of it.
I keep saying it's going to take us at least a generation to recover. A generation in which the US is seen as a backward, laughingstock of a nation, similar to the Ottoman Empire when it was called "the sick man of Europe." Only we'll be a sick man with nuclear weapons. I'm sure the world is going to love that.
The problem is us. The problem is that we've become so selfish that simple human compassion is now a partisan issue. We've become so enamored of our own opinions and our own view of the world that we reject observable facts that are staring us in the face - and we take pride in it! We've become so concerned with "winning" that we'll abandon any principle and overlook any moral failure in the pursuit of "victory."
And perhaps worst of all, we've let America's Original Sin - White Supremacy - back into the room. Some would say it's never left the room, and they may very well be right, but today it's regained a level of political respectability that it hasn't had in decades.
We have become so selfish, so narcissistic, so callous and so hypocritical that many of us who call ourselves "Christian" have stopped believing in the real Jesus, who told us to do hard things like love our enemies and welcome the outcast and the stranger. Many of us have traded in the real Jesus for a cheap knockoff who looks and thinks more like we do. But that's not going to work. A false idol never holds up for long.
And do you know what all that does? It makes us afraid. If we can no longer trust our government, if we can no longer trust our community, if we can no longer trust the facts we see with our own eyes, and we can no longer trust in God, what can we trust in? We'll flock to anyone who can put on a show good enough to make us think he might protect us. We'll tell ourselves that such people are "the right people" to make all the decisions and take all the fear and anxiety away. We'll hate who he tells us to hate, bomb who he tells us to bomb and even build stupid walls. And once we've committed to this kind of "strong leader," we'd darn well better stay loyal, no matter what happens. Otherwise, we might be next on the list of people to be hated, cast out or even bombed.
Trump didn't make all this happen. It started decades ago, with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and thousands of mini Nixons and Reagans filling up the city councils and the state legislatures and the halls of Congress, telling us that government was bad, that our tax money was being wasted on lazy brown people, that untold riches would trickle down to everyone if we just trusted the wealthy to use their money in ways they'd never used it to get wealthy in the first place. We had to be carefully taught, guided and nurtured through the years. And the only way it's going to change is with another such effort, applied in the other direction.
I didn't vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. I liked his message, but he didn't have the political infrastructure behind him to make any of it happen. Now I feel like I made a mistake. True, the infrastructure isn't there, but it's never going to be there without the message first. Bernie probably would have ended up a very frustrated president - but he's been and can still be the start of something new. Something he probably won't live to see completed. Something I may not even live to see completed. But still something worth doing. Something that needs doing.
There's a long, dark night ahead for this country. But it doesn't have to be the end. Martin Luther King once said, "Even the most starless midnight may herald the dawn of some great fulfillment." We must all do our part to make that happen.
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