For the last few days, a copy-and-paste post has been circulating on social media, asking those horrified by last week’s election results what it is we’re afraid of. Many of us have expressed fear, along with disbelief and revulsion, and it’s fair to ask why we’re afraid. I was directly confronted by a family member who requested a list of the horrible and tragic events I fear may befall our country in the next 6 to 12 months; again, it’s a fair question. So I’ve given it some thought, and here’s my list.
Because I could easily write a whole book right now on the things that make me angry and/or afraid, I’ll start with these four: Trump’s ignorance, his immaturity, his mental instability, and his association with people who represent the darker side of humanity and of America’s history.
Our president-elect, and I physically shiver every time I read or write those words, is the most ignorant person ever elected to the presidency of our country. There’s a difference between being ignorant and being dumb; I think he’s both, but I can’t document his dumbness since he has never released academic transcripts (or tax returns, etc.), so I’ll stick to ignorance, for which there is an abundance of documentation.
Anyone applying for a job is expected to have the knowledge and skill required to perform that job; this is so basic, I can’t believe it needs to be mentioned. Hiring an “outsider” is a nice way of saying we hired someone who doesn’t have a clue what the hell he’s doing. He doesn’t know how the system works, he doesn’t know the governing charters (in this case, our Constitution), and he doesn’t know what the job consists of. The higher the position the more knowledge is required. There is no higher position than leader of the free world, so we should have been looking for a friggin’ genius; instead, we hired the guy standing on the corner holding a cardboard sign.
Not only is he ignorant of the job but he’s demonstrated a stubborn unwillingness to learn. He lacks intellectual curiosity. He lacks the social consciousness that would cause most of us to strive at least to give the appearance of competence. Look at the photos of Trump’s first meeting with President Obama after the election. He looks scared, as well he should be. He’s in so far over his head that he can’t even fake a look of confidence and competence.
In the absence of knowledge, he can rely only on populist appeal and demagoguery, and so far that’s working well for him among his followers. Matthew MacWilliams wrote in Politico Magazine on January 17, 2016:
If I asked you what most defines Donald Trump supporters, what would you say? They’re white? They’re poor? They’re uneducated? You’d be wrong.
In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.
That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations. And because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American electorate, among Democrats as well as Republicans, it’s very possible that Trump’s fan base will continue to grow.
(http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533)
There you have it. The people who elected Donald Trump don’t care that he knows nothing about governing. They wanted an authoritarian—an autocrat—and they got one. Some say the comparisons to Hitler are exaggerated; some say they’re spot on. By the time we know who’s right, it will be too late.
According to the Wall Street Journal,
During their private White House meeting on Thursday, Mr. Obama walked his successor through the duties of running the country, and Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope, said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obama’s term.
After meeting with Mr. Trump, the only person to be elected president without having held a government or military position, Mr. Obama realized the Republican needs more guidance. He plans to spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do, people familiar with the matter said.
Does it seem unreasonable to say that the Presidency of the United States is NO place for on-the-job training? My fellow citizens have elected the first president in our history with zero government or military experience, and they can’t understand why I and millions of others are afraid of what he’ll do. At a time in the world’s history when we face the greatest global threats and conflicts, combined with the most powerful and sophisticated weaponry that’s ever existed, we have our most unprepared leader. That’s scary as hell!
My next fear is that Trump is the most immature person ever to stand on a presidential campaign platform or debate stage or to be welcomed into the White House as its next resident, which is to say he is temperamentally unfit for the position to which he’s been elected. If your 5-year-old were inaugurated president, given highly classified information including the nuclear codes, given power to make decisions affecting your safety and welfare and that of everyone else in the world, would you be scared?
When was the last time you saw a presidential candidate accuse his opponent of everything she said about him, a weird version of Pee Wee Herman’s comic line “I know you are but what am I?” When was the last time you heard a presidential candidate attack everyone who criticized him, including the SNL actor who impersonated him? When was the last time a presidential candidate had to have his Twitter privileges revoked the week before the election because he has no impulse control? When was the last time you saw a presidential candidate remind himself in a campaign speech to remain calm, be cool? Never. Never!
It was frightening enough to have a candidate bent on wreaking revenge on everyone who threatened his delicate ego, even more frightening now to think how he’ll respond when he’s president and has all the power of that office at his fingertips. For the first time in our nation’s history, we witnessed a presidential candidate threaten to use his presidential power to have his opponent investigated and possibly incarcerated. That alone should scare any sensible person. His Twitter wars, his petty insults, and his mean-spirited attacks on every demographic in our country do not evidence the maturity and gravitas necessary to be president.
Vocabulary is more than a subject we study as part of our elementary-school English classes, it’s an indicator of our ability to process complex ideas. Children’s ideas are generally not too complex, and their vocabularies reflect the simplicity of their lives and scope of understanding. That’s normal and healthy for children but not for adults and especially not for an adult who thinks he should be president. Jack Shafer, in an August 13, 2015, Politico article, rated Trump’s vocabulary at a third-grade level. (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/donald-trump-talks-like-a-third-grader-121340)
Some of his go-to words are “great,” “terrific,” “loser,” “disaster,” “very,” “disgusting,” “unfair,” and “ashamed.” Humans learn words as we need them to communicate our thoughts. Toddlers have a relatively simple world, and the things they want to communicate are basic biological needs: they’re hungry, thirsty, hot, cold, need to use the restroom. As they begin making observations and processing the world around them rather than just their own needs, they have to learn more words to express those more complex ideas.
Trump’s former ghost-writer for The Art of the Deal claims, “He has the smallest vocabulary of any person who has ever run for any kind of office, much less president . . .” Schwartz also says,
“It’s a 200-word vocabulary, so as soon he gets beyond that, you know that he’s reading someone else’s words,” Schwartz said. He theorized that Trump probably doesn’t familiarize himself with prepared remarks before delivering them because of his “incredibly short attention span.”
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-vocabulary_us_580d458de4b0a03911ed69b6)
Admittedly, I don’t know how Mr. Schwartz arrived at that figure; but having listened to Trump speak as many times as I could stomach doing so, I think the estimate is pretty accurate. For perspective, child development experts estimate that a 2 ½-year-old should know about 300 words.
Lest someone think I’m being petty by spending so much time on something as seemingly insignificant as a small vocabulary, I believe a person’s words reveal a great deal about the person. They reveal the depth and breadth of what the person has read and studied; reading and study build one’s word bank as they increase one’s understanding of the world–a necessary qualification for a head of state–and it’s safe to assume that someone so verbally bankrupt has read and studied very little and understands very little about the world. Understanding of language, in my opinion, also reflects a person’s ability to process complex ideas as well as the person’s interest in ideas. We learn words as we need them; those who remain at the toddler level, whose worlds consist only of their own needs, have little use for more sophisticated words.
In an excellent article titled “The Seven Broken Guardrails of Democracy,” David Frum begins with this:
The first guardrail to go missing was the old set of expectations about how a candidate for president of the United States should speak and act. Here’s Adlai Stevenson accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 1952:
That I have not sought this nomination, that I could not seek it in good conscience, that I would not seek it in honest self-appraisal, is not to say that I value it the less.
There was a certain quantum of malarkey here—but it wasn’t all malarkey. From the founding of the republic, Americans have looked to qualities of personal restraint as one of the first checks on the power of office. “The aim of every political Constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers, men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous, whilst they continue to hold their public trust.” So argued James Madison in Federalist 57. In Federalist 68, Alexander Hamilton promised more specifically: “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.”
(http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-seven-broken-guardrails-of-democracy/484829/)
Okay, so nobody talks like that any more; but Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other leaders speak and act in ways that evidence their knowledge and intelligence in the best 21st-century form. Do I need to point out the contrast with one of Trump’s classic lines, “I’m speaking with myself [on foreign policy] because I have a very good brain”? I rest my case.
Then there are his words from his first televised sit-down interview after the election. Interviewer Lesley Stahl asked for his response to the supporters demonstrating in his name. Here’s what he said:
“I am so saddened to hear that,” Trump [said] when she said Latinos and Muslims are facing harassment. “And I say, ‘Stop it.’ If it — if it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: ‘Stop it.'”
Wow, Donald! That’s it? “Stop it”? A five-year-old would say that. You can’t reason intelligently with these people—your own supporters—and express to them that what they’re doing is wrong and you refuse to tolerate or condone that kind of behavior in your name or in our country? Just “stop it”? That’s all you’ve got? And you wonder what we’re scared of? Throughout his campaign, Trump told us how he would fix problems by simply speaking solutions; he would command bad people such as ISIS to cease, and the problem would be solved.
Smart people can see two problems here: First, he sees his position as that of a dictator. He speaks, and people follow his commands. Second, the dark forces have been unleashed and empowered, so they no longer need Trump and have no reason to listen to him except when he is further advancing their causes. There will be a nasty divorce between the demagogue and his adoring fans because they no longer need each other. They helped him get elected; he has no further incentive to keep his promises or live up to their hope that he would be their champion. They’ve been given power and legitimacy to carry on their bigotry and violence with or without his support. Are you scared yet?
The guardrail metaphor resonates with me since I had a few hair-raising moments during my 1996 trip to Israel. On one of our daily excursions, our bus driver took us on a narrow, winding road up a hillside—not one of the roads usually available to tourists. I believe it was called the Old Roman Road, so for obvious reasons, there was no guardrail or any kind of barrier between our bus and the sheer drop-off into the valley below and the road was not engineered to support modern tour buses. We were riding in a large modern tour bus, however; and it seems the distance between its tires and the edge of the road could probably have been measured in inches. Our president is our representative on the world stage; our national security is partly dependent on our representative’s ability to command the respect and cooperation of other world leaders. His mental and emotional stability and his personal restraint are among the guardrails that prevent our plummet into oblivion. So far, the most common caricature of our newly elected top official in publications around the world is a diaper-clad, tantrum-throwing toddler. I was scared on that bus ride, and I’m even more scared now.
Next, I fear the fact that we have elected an extreme narcissist as our president. It didn’t take anyone long to recognize the symptoms once we started hearing from Trump in large doses; his narcissism was the first thing to be noticed and analyzed among anyone with even a Psych 101 class on their transcript. Professional shrinks have said there’s a little narcissism in every leader, that it takes a bit of self-importance to motivate a person to seek high office and extreme power. No one, however, has ever thought Donald Trump’s ego and self-importance are within the normal, healthy range.
Amy Ellis Nutt quotes experts who define narcissism thus:
“Narcissism is a trait all human beings have to one extent or another, so it’s not inherently negative,” said psychologist Margaret Jordan, an expert in personality disorders at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine. “It’s a part of self-esteem and is important to mental health.”
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/22/is-donald-trump-a-textbook-narcissist/)
Ms. Nutt goes on to ask when self-regard becomes pathological. Her answer:
The most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes narcissistic personality disorder as being “characterized by the presence of both grandiosity and attention seeking” and lists nine criteria, of which five are necessary for diagnosis. Among them: a need for excessive admiration; preoccupation with fantasies of brilliance, power and success; and a sense of being special.
Those traits can lead to arrogance and haughtiness, and a single-minded pursuit of status that make close relationships difficult and devoid of true intimacy.
About six clinicians were consulted in the preparation of Ms. Nutt’s article, all of whom refused to specifically evaluate Trump, citing what’s called the Goldwater Rule, which discourages psychiatric professionals from evaluating people with whom they’ve not personally met. A few of them did, however, agree to speak on the process by which they would identify possible signs of narcissistic personality disorder. They shared these examples:
Trump has said that his “IQ is one of the highest,” that he has “the world’s greatest memory,” and that he is “dazzled” by his own creations.
And during his speech Thursday night at the Republican convention, he faulted the government’s “broken system,” then declared: “I alone can fix it.”
Although they declined to say whether these statements qualify as pathological, I’m going to draw my own conclusion, which is that no matter what we call it, that level of grandiosity is dangerous in a president. The professionals did go so far as to say it is unprecedented.
Our new president-elect sees every situation only as if affects him; the rest of the world exists as his supporting cast, and we are useful only as we enhance his ego. Chanting, adoring crowds yield many votes; having the biggest crowds means he’s the best candidate and his message is obviously right. The system is rigged unless it serves his purpose; now he’s no longer whining about a rigged system. The vote would be fair and he’d accept the results if he won, but if he didn’t win it would obviously mean his opponent had cheated and he wouldn’t commit to accepting the results. When crowds of protesters began to throng the streets in protest of his election, he didn’t express concern for anyone’s safety or talk to the protesters and address their concerns—going back to his childish communication ability. Instead, he tweeted some of his favorite words: “very unfair.” Unfair to him, of course, the only effect that matters.
Dan P. McAdams says of Trump’s personality:
More than even Ronald Reagan, Trump seems supremely cognizant of the fact that he is always acting. He moves through life like a man who knows he is always being observed. If all human beings are, by their very nature, social actors, then Donald Trump seems to be more so—superhuman, in this one primal sense.
(http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/)
What does all of this mean to citizens of our country, and why should any of us be frightened by it? A man who thinks he alone can solve problems is delusional, autocratic, uneducated, and unlikely to work within the checks-and-balances structure of our government. As President Obama recently said, “A man who can be baited with a tweet has no business with the nuclear codes.”
A president who has threatened to jail his opponent, to “open up the libel laws” to silence and prosecute journalists, whose first response to every problem is to file or at least threaten to file a lawsuit, who shows no capacity for empathy or compassion, who lies and then lies about his lies—all for one purpose: to defend and protect his enormous but fragile ego—is dangerous. When he is president, SNL actors will continue to impersonate him, every journalist in the world will continue to write about him, every scholar will continue to study and analyze him. If he continues his penchant for vengeance and focusing on protecting his ego against every minute affront, he’ll have little time left over for tending to the duties of his office. And we will all be the losers for that: not just the Democrats but ALL Americans.
The overriding fear is that Trump’s election, and the events and movements which made his election possible, have established a new normal, which can’t be accepted if we’re not only to survive but to progress and innovate as Americans have always done.
C. J. Polychroniou prefaces his interview with Noam Chomsky with these words:
On Nov. 8, Donald Trump managed to pull the biggest upset in U.S. politics by tapping successfully into the anger of white voters and appealing to the lowest inclinations of people in a manner that would have probably impressed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels himself.
But what exactly does Trump’s victory mean and what can one expect from this megalomaniac when he takes over the reins of power on Jan. 20, 2017? What is Trump’s political ideology, if any, and is “Trumpism” a movement? Will U.S. foreign policy be any different under a Trump administration? Some years ago, public intellectual Noam Chomsky warned that the political climate in the U.S. was ripe for the rise of an authoritarian figure. Now, he shares his thoughts on the aftermath of this election, the moribund state of the U.S. political system and why Trump is a real threat to the world and the planet in general.
Mr. Polychroniou goes on to quote Mr. Chomsky:
On Nov. 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government—executive, Congress, the Supreme Court—in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.
(http://www.ecowatch.com/noam-chomsky-trump-2093271018.html)
Brilliant minds like Mr. Polychroniou and Mr. Chomsky are not given to speaking in hyperbole; they are cautious and measured and don’t venture outside what they can document with fact. When such writers do indulge in hyperbole, it is a loud signal that we should all take notice. And we should be very afraid.
In the face of such dire predictions, our human tendency is to feel overwhelmed and to calm our fears by accepting the new normal and telling ourselves it won’t be so bad. The sun will rise tomorrow, and we’ll be okay. It’s exhausting to be always trying to swim against the current, so we tell ourselves it won’t do any good to try. But that leads to mediocrity and satisfaction with the status quo, and that’s not the America I know. We’ve already lowered our standards to a frightening level; how much lower are we willing to go?
Americans have always been innovators, strivers toward excellence. When our road was too old or inadequately engineered to support our bus, we didn’t shrug our shoulders and sigh “Oh, well!” We brought our creativity and genius to bear and built a new road or re-engineered the old road, because just getting by was not enough. Is our new standard for success going to be just staying on the road without falling off and plunging into the abyss? Will a good day be one on which nobody dies? Will a good day be one on which our president doesn’t do anything stupid or dangerous? Will we no longer even expect excellence or progress? It seems that’s where we’re headed, and that scares a few of us.
My next fear is the mainstreaming of attitudes which we thought we’d driven underground. Racism and bigotry have always existed in America; they’re written into our DNA. The slaves were here before the pilgrims, we committed genocide on the native inhabitants of this continent, and we herded Americans of Japanese ancestry into internment camps. Our hands are dirty, and the last few decades have not eliminated prejudice and bigotry; but dammit, we’d come a long way toward extending equal rights to all Americans; and those who opposed equal rights—who wanted to keep America white—were at least driven underground.
Looking back on it, we should have seen this coming. Underground, things boil and seethe and eventually erupt. Donald Trump released that roiling, bubbling lava; and it will take a long time to contain it again, if we ever can. But it’s probably a bit disingenuous for us to feign surprise. We always knew it was still there, especially during these last 8 years when the ugly vitriol of racism has been spewed every day at our black president. I knew it was there when my black friend told me he was afraid to drive through certain areas between Florida and North Carolina and another black friend is nervous about holding her white husband’s hand in public. We should have spent less time congratulating ourselves on our progress and more time seeking out and confronting the bastions of bigotry that still existed.
But now that time has passed, and what was hiding in bunkers on the fringes of society is now marching down Main Street. Churches are being burned and vandalized, children are being threatened and frightened, teachers are being defied because of their race or ethnicity, hate speech and bullying are rampant, and so are death threats. Signs are reappearing on water fountains which I have not seen since my youth. What’s next? Signs on city buses asking patrons of color to take the rear seats? And the perpetrators of all that evil are celebrating the election of a president who has legitimized and encouraged their bigotry and violence.
Those of us who fear this new normal and the results of Trump’s unleashing the forces of darkness are being told to relax because he’s going to surround himself with good advisers, so it will all be okay. That statement is not reassuring first of all because a president should not need babysitters; he shouldn’t need people to revoke his Twitter privileges at times when a careless remark could spark disaster. He’s not a 12-year-old who needs a break from screen time. He’s a 70-year-old who is supposed to be competent to execute the duties of the office to which he has, however tragically, been elected. Good presidents need good advisers, of course, because no one person can see every aspect of a situation; more minds mean a greater range of perspectives. But good presidents need good advisers to augment their judgment, not to compensate for its lack.
My second response to this most disturbing attempt at reassurance is that it’s a lie. Trump is not surrounding himself with sound advisers. Among his first appointments is Steve Bannon, his campaign manager, as his chief strategist. This one fact alone ought to scare the bejeezus out of anyone with good sense. The person with the president’s ear, guiding his policy making, has been credited with creating a haven for all of the groups loosely affiliated under the umbrella of the alt-right.
According to Mother Jones writer Sarah Posner,
By bringing on Stephen Bannon, Trump was signaling a wholehearted embrace of the “alt-right,” a once-motley assemblage of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ethno-nationalistic provocateurs who have coalesced behind Trump and curried the GOP nominee’s favor on social media. In short, Trump has embraced the core readership of Breitbart News.
“We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon’s target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon’s leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an “eclectic mix of renegades,” accusing President Barack Obama of importing “more hating Muslims,” and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of “political correctness.”
(http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news)
We’re also told by many news outlets that the KKK, the American Nazi Party, and other white nationalist groups are celebrating Trump’s victory and praising his appointment of Bannon who they say will hold Trump to the promises he made them during his campaign.
Less dangerous but equally appalling are names on Trump’s short list for cabinet positions, a group who, according to Robert Reich, “reads like a Who’s-Who of rightwing know-nothings (Sarah Palin), dangerous retreads (Newt Gingrich and John Bolton), arch conservatives (Sam Brownback), disgraced hacks (Chris Christie), Wall Street regressives (Steven Mnuchin), and raving opportunists (Rudi Giuliani).”
So much for the knowledgeable advisers! Sarah Palin can’t compose a coherent sentence; the most accurate description I’ve heard of her speech is “word salad.” The good news of Rick Scott’s possible appointment is that it would get him out of Florida, but that’s small comfort when one considers the irony of appointing the man whose name became public for perpetrating the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history as Secretary of Health and Human Services. One of his first tasks would be assisting in repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he has already obstructed in the state of Florida.
This scary new normal is for me, as an old white woman, not too personal. Yes, there is an age prejudice, and I’ve seen and experienced it; yet it does not cause me to fear for my life. I am nervous about the talk of making changes to Social Security and Medicare, but I’m more frightened for my brown and black friends, my gay friends, my women friends who still work and whose work environment is bound to become more misogynistic and tolerant of sexual harassment and assault. When both the president and his chief adviser have known histories of sexual assault and domestic abuse, those facts lend a certain tacit sufferance of other would-be perpetrators’ actions.
I lived through the middle decades of the twentieth century, and I saw what life was like under the Jim Crow laws. I heard the N word spoken casually, I saw the signs on the water fountains and entrances to businesses, and I saw the signs in buses and saw them being enforced. I don’t want to return to those times. I don’t want anyone having to live in the closet and fear for their lives and their safety. I don’t want to see loving relationships ended because someone else disapproves of them. Tolerance is not based on approval; it’s based on compassion and empathy, and I want to live in a country where compassion and empathy are the norms. I fear living in a country where they’re not the norms.
I fear for those millions of people who have just become accustomed to having health insurance, and have been able for the first time in their lives to take care of their own and their families’ health, having that ripped away from them. I fear for the millions who as I write are living in fear of deportation, of having their families torn apart, of being removed from their homes and their livelihoods when they’ve been contributing members of society. I fear what will happen to our free press and our freedom of speech. I fear a further stretch of the Second Amendment to allow dangerous people to possess even greater numbers of dangerous weapons. I fear for Muslims, who have already been subjected to abuse, being further marginalized and persecuted. We interned Japanese Americans; it’s not a stretch to think an intolerant government might do the same to Muslim Americans.
I fear a president who, according to the repugnant Ms. Conway, is considering convening a special session of Congress on Inauguration Day to immediately repeal Obamacare. Inauguration Day? Go dance with your wife, for God’s sake, and enjoy the pageantry and adulation you so crave. You can start destroying people’s lives tomorrow. What’s the rush? Are you so petty and mean-spirited that you must give the finger to your predecessor before all of his personal belongings have even been moved out of the house? (http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/13/politics/kellyanne-conway-trump-special-session-congress/)
A president with no respect for tradition and custom, who will destroy decades- or centuries-old institutions and practices on a whim is a frightening president. A president who steadfastly refused to honor the tradition of releasing his tax returns, who refused to be transparent about his foreign ties, who seems unfazed by FBI and Russian interference in our election because the results benefit him is a dangerous president.
I also fear the false equivalence that has prevailed throughout the campaign and now into the transition period. A simpler way of understanding false equivalence is apples and oranges. Comparing Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton is comparing apples to oranges. Comparing this election to any other election in our history is comparing apples to oranges. Expecting the same acceptance of this new president that should be accorded to any other qualified winner of the office is comparing apples to oranges. This election was not a normal election, yet it has to an alarming degree been treated like one by everyone from the media to the least informed voters.
As a result, we have normalized things that are not and should not be normal. We’ve made it normal and acceptable for a con man to become a serious candidate for our highest office and to garner enough votes to win that office. We’ve made it normal and acceptable for one of our two major political parties to allow that to happen and to use its power and resources to support that candidate. We’ve made it normal and acceptable for a presidential candidate to threaten and intimidate his opponent and anyone else who got under his very thin skin.
This is not the America I want to live in. I’m fearful and angry that I no longer know my country.
Last of all, I fear that many people will read the 5000 words I’ve written and still not understand what I and others like me are scared of. We’ll still, in their minds, be sore losers, crybabies, and hypocrites. None of this will make any impression, just as each revelation of Trump’s degenerate past made no impression. This is my greatest fear of all: the fear that we now live in an America so deeply divided that we’re not just trying to reach across the aisle any longer; we’re trying to reach across a chasm so wide that there’s no common ground for coming together and living as brothers and sisters. Bridging that chasm has to be our primary goal. It’s not negotiable; it must be done, because failing in this “great experiment” is just not an option.
“When you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies.”
Robert Kennedy
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