I wrote a blog post in June of 2016, leading up to the Presidential Election, assessing how Donald J. Trump became the Republican candidate for President. The fact that he was elected was a shock to me -- maybe it shouldn't have been -- and it made me reassess my assumption about the character of the American people. Fundamentally, I concluded that there was no monolithic "American people," no defined American culture [outside of fast food], and no "pledge of allegiance" to equality or democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville be damned.
Trump's term in office has served as an emetic, causing the vomiting up of every despicable element of the American underbelly, including white supremacists -- one side of the "very fine people" in Charlottesville, Virginia.
These disaffected, under-educated, previously disorganized rabble formed an unholy alliance with the reliable single-issue voters, such as the evangelicals, whose only focus was abortion, and who ignored the homeless, the children in cages, and the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
They joined arms with "freedom-loving" militias from Oregon to Michigan, from “sea to shining sea.” And to the gun-rights fanatics, who failed to see in the blood-soaked schools, dance floors, festivals, football games, and streets of America any reason to limit access to lethal firearms.
Unable to divine connective tissue for their targeted misanthropy, some of the more suggestive elements of Trump’s followers found, buried within the "Deep State," an oracle, Q -- and Qanon was formed. Its conspiracy theories became so influential, and so disruptive, that even Facebook finally imposed restrictions. Still, a Qanon supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, won the Republican primary for Georgia's 14th Congressional District. President Trump congratulated Greene and called her “a real winner.” The FBI has labeled Qanon as a potential domestic terrorism threat.
And here we are, awaiting the results of the 2020 Election, in which Donald Trump, after having exhibited all the worst behaviors we had anticipated, and more, has so far amassed some 70 million votes, 7 million more than his 2016 total, and counting. Joe Biden, with over 74 million votes, has already broken Barack Obama's record vote total, and the margin with which Hillary Clinton exceeded Trump's 2016 popular vote, and yet he clings to a razor thin lead in states he needed to win the electoral college.
Trump still had a narrow path to victory, but his demands to stop counting votes [but only in states where he is ahead] are being dismissed, leaving him to fall back on law suits, which are also being dismissed. His hope to have the Supreme Court, which, with Mitch McConnell's help, he has succeeded in moving to a six to three conservative majority, seems Sisyphean.
In the end, Joe Biden won the battle for the American Presidency, but in a sense it is a Pyrrhic victory. The fight to overcome the Trump Presidency has taken an enormous toll on the vision of America as somehow “exceptional,” as somehow worthy to lead the world towards freedom and justice, worthy of emulation — an America, her good “crowned with brotherhood.”
How long will it take us to reclaim that lofty vision?
