We face the end of America — the America I’ve so profoundly loved. I will be shattered.
Through past episodes of mob madness, always in the broader population good sense still prevailed. That indeed seemed a key American characteristic. And most voting Trump aren’t enflamed fanatics. Rather, what’s striking is the superciliousness. As if this is some kind of entertainment game. Nearly half of us won’t even bother voting.
We’re like brain-dead zombies staggering over a cliff.
America isn’t perfect; no country ever could be. But virtually unique in world history, ours was founded not on ethnicity or cultural tribalism, but on ideals and lofty aspirations — and with all our human imperfections, we’ve striven to fulfill them. To become better, not just for all our own people, but to make a better world. And we have accomplished great things.
Step by step we’ve advanced human dignity and rights: abolishing slavery; women voting; worker and consumer protections; greater racial equity; more sexual freedoms; and so on, growing as an open, enlightened cosmopolitan society welcoming to diverse peoples coming and contributing to economic dynamism and enriching our culture.
Trumpism hates all that. Its white Christian nationalism using “religious freedom” as a cover for shoving their narrow-minded beliefs down all our throats. The Dobbs decision was the first time a previously guaranteed right was revoked. Only a foretaste of what’s to come, undoing past progress.
All the post-Pennsylvania “unity” talk is empty. Instead of “all in this together,” Trumpism remains quintessentially us-against-them tribalism. They blame Democrats when their own demonization of others has been so incendiary. They’re the ones fetishizing political violence — January 6, and epidemic death threats against public officials —it’s been playing with fire, Trump throwing gasoline on it.
Turning to the global picture, for all the criticism, America has also done so much positive. Architects of the United Nations and a world order outgrowing “might makes right.” Defeating Germany and Japan, we aided their reconstruction, not as subjugated colonies, but independent partners. We helped rebuild war-torn Europe through the Marshall Plan. Nourished a web of alliances to keep the peace. Helped create a global trading system that has spread prosperity. Acted to stop atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and midwifed a peace there. George W. Bush’s PEPFAR plan was a huge effort combating the AIDS scourge in Africa. And on and on. Overall, America has been a force for good in the world.
Trump thinks all that’s stupid.
Right now an epochal threat to the enlightened global order is unfolding in Ukraine. Once again, America stands up for what’s right, battling a great evil. Trump would let it triumph. Doesn’t even understand the evil. Idolizes the murderous dictator behind it.
Rewarding Russia’s aggression will be globally devastating, emboldening bad guys everywhere. China would see a green light to invade Taiwan. The whole world made a much nastier, crime-ridden neighborhood for us to live in. A reality Trump refuses to comprehend, his “America First” shtick clueless about our true national interests.
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What in my youth drew me toward political engagement was a fundamental nobility of spirit about America and its democratic civic life. Representing, as the ancient Greeks might have said, a quest for the good. Pursued by largely good people. Now we’ll have not just a dictator but one whose blatant criminal depravity outstrips anything imaginable a few short years ago. And the Supreme Court has effectively put him above the law.
Autocrats like Turkey’s Erdogan have shown how to give democracy the death of a thousand cuts. Starting, indeed, with suborning the courts. Harassing and jailing journalists and other inconvenient people. Exploiting corruption to pay off the compliant. Skewing voting systems to hobble opponents. And so forth. While Republicans decry “the administrative state,” Trump will use his now-unfettered powers to the hilt to serve his dark vision and personal vendettas.
We’re bedazzled by the sheer animalistic lure of “strength,” but will regretfully learn what it really looks like in an autocratic ruler.
My favorite postage stamp (displayed on my wall) proclaims “America’s Light Fueled by Truth and Reason.” Trumpism is fueled by lies and unreason. Mark Twain said a lie can run around the world while the truth is still getting its shoes on. Now the very concept of truth is embattled.
The Republican convention was a tornado of lies, especially vilifying immigrants: “they empty their jails, their insane asylums.” Cheering such venomous nonsense, that convention was an insane asylum.
Ground zero was January 6, with all the lying that led up to it, and gaslighting us about what happened. Trump connived the violence, plotting to steal the election and overthrow our democracy, replete with fake electors. Now he disclaims responsibility with yet more demented lies, even while calling the jailed rioters — nearly a thousand of whom pleaded guilty to crimes — “hostages” and “warriors.”
What will electing him say about us as a nation? That character, honesty, human decency, no longer matter. That democracy no longer means anything; we no longer even understand it. America is still full of good people — how can we have come to this?
Republicans have plunged into a pantomime perversion of reality, a deluded delirium of cult worship. Vance long since cynically drank the Kool-Aid; now even Haley has. The country at large seems to shrug at the stupendous bizarreness. And while the Democrats’ candidate is unfit too (though far more benignly) they apparently can’t detour either from the looming cliff. So January 20 will see the customary pageantry — this time a sick grotesque of a proud tradition.
We take for granted our mild, peaceable society. No god guarantees it for us. The French Revolution started out all brotherhood and rights of man, then devolved into rivers of blood. Chronicling Trumpism I’ve kept repeating, “it will get worse,” and so it continues to metastasize, driven by some implacable law of mass psychology. This won’t be just another spin of the political wheel, but a lurch into very different and darker territory. The end of the America we’ve known.
Reason is what sets our species apart, and built civilization. But we always struggle with it. Religion has been a key incongruity, messing with our use of reason. Yet even religion has its own logic — which Trumpist idolatry flouts. Thus affronting rationality twice over.
Humans are proven capable of rationalizing vast wickedness. Fools dance around bonfires of reason. Throw those stamps into the flames.
