Being Rid of Trump Is Only the First Step in National Recovery

Donald Trump is, in my view a horrible and dangerous individual who has proven why no malignant narcissist should ever hold high elected office.  A president should care about the good of the nation and the wellbeing of all its citizens.  Not so with Trump who only cares about himself- satiating his incredible ego and now remaining in office in the hope of avoiding much deserved likely criminal prosecutions for tax evasion and more.  If Trump loses the election today, it will be a huge first step in repairing the nation.  But Trump is not the only American displaying frightening levels of self-absorption and hatred of others. His base is filled with millions of hate-filled individuals whether they are members of white supremacist militias or country club women and church ladies who feign politeness and/or religiosity while supporting an individual who is the antithesis of both.   It is dismaying how so many can be so foul beneath the surface, seemingly motivated primarily by racism or a religious extremism willed with animus for others that makes a mockery of Christ's gospel message.  Somehow, it will be necessary moving forward toward national recovery to change these cold and malignant hearts.  A column in the Washington Post looks at where we find ourselves as a nation today:

Boarding up storefronts in the days before an election isn't something we do in this country. Supporters of one presidential candidate don't use their vehicles to create havoc on major highways or to threaten a bus filled with supporters of the other candidate. We don't go into Election Day wondering if all the votes will be counted — or if everyone will accept the outcome. We don't turn a deadly pandemic into a political issue. None of this happens in the self-proclaimed greatest democracy on Earth.

Until now.  It is tempting to blame all the chaos and conflict we're living through on President Trump — and to hope that if Trump is defeated, things will snap back to the old normal. But Trump is a mere symptom, not the disease itself.

As he campaigns for Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama has riffed on a memorable line from his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama: "Being president doesn't change who you are, it reveals who you are." More than that, the Trump presidency has revealed who we are as a nation.

If Biden's superpower as a politician is empathy, Trump's is shamelessness. He has zero respect for the guardrails that long proscribed our political life.

Not so long ago, a public official caught in a lie had some explaining to do and some contrition to display; Trump simply repeats the lie, confident that many of his followers will believe it. He claims that he can lose only if the election is somehow riddled with fraud. And when a caravan of Trump supporters dangerously surrounded a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway Friday — an incident now being investigated by the FBI — it was no surprise that Trump reacted by calling those reckless drivers "patriots" and saying they "did nothing wrong."

What continues to be surprising and disturbing is the wider Trump effect: the way he gives both his supporters and his opponents permission to say and do things they might once have considered beyond the pale. At rallies, that means encouraging ritual chants of "Lock her up!" or "Lock him up!" about Trump's political opponents.

But if Trump revealed this ugliness, he didn't invent it. A segment of the White population, especially in rural areas and small towns, was already alienated from political and cultural "elites" in the big, globalized urban centers — and increasingly anxious about lost status and power in a nation rapidly becoming more diverse. Unjustified police violence and unaddressed systemic racism had already brought many Black Americans to the boil-over point — and Trump devoted himself to turning up the temperature.

[T]oo many Americans [are] looking to politicians to provide them with a sense of affirmation and superiority rather than with carefully considered policy proposals that might benefit the entire nation.

Take Trump's opposition to the Affordable Care Act, . . . Trump's animus about "Obamacare" was personal: Destroying it wasn't about changing health-care policy but about dismantling a hated opponent's legacy.

Even if Trump gets the electoral drubbing he deserves, the cleavages he has so successfully and destructively exploited will still endanger us. Covid-19 will still plague the land. No election can erase the fact that we have more cases and deaths than any other nation. Whether or not Trump is defeated, his influence can linger: Too much of the country is refusing to regularly wear masks because the hated "other tribe" insists that everyone should, making a bare face the 2020 equivalent of a "Make America Great Again" hat.

One thing that gives me hope is the fact that so many of us — nearly 100 million, as of Monday — defied both the raging pandemic and widespread attempts at voter suppression to cast ballots before Election Day.

We can't begin to solve our problems unless we talk to one another, and elections are the venue for that conversation. We may be yelling and screaming across the divide, but it's a beginning — and you have a part to play. Vote.