The chasm of American Politics
My husband and I enjoy talking to one another. We even have a YT show where we just blather on for an hour or so about our week, politics, family, friends, work, music, you name it, we ramble on about it.
There are many weeks we avoid politics on the show because it is so damned depressing, too damn stressing, and all around frustrating. Yet we can not dismiss it and find ourselves chatting throughout the week about whatever abomination has come down from on high.
This past weekend I found myself writing a lot (call it therapy) and our time was limited for the usual day-to-day chats. Late one evening my husband sat me down and ask what was on my mind. I laid it out in stark reality.
This divide in the country will not go away and I think we are heading for a period of instability akin to the Civil War.
The problem lies with our core beliefs. We on one side believe in human rights, humanity, diversity, fairness, justice, equality, feminism, immigrant rights, gay and trans rights. I went on for a bit in this vein and then I turned to the opposition.
They believe that their religion protects their rights to be anti-women, anti-immigrant, to oppose gay and trans persons rights or existence, to hate those not like them in religion, skin color, and beliefs.
It comes down to us on one side believing we are doing what is moral and right and them believing they are morally correct in their opposing beliefs. How do we bridge that chasm?
Where is common ground when they don't believe I have a right to bodily autonomy?
Where is common ground when their believe their religion says gay and trans people should die?
Where is common ground when they say I, a woman, should not have the vote, that being paid less than male colleagues is just the way it is, and I should be subservient to my husband as head of the household?
Where is the common ground when they deny the videos showing that Renee Good was not a threat to the murderous trigger happy bully ICE agent?
Where is the common ground with people who support the concentration camp system and abduction terror instituted by the ICE thugs?
Something to consider:
What if the United States Civil War had happened differently? What if the cause was not about slavery in the way it played out? Turn the idea sideways...what if Lincoln had not been the President but rather a slave owner had become President? What if the war happened because the national leaders said they wanted Slave Ownership protected as a right enshrined in the US Constitution. What if the Amendment passed in a majority of states? What then would the states opposing slavery have done if they had fired the first shot? What if they said we oppose slavery and wish to secede from union?
That is where we are at. Those in power at this moment wish to rob civil liberties, Constitutional protections, from a large number of Americans. We are standing on the brink.
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I came across this editorial floating around the internet of things. I think the author is Michael Jochum. It aligns with what I was discussing with my husband over the weekend.
I’ve been watching an absolutely heroic amount of pearl-clutching lately from people who insist that J.D. Vance would somehow be “worse” than Trump once Trump’s inevitable political and biological expiration arrives.
Let’s get something straight: it has never been about Trump, not for one second.
Trump is just the mascot. The real story is the people who finally saw themselves in him and felt validated by what they saw.
I actually believe most of them will drift away when the cult collapses, embarrassed, many of them will swear they were never really into him at all. The MAGA amnesia is going to be epic.
I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then even more surprisingly again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is.
I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. He wasn’t a candidate. He was a mirror.
If you were a racist, you found your guy.
If you were a misogynist, you found your guy.
If money was your only religion, you found your guy.
If your heart was armored shut, you found your guy.
If you callously and maliciously mocked disabled people, you found your guy.
If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy.
If you were a rapist, you found your guy.
If you’d done absolutely nothing to acknowledge, confront and address your emotional wreckage, you found your guy.
If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy.
If you were an aloof and perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy.
If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy.
If you were a conman, you found your guy.
If you menacingly mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy.
If you were raised by a toxic father and father figures, you found your guy.
If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy.
If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy.
If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy.
If you’d never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy.
If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy.
If your ego contained a hole so large not even the U.S. presidency could fill it, you found your guy.
If you were a sociopath who completely lacked empathy and compassion for other humans, you found your guy.
If Trump had only possessed two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one. Nope, this has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated.
Trump didn’t create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate. He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity.
If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
That’s the part that should chill the spine.
Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power?
Perhaps we were living in a fool’s paradise. Well…. we aren’t anymore."
