Trump Has Smashed Our Country’s Moral Compass
I’m finally calming down enough to think things through more analytically. Well, sort of.
Except I’ve discovered this interesting thing: a lot of what I feel about Trump isn’t political, it’s personal. Very personal.
I bet it’s the same for a whole lot of other people, too. Think back. Somewhere in your past there’s a person who made you question everything your parents told you not to do. Everything the Bible told you not to do, for that matter. And made you go, “Yo! God! Are you seeing this or what?”
Trump is that guy. He lies. Incessantly. He cheats and brags about it. He bullies and bribes people into doing what he wants them to do (Carrier et al) or to keep them from doing things he doesn’t want them to do (4,095 lawsuits).
He says things we can’t believe we’re hearing from a public official (“You can grab ’em by the…” oh, you know the rest) and says everyone does it or somebody else “started it.” He demonizes whole cultures (Mexican = Rapist). Women, he chooses to trivialize (“Goofy Elizabeth Warren”), patronize (“Such a nasty woman”) and/or objectify (“Grab ‘em…” yeah, that again). And then denies it.
He strategically antagonizes and equivocates, ignores ethics and protocols out of both ignorance and egoism (Taiwan call) and instigates petty squabbles to distract us from the fast ones he’s pulling. I mean, the man divided and then conquered an entire country, for Chrissake. And it may have been more for business purposes than out of any real desire to run that country.
Ho-ly schnikes.
And the fact that he’s getting away with all this makes America look different not just to me, but to the entire bloody world. All over the planet, there are people who still have a naïve but touching trust in America. I’m talking about those “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” that the Statue of Liberty welcomes and who look at us with touching awe.
In my youth I was awed, too. I’m a Kennedy-era kid. So my leaders were elegant and eloquent — okay, not all. And JFK’s dalliances top Clinton’s by a country mile, that’s true. But our way of choosing those leaders, until recently, was proof that our democracy worked.
America looked safe. Secure. The horrible things those foreign dreamers were desperately running from didn’t happen here. The things they longed most fervently for could only happen here. In fact, the American Dream may have meant even more to them than it does to us.
I wonder how they feel now that America looks a lot more like the countries they risked their lives to leave?
Here’s how Aodhán O’Riordáin, Irish Labour lawmaker, feels. Turn it up loud:
I understand his anger. And I grieve for him and all those in other countries who share that anger. And us, too.
Because stripped of the ethical and moral glue that used to hold us together, our country is in tatters. That’s the real reason so many people are having such a hard time getting over this thing and figuring out what to do next. It’s more than just an election they’re trying to recover from. The moral compass that used to keep us on track has gone all caddywhompus.
We had Evangelicals championing a man who has broken all but one or two of the Ten Commandments. We had people fighting mad about fat cats and elitists fawning over a trust fund baby who lives in a gold plated apartment in the sky.
(And who had the audacity to say Hillary Clinton “spoke with contempt for the people who pay their taxes and scratch out a living,” while she lived, “a sequestered life behind gates and locks and guards.” With a straight face, after flying to the rally in his big old private jet, he said that.)
We had college educated men and women voting for a guy who doesn’t read and makes fun of “elitists.” We had women voting for a guy who admitted on camera that he doesn’t treat women respectfully, thinks women who work are dangerous, and that if a woman is sexually harassed at work she should just find a new job and let the guy who harassed her keep doing it to other women.
It’s like millions of people stepped into the privacy of that ballot booth and went full kamikaze, mad as hell, hissing, “Damn the torpedoes, let’s sink this bitch!”
And nobody saw it coming. I watch the talking heads bicker on TV, read countless contradictory op ed articles everyday from press and pundits trying to figure out what went wrong and what to do about it.
There’s only one thing almost all agree upon: the media is our coal mine canary. Here’s what CNN’s Christiane Amanpour told the Committee to Protect Journalists:
“This is how it goes with authoritarians like Sisi, Erdoğan, Putin, the Ayatollahs, Duterte, et al . . . First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating — until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison — and then who knows?”
Take out the word “media” from that and put in “protesters” or almost any group who opposes what’s going on in Trumpland today — put your own name in there if you like. Chilling, isn’t it? How well it fits? And what that means?
He’s burnt the playbook, Trump. And if we’re ever going to really make this country great again, we’ll need a cagey coach who can write us a smarter one, or a real good quarterback who can read the field and Hail Mary right past The Donald a few times. Get him all riled up and confused.
Darragh Roche of the London Economic said America needed a “bastard for peace.” Wait , let’s hear the whole pitch. It’s amazing:
“We’ve had enough of the polished, prissy policy wonk — the John Kerry(s) and Hillary Clinton(s) who measure every word, never say what they really think and always make sure they have wiggle room to revise their position in case the political winds change. Liberals need someone who will call bullshit on Trump’s claims that Obama founded ISIS or when he denies he said climate change is a Chinese hoax. We need a liberal who isn’t afraid to call Mike Pence a bigot for supporting gay ‘conversion therapy’. We need a liberal who’ll call a spade a spade and a racist a racist. We need a bastard for progress.
Our bastard for progress will hammer Donald Trump with the US Constitution not just verbally but with every campaign, every media appearance, every vote in Congress and every aspect of his or her character. Just as Trump is a bully to the core of his being, our liberal bastard must be the finest champion of the bullied…”
Our great liberal bastard is out there — a bastard for progress, a bastard for peace, a bastard for the 21st century.”
God, I hope so. I hope so. For all of us here and the ones all over the world wondering where that Dream went. And where they can run to now that American isn’t what it used to be.
I’m wondering, too. I feel like somebody died. Some hero of my youth, someone I believed in and was inspired by. It’s personal, like I said.
But oh, there are millions like me . Shell shocked bastards for peace, all. And we won’t be in mourning forever.
Hang on, huddled masses. We’ll be back.
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