If you’re reading this, the US presidential election has been called in Joe Biden’s favor.
The office of the president will soon not be occupied by a petulant, racist, xenophobic, nepotistic, misogynistic, anti-science narcissist who seemingly can’t distinguish fact from fiction and casually and routinely incites violence against those with whom he disagrees.
As you can likely tell, I’m not a fan.
I’m happy to say we the people have narrowly avoided driving the country off the cliff … for a second time.*
So you’ll never have to read the other essay.
*exhales*
There was no “blue wave.” No landslide. No forceful repudiation of the past four years. No clear statement that the administration has been complicit in the deaths of a quarter million people from COVID-19, and that wasn’t inevitable and that it isn’t okay.
And Mitch McConnell was re-elected, which by itself takes a bunch of the luster off the rest.
But never mind. What’s done is done.
Though… terrifyingly all it took to undermine the foundations of American democracy, to torpedo America’s respect and standing on the world stage, and to roll back decades of at least the appearance of social progress was one useful idiot and the support of a set of well placed hypocritical, feckless and power-hungry party sycophants. All the while technically playing by the rules.
Trump wasn’t the problem.
Let that sit on your tongue, and in your head, for a minute.
Trump. Was. Not. The. Problem.
He took advantage of the situation, to be sure. And used his position to enrich himself and his family, to marginalize groups he didn’t like, to gaslight a country of 320 million people, to magnify and amplify the worst in us and the worst of us.
But he wasn’t the problem. At of the time of this writing, over sixty million Americans supported him, his behavior, and his policies.
And that wide spread support, that’s still not the problem.
To be clear, I don’t know what the problem is, but if we want to, we need to start by asking why.
Why did nearly half the voters think he was a better choice (for them? for the country?) than his opponent? Why did he appeal to them – what did he say or do? Why did they support his behavior, or choose to look past it if they didn’t support it?
And – here’s the hard part – we need to listen to the answers. Not discount them when we disagree. Not denigrate them – even when they’re not based in the facts and reality we recognize. Listen to understand.
And keep asking why.
Until we get to things we can agree need to be fixed.
And that’s the other hard part – we need to find ways to cooperate – across the political spectrum, across the social divide – to start fixing those things.
Because once it’s clear that it can happen here, it’s much, much more likely to happen again.
And that’s not the problem, but it surely is a problem.
* I realize that most Americans voted against driving off the cliff in 2016 – but the outcome was what it was.