The Inconvenient Truth We Face
Even with proof of who he was, Americans reelected Trump
Those of us who are trying to preserve and restore democracy must come to terms with an enormous “inconvenient truth,” (apologies to Al Gore for stealing his phrase.)
That “inconvenient truth” is simply this: Last November, an essential majority of Americans voted to reinstall Donald Trump in the White House. You can quibble and say he didn’t get an absolute majority, but he got more than 49 percent — 77.3 million to 75 million for Kamala Harris, plus another 2.3 million combined for Robert Kennedy. the Libertarians and Green Party spoiler Jill Stein.
Those third-party votes were essentially votes for Trump. The margins were small. but America preferred a man who radiated irrational hatred and had already demonstrated profound incompetence in office.
That’s what we dare not forget. This was very different from 2016, when Trump’s election could be seen as a fluke; a consequence of our flawed electoral college, and the fact that Hillary Clinton, an immensely talented person, ran a very poor campaign.
Still, she won the popular count by almost three million votes, and turnout may have been low because no one, including Trump, expected Trump to win in 2016. I knew he was a blustering fool, but even I thought there was a chance he would rebuild America’s infrastructure, perhaps stamping Trump on every girder, but hey.
Instead, he built nothing but chaos, which cost the lives of thousands in the pandemic, and so Americans threw him out. Afterwards, he egged his supporters into staging a clumsy coup attempt that trashed the Capitol.
He was replaced with a competent, if elderly and aging professional who stemmed inflation, ended our hopeless war in Afghanistan and restored our international reputation. When he stepped aside, his younger and very competent vice president attempted to replace him. But people wanted the slimy, obviously corrupt and convicted felon instead.
That’s the inconvenient truth we have to face.
I think, but certainly am not sure, that the Marmalade Mussolini would lose an election rematch today. But millions and millions still support this man, who does not seem to have a single redeeming characteristic, personal or professional.
We can’t forget that. The country that produced Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama also has produced boatloads of racists and was indeed capable of slow genocide against the Native Americans.
Yet, we produced the Bill of Rights and were a safe haven for millions.. But millions more think what’s happening now is okay.
Paradoxically, our only hope for changing this is to remember that, always.
In the movie Nixon, Tricky Dick said to a portrait of JFK "when they see you, they see what they wish they were. When they see me, they see what they are."
The tools of persuasion and civil discourse will certainly be tested in these contentious times, with the path of the nation's future and our posterity at stake. And maybe those tools will be of little use in what lies ahead. Not sure if we're at a fork in the road where the direction we take makes all the difference, but it seems close. Who we are, who we've been, who we can be, who we want to be, who we should be. Nice commentary with food for thought.