Tomorrow, a new president will be sworn in, taking residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I hope he will be able to be a force for change and unity rather than more divisiveness, but I'm not holding out hope. Not because he won't try, but because our country has gotten more and more fractured every day. The last four years have made me worry that we are headed for another civil war. As concerned as I was at the beginning, I never expected to be here.
I remember when I first heard that Donald Trump had thrown his hat into the Presidential ring. I couldn't imagine him being a real contender. There was no way that he would come out ahead of some of the more established Republicans. When it became clear that he was actually going to walk away with the nomination, I couldn't believe it. He had no political experience at all. If he tried to run the country like a business, I could see it going badly. Living in a wider world, we (as a country) needed to practice diplomacy. We needed to be able to compromise, because no one should walk away with everything they want while the other walks away with nothing. Still, I thought Clinton was going to win so I tried not to put too much worry into it.
November 8 came and, surprisingly, Clinton won the popular vote and Trump won the electoral. I was flabbergasted. Our country was going to change, and I didn't think it was going to be for the better. The policies he was proposing (primarily the wall) were so xenophobic. His speeches at his rallies were inflammatory, blaming all the problems that the average American had on illegals. The schools that my children attended were, and still are, very culturally diverse. There was fear that I was hearing about from the students about Trump ending DACA, about losing the only home they'd ever known. There was anger from so many women because of his misogynistic comments and his desire to roll back rights for women.
But for all the fear and worry, I was hoping, praying, that I was going to be wrong about him. That he was going to rise to the challenge, that the people around him would be able to keep him from harming our country too much. I wanted him to succeed, because I wanted my country to succeed. America had so long been a light to the world and that light needed to continue to shine.
But I wasn't wrong. He toned nothing down, trying to flay anyone who disagreed with him. Anything that didn't fit his personal narrative was a witch hunt or a lie or fake. He blamed everyone but himself for everything. He gave everyone demeaning nicknames. When white supremacists collided with counter-protestors and a woman was killed, instead of calling out the neo-nazis, he said that there were "fine people on both sides". When something happened that he didn't agree with, he blamed Antifa and BLM. When tragedies struck the nation, he rarely sent out immediate words of hope or condolences. Often, it would be days later that he'd finally address whatever had happened. He lead by tweet.
And then there were the lies. So many lies, most easily proven false. Lies about what he said and what he did. Lies about what others did. Lies about our country. Lies about where a hurricane was (not) supposed to hit. Lies about himself and lies about others. By the end of his presidency, he had over 30.000 false or misleading statements.
Still, I thought we'd be able to get through it. Only three more years. Only two more years. Only 18 months. How much damage could he do, really?
Then COVID hit. Instead of encouraging people of the country to follow CDC guidelines to stay safe, he claimed that it was no worse than the flu - all the while knowing that it was far more dangerous. He eschewed wearing a mask in favor of making fun of anyone who did. He politicized public health and put keeping our economy open, pretending we weren't in the midst of a pandemic, over keeping Americans safe. He refused to take any responsibility for the actions his words caused. Instead of trying to help every state get what they needed to keep front line workers safe, he set the governors against one another to bid for the equipment they needed. Instead of being a president for all people, he denigrated Democratic governors trying to keep their people safe. He praised anyone who followed his words as if they were gospel, and turned on them the moment they said something at odds.
It wasn't just COVID itself that brought hell to America last year. Rather than trying to ensure that every vote was able to be heard by supporting the shift to mail in voting, he claimed it was rife with fraud and that mail in votes shouldn't count (unless, of course, it was his mail in vote - he'd been doing it for years). He stirred up his base with claims that the only way he could lose the election was if the Democrats cheated - long before even a single ballot was cast. And when he did lose, instead of stepping aside with grace, he screamed to the high heavens that it was a fraudulent election. It didn't matter that he and his lawyers tried over 60 times to get a judge to see things his way, nor did it matter that only one out of those 60 plus court cases was made in his favor - and that had nothing to do with fraud but rather whether a three day extension granted by the PA secretary of state for mail in voters missing identification to provide said identification was legal. (And even those, according to PA, numbered under 100.) Even taking the case to the Supreme Court, filled with three people he'd appointed to the bench, didn't get him the answers he wanted. So instead of admitting defeat, he continued to incite his base with false claims of fraud, with apocryphal stories of the dead voting and ballots ending up in rivers. I shouldn't have been surprised when last week his rhetoric of hate caused a siege of the Capitol in the hopes of stopping the perfectly legal certification of electors. But somehow, I was.
Seeing the number of people that still believe his lies, who see themselves as patriots fighting against the lying, scheming democrats that blocked True American Trump at every turn makes me worry that no, Biden won't be able to heal our fractured country. There are far too many that believe that Biden is a puppet with dementia, going to be led by the nose by those on the far left. (And, to be fair, there were a fair number of people on the left that believed that Trump was just going to be a puppet for the right. And see where that got us.) There are so many people that refuse to accept the that our country is not one big conspiracy, with the government out to get them. I worry whether I'll even recognize our country in 10 years.
I'm not saying that the left have been saints, or that Trump was the only one causing problems on the right. Too many of our elected officials have been playing the politics game for so long that they have stopped caring about the people they represent and care more about either their own party or their own power. This is on both sides. Our officials need to remember that they were elected to represent us, that they need to work for what is best for us and what is best for the country as a whole. They need to find a way to compromise so their diverse constituents all feel as though they are being heard. They need to accept that no one is going to get everything they want and that, sometimes, you have to put aside your ego for the state of the country. Or we're not going to have a country left for them to be egotistical about.
The American people also need to find a way to compromise. People on both sides need to learn how to accept others beliefs without shoving their own down the throats of those who disagree. That means that those on the right who don't agree with gay marriage need to accept that two gay people who love one another getting married is not going to harm their marriage - and if they do, then that says something more about the original marriage than the gay marriage. That means that those on the left who get pissed when someone says "Merry Christmas" need to get over themselves and accept the wishes in the spirit in which they are intended. Both sides need to recognize the problems that exist in our country - systemic racism, xenophobia, misogyny - and understand they have to come together to solve them. We need to get out of an Us vs Them mentality and come back to a "We are One" mentality. We need to stop spreading hate and start spreading love and understanding.
Most importantly, we need to stop the "Not my...." garbage. I've been hearing it for 20 years, ever since Bush v. Gore. And I've hated it because it is nothing but tearing apart our country. I voted for Gore, but he conceded in part to keep our country peaceful. But even if I didn't like how things went down in Florida (and I was living there at the time - I heard it ALL), at the end of the day Bush was still my president. I did vote, both times, for Obama. And I was glad to have him as a president. I didn't, as I'm sure you've guessed, vote for Trump in 2016 (or again in 2020) but he was duly elected as the president of the United States in 2016, so he was my president. I don't get to pick and chose who I recognize as elected officials. I need to follow whatever the voters/electors/etc state. And if I don't like it, rather than complain about it or call it false, I need to make sure that more people who agree with me are voting next time. And the time after that. And the time after that. Because THAT is how we create change - not by denying the truth but by accepting it and doing whatever we can to see that change happen.
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| My Socially Distanced Thoughts |
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Joining in the insanity...