They wanted him, again. That is what we are left to consider.
This is as defining a moment in American history as the firing on Fort Sumter.
It had been unimaginable that he could be elected again, that tens of millions of Americans could look at this bloated liar, this rapist, this convicted criminal, a make-up wearing, hairspray using thief, a coward, a President who tried once before to destroy American democracy and may succeed this time, a man who only preaches hatred and fear and who only wants revenge. They looked at him, listened to him and said, “I choose him.” Seventy-one million Americans and counting made this decision.
His win means the enshrinement of cruelty as an American trait, and sadistic mockery and an atomizing selfishness. He bleeds those vices out into the citizenry. He’ll have to be dead for a generation, maybe longer, before his peculiar mix of poisons has a chance to be expunged.
His election means the end of a national community. With great speed, I think we will revert to laying claim to our allegiance to regions and states and to cities. How long before we speak of the United States as an are rather than the United States as an is.
Families will face a reckoning. As the crimes of this version of Trumpism accelerate in number and horror, the splits between his supporters and those who loathe him will become too great to bridge. How to sit down for a meal with others who approve of the betrayal of Ukraine, who support the efforts to track and control pregnant women, who believe in the dismantling of voting, who applaud the persecution of his critics, who are altogether on board with setting up vast concentration camps for migrants?
Trump has been very clear on what is coming. For him power and pleasure. For millions upon millions of others, chaos and misery and an end to something beyond value – a sense of stability. From now until long after I am dead, that sense of surety in democracy is gone. We will have to live with abominations. We will have to live with daily shocks.
Our public morality will continue to degrade because of him. He dehumanizes any person or group simply to strike back or to gain an advantage – migrants are poison, they are Hannibal Lectors, they are animals, they are not human. Democrats hate their country. They are demonic.
This is an attempted National suicide. What will a successful one look like? What does the death of a 248-year-old democracy look like? No one knows.
What does a thoroughly corrupt US Government look like? What does rule by oligarchs look like? We are going to find out.
What does pent up vengeance look like when it comes from the office of the President? We are going to find out.
What does a President who is immune to the rule of law look like? We are going to find out.
There is no safe place. Each of us is about to be tested.
