Four years ago I pivoted this blog from an exclusive sports/culture focus to a more political one as Donald J. Trump ran for the presidency and, improbably, won it. I hate to give him credit for having that kind of power, but we would be kidding ourselves if we didn’t admit that he has transformed our lives in various ways over the last four years — and not for the better. But such is the nature of some change agents, even if he didn’t know he was one.
In his inaugural address, such as it was, Trump described a state of “American carnage.” What we didn’t know is that the man who prides himself on keeping his promises — indeed it’s one of the things that his base loves, loves, loves about him — was describing a self-fulfilling prophecy. American carnage is exactly what he has delivered, from the complete abdication of Alexandrian leadership (leadership from the front) in the coronavirus crisis, which caused the economy to crater; to his exploitation of the Black Lives Matter protests to stir racist fears; to his exacerbation of the gulf between right and left. Despite the run-amok virus, perhaps the greatest failure of a presidency rife with them is the chaos Trump has created on the southern border, with more than 500 children separated from their families not only indefinitely but perhaps forever with others sent to Mexico, not their countries of origin. This one act — the separation and incarceration of children — tells you everything you need to know about the immorality of an administration in which people are props and so much wallpaper, either to be cast aside or set up like a backdrop as in the case of the Omaha rally-goers who were then left out in the cold — literally.
America under Trump is a funhouse of horrors, with his supporters refracting his narcissism. They, of course, don’t see this, but then narcissists, like stupid people, have no self-awareness. Indeed, iff you talk to the Trump supporters in my office, they would tell you that hie is not responsible for individuals who fail to wear masks. Fair enough. We must each take individual responsibility. But the president sets the pace. He sets the tone. He sets the example. Trump’s slowness to respond to a virus he knew was virulent but portrayed as a hoax, his demonizing of authorities like Dr. Anthony Fauci and his petulant reluctance to wear a mask all told his followers that it was OK to go about business as usual — when it was far from OK.
Other Trump voters like what Trump has done for the economy and for Israel. But how are Israel’s Mideast problems solved without a solution to the Palestinians who share its land? How can anything be resolved there until that Gordian knot is unraveled?
And what economy? Trump inherited the longest bull market in history. (Thanks, President Barack Obama.) Trump didn’t screw it up despite the Republicans’ disastrous tax reform that has benefited no one but the 1 percent and has only added to the monstrous deficit they supposedly abhor — until of course the moment he did screw it up. Ah, the irony, like something out of a Henry James or W. Somerset Maugham novel, except without the Jamesian or Maugham-like talent, of course: In an effort to save the market and the economy, Trump hid the truth about the pandemic, which in turn caused the market and the economy to head south.
But as Adelaide Anne Procter writes in ‘the poem “Legend of Provence,’
”No star is ever lost we once have seen,
”We always may be what we might have been….”
It’s not too late to reclaim the country from the alternate universe we were plunged into four years when I wrote a post that referenced “The World Turned Upside Down,” the song the British played as they exited an America victorious in its revolution.
Time to be that America again. Time to set the world right side up. Time to vote as if “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” depend on it — because they do.