These days, everyone is making closing arguments — Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald J. Trump, comedian Jimmy Kimmel of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — as if we the people were we, the jury, which I suppose we are. I might as well make one as well.
We hear a lot about racism, sexism and every other ism but the one from which all these proceed — narcissism. Trump and his MAGA minions are a funhouse of narcissism — reflecting and refracting unending images of grievance, lack of empathy or even sympathy, a demonization of others and a refusal to accept anything approaching everyday reality. (Remember a narcissist is always a hero or a victim but never a villain.)
So for Halloween, Trump sported a garbage collection vest to undersore President Joe Biden calling his supporters “garbage.” But Trump’s surrilous remarks are OK, right?As I wrote at the time of Charlottesville, hatred of hatred is not hate.
The Republicans sought to make hay out of another Biden gaffe. But that Freudian slip contained some truth. All we hear is about how the economy is so bad for the MAGA crowd but nothing about what Trump’s “concepts” will do to the rest of us. Because we’re vermin and the Antichrist, right? No one begrudges these people their traditional values. But why must those of us who don’t care for those values share them?
Why must women, probably the demographic group Trump has most trouble with, bend to his “protection, whether they like it or not”? This remark came right on the heels of Biden’s “garbage” comment. Say what you want about the Repubs, but they really know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
At least that is what we hope. The election has no margin for error. The key will be women. If they turn out as I expect, Harris will prevail.
Until then it’s a nailbiter that should never have been, because the choice is simple — rationality versus irrationality, and rationality, the Stoics said, is the beginning of all virtue.
We can reason our way out of this madness. The question is whether we have the will to do it.