August 23, 2020
After four years of a Trump presidency, our country has been rendered unrecognizable. We are a failed state, with an economy in tatters, brought low by a pathogen that we refuse to muster the discipline to manage, despite possessing the knowledge and the resources to do so. Our children can’t go to school safely and those adults lucky enough to still have jobs, can’t go to work safely either. Rather than reckon with the enduring structural racism that is the legacy of slavery, Trump and most in his party would rather deny the facts of history and brutalize those who point out the truth.
After four years of seeing children ripped from their parents and put in cages; an entire religion banned from entering the United States; Nazis praised; and environmental regulations shredded, Americans are exhausted and traumatized. Four years ago, Black women warned this country what a Trump presidency would bring, and nearly 63 million Americans voted for him anyway. Perhaps some of those 63 million genuinely believed that Trump would shake things up and shift policy to benefit working people (who are Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous and white, btw) who have received short shrift from both parties. Perhaps some were just too misogynist to vote for a woman, regardless of her peerless qualifications for the job and Trump’s embarrassing lack of them. We know that more of them than we’d like to admit voted for Trump because of his racism, because of his assurance that in Trump’s America, white people would always be on top and would be the only ones able to claim the mantle of “legitimate” Americans, the Constitution and the law be damned.
Regardless of what the predominant reason was that 63 million Americans voted for Trump, there is no question that they believed that they would thrive under a Trump presidency. They were all fine with the dehumanization and degradation of the “other,” confident that it wouldn’t touch them.
While there have always been conservatives who recognized that jettisoning a Constitutional republic for an authoritarian, White supremacist regime was too high a price to pay for anti-choice judges (Hello Lincoln Project), even now, there are those who survey the damage wrought by the human wrecking ball at 1600 Black Lives Matter Plaza, and are convinced that another term will leave them unscathed.
In the face of such a dispiriting present, last week’s Democratic National Convention was a much needed shot in the arm, a tantalizing reminder of what America could be if we truly embraced the vast beauty of its places and its people. A dazzlingly diverse array of rising stars gave a virtual keynote.
Yet it was also full of stark warnings from Sen. Bernie Sanders, First Lady Michelle Obama, a chorus of Republicans from John Kasich to Colin Powell, and most searingly, President Barack Obama, that the American experiment would not survive another Trump term.
All four nights featured numerous paeans to Joe Biden’s character as a truly decent, empathetic person, capped by Biden’s surprisingly effective speech Thursday, leading off with a quote from Ella Baker, pledging to be president of all Americans, not just those who voted for him.
In a rational country, with free and fair elections, it would be no contest. But as we head into the week of the Republican National Convention, none of us should be sanguine. We should never underestimate the seductive power of white grievance, of holding on to a system where your skin color confers automatic advantage.
We have already seen the extent to which our fellow Americans are willing to latch on to alternate realities and conspiracy theories in order to convince themselves that maintaining a death grip on white supremacy is the moral high ground. We need only look at the recent primary victories of QAnon adherents to see the mental gymnastics some are willing to engage in.
Their mistake is thinking that the “others” are the only ones in danger. Predators always need a new target. They may not know it, but they’ll be next.
#VOTESAVEAMERICA