INTERNECINE STRIFE

“The most disturbing thing I've learned from the Trump presidency isn't anything about @realDonaldTrump. It's what Trumpism has revealed about friends, neighbors and family that hurts deeply and makes me sad.”

Nate Bell @NateBell4AR

This tweet from Nate Bell, an ex-GOP politician, expresses succinctly what has been gnawing on me without finding the right articulation to bring it out in the open.

Nate Bell is hundred percent right. Donald Trump is just one person, entitled to his opinions like all of us are. The fact that he has been elected President does not change that. While it is curious, to say the least, that he feels comfortable – in fact is hell bent – to voice his personal opinions, misconceptions and fabrications by tweet, knowing that all of this will ultimately become part of the public record of his presidency, it remains only one person’s contribution to the public discourse. It is the response, that his unprecedented (for a President of the USA), reckless, and vicious torrent of bias and agitation has spawned, that saddens me. I still have difficulty accepting that America has offered such fertile soil for his brand of bullying, populism and demagoguery.

No one can say that Donald Trump deceived the voting public by campaigning as something else (more) than he is, a bigoted, narcissistic, misogynistic, unscrupulous manipulator of the minds of people who want to believe that only their ilk represents the real America. So, we got what we voted for. And we should not be surprised to see that this man now behaves exactly like he did in his sordid campaign even though voters (how many of them?) may have thought that, once in office, he would conform to traditional decorum and prudence under the spell of the majesty of the office he was elected to.

I just finished reading Rick Atkinson’s first book of what is promised to be a trilogy on the Revolutionary War, titled “The British Are Coming”. It is a monumental account of the epic struggle that was required to give birth to a nation determined to no longer be governed by an autocratic distant power but by the people and for the people. Atkinson’s book makes it painfully clear that American independence was not universally embraced by the inhabitants of the thirteen colonies and that communities and families were split between loyalists (to the Crown) and rebels (dedicated to independence and republicanism). The uprising against the British control of the thirteen colonies was setting up the first American internecine strife, pitching neighbor against neighbor, children against parents and siblings against siblings.

This scene of internecine strife would be repeated, with no less devastating effect, during the Civil War and – to a lesser extent – during the Vietnam War. And now it rears its ugly head again and this time it is my first direct encounter with it. I witnessed the Vietnam War from Europe, where people were less personally involved, but similarly divided.

Like Nate Bell, I am set back by what Trumpism has revealed about (some of) my friends, peers, neighbors and extended family. The rift that clearly exists between Trumpists and Never-Trumpists is not about policy but mostly about style and character. I cringe every time I see, which is often more than once a day, how the leader of the free world drapes himself in the American flag while -in the words of David Rothkopf – embracing nearly constant jingoism and denying people who disagree with him the mantle of patriotism. I have never been one to believe that the ends justify the means. I do not dispute that a more assertive American policy in the relationship with our allies and trade partners was probably overdue, but it matters a great deal how one plays in the sandbox. This President has no respect for continuity of purpose in America’s relationship with its allies and adversaries and is all about personal glorification, adding to the Trump brand, never mind that his successor will have to clean up the mess.

My uneasiness stems from the fact that many of my friends, peers, neighbors, and extended family members don’t see it that way. Would they put up with Trump-like behavior from their bosses, their direct reports, or members of their network? Not a chance! But for this President of the USA the normal rules of personal conduct are suspended, because the economy is booming and the stock market is at an all time high. Do they really believe that under a true Republican conservative President this would not have happened? And is it worth paying the price of near universal ridicule and contempt from the rest of the free world?

I admit to being part of the problem. Finding myself no longer on speaking terms when it comes to domestic politics with those who will defend this charlatan of a President à tort et à travers. At my age, I can ill afford to lose friends, when natural attrition is already taking a steep toll. It hurts, but for me it is a matter of human decency and civilized norms that I cannot disavow.

To the victor go the spoils. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now unequivocally say who was on the wrong side of history in the three previous episodes of serious national discord rising to the level of internecine strife. The loyalists, the confederates and the Vietnam hawks got the short end of the stick and were condemned to live with the ignominy of having been found to have been supporting the wrong (lost) cause. It gives me good reason to believe that 50 years from now (but hopefully sooner) it will become indisputably clear that Trumpism was an aberration, an episode of a large part of the public, misled by a seriously flawed character with appeals to people's basic instincts of fear, aggression and contempt, finding themselves on the wrong side of the arc of history.