What Trump Means to Me
I was in my senior year of high school when Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States. Like many, I found myself engulfed in a fog of confusion, despair, and dismay. I distinctly remember a thought I had the day before the election, when a Clinton victory was all but inevitable in my mind. The country would need to need a cultural, political, and moral reckoning to fully move past a man who had awoken the cantankerous id of a nation at a pivotal juncture in history. A day later when I sat in an auditorium of my peers, many of them cheering the results of the election, I did not know what to think.
The next four years brought with it a compulsive fixation on the President and his actions. Russia. North Korea. China. Tariffs. Bannon. Cohen. Connaway. Alternative Facts. Impeachment. Charlottesville. Cages. Protests. Counter-Protests.. Supreme Court Picks. QAnon. Resistance. Never Trumpers. Antifa. Proud Boys. Walls. I was blind to the transformation of the chemistry of my own mind. A perverted distortion of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire blared in my ears as the word association ran circles around the brain and made my amygdala dance. On November 7th, the day when I was sitting on the highway and heard Wolf Blitzer on the radio project Joe Biden the 46th president of the United States, I felt instant relief. Yet, the music did not go away
In my heart of hearts, I truly believe that the function of government is to create an arena that sets clear boundaries and provides citizens with the tools they need to create a life of meaning for themselves. I believe Aristotle is right when he says that we each have a telos that resides within us — a purpose. I believe that the biggest mistake a government can make is distract us from our telos and that its ultimate aim should be to provide fertile soil to which our seeds can grow.
I believe that the United States has done a great injustice to many in its long history by stripping many of its citizens of the mental and physical objects needed for personal flourishing. Egregious income disparities have left some with everything and many more with nothing. Racial injustice has continually shape-shifted and molded itself to meet the intolerance of the present to devastating consequence. Corporation-led consumerism has stripped us of a connection with our own humanity. However, I believe that liberal democracy is a powerful tool that organizes society in a way that empowers us to act on the better angels of our nature. I also believe in the philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr, who maintains that the universe is not neutral towards injustice and demands that our “maladjustment” to the ills of our society such as racism be grounded in the pragmatic and spiritual principle of love.
Yet, it was not the eloquent voices of Aristotle or Martin Luther King Jr. that have rang in my ear for the last four years. Instead, it was Donald Trump, and that changed me. I began to lose faith in electoral politics. How could I believe in the redemptive power of democracy when its face was a man incapable of displaying an ounce of remorse or empathy. How could I look at a country full of Trump supporters and maintain faith that the ballot box is an appropriate place to seek change?
Simultaneously, I felt the fuel to my “maladjustment” transform from righteousness into hate. I am ashamed to say that schadenfreude coursed through my veins at the knowledge that the President who had downplayed a pandemic and cost lives was now himself sick. I am ashamed to say that I muttered hurtful words under my breath as I politely waved at my neighbor who proudly waved a Trump flag outside his home. I am ashamed to say that I sometimes find it difficult to consider the source of our common humanity, and that it is difficult for me to practice a key principle to which Martin Luther King Jr. believes our “most durable power” is derived: “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
The chaos of the world has made me feel helpless and afraid. Yet, instead of looking inwards for peace, I have looked out. Trump’s cult-of personality that many idolized made me crave my own leader to which I could outsource my pain. I found meaning in my ideological battlestation, hollow in substance. Instead of grounding myself in core principles and beliefs, I became one-dimensionally focused on what I perceived to be the moral decay of a republic at the hands of a small and dishonorable man.
I can see how personal reflection can seem frivolous compared to other important questions. How can the energy of the last four years be harnessed in a productive way in order to combat social and political passiveness that seems to be woven into our republic? How do we reclaim democratic values at a moment of impenetrable division? How do we shape policy to compassionately and effectively move society forward as it simultaneously buckles under its own immobility? There is no better indicator of the urgency to tackle these questions than the threat of climate change.
Yet, I write this to urge that we take a collective beat first. It’s a moment to ask ourselves, ‘What does Trump mean to me?’ I personally have gone through a metamorphosis regarding my core beliefs on politics, people and institutions, but as is the nature of the metamorphosis, it was not completely conscious. For anyone who has kept one eye turned towards Trump the last four years, I suspect that my story may resonate with you. Not because you agree with my politics. Not because you agree with my vision of government. Not because you have been pushed in the same direction as I have. But because Trump meant something to you.
Everything that produces meaning comes to an end one day. One of the reasons I love where I live is because of the changing seasons. It is a reminder to consider attachments as fleeting and to continually practice grief for the climate one has become adjusted to. The season of Trump has come to an end, but it is hard let go. It’s hard for me to admit to my own hate, cynicism, and cruelty which has come with this season, let alone come to terms with it. Yet, I am committed to grieving for the death of old beliefs and to consider the ways I am now different. I don’t know what comes next, but unless it is with an open mind, we risk letting incomplete grief ruin our chances to move forward start anew.
If it is difficult for me to let go, I can’t imagine how difficult it is for those who found hope and inspiration in Donald Trump. Yet, it is they who need to grieve as much as anyone, and I hope they are given the space for it. Mainstream media has given little room to the emotional logic of those who are now desperate to see another four years of Trump. I do not think it is fair to ask anyone to comprehend the logic behind supporting this man. There may be room for that one day, but the temperature is too hot for that right now. However, it is still important to give everyone room to grieve. This is true for anyone whose insides became twisted or turned one way or another due to the politics of the soon-to-be past.
We Didn’t Start the Fire is a classic because of how intuitive it is to us. When history accelerates and it feels like the world is on fire, nobody wants to take the blame, nobody wants to reflect. It is tempting to lose oneself in the cacophony of the music and dance nervously with the secret hope that it will all go away. But, to do so would be to succumb to a recurring tragedy of history and let the world burn. Lets turn off the blaring music, if for just a second, and look inwards.
