He’s baaack!
Everywhere you turn these days, there’s good ol’ Dubya. Boy what we wouldn't do to have him back again, eh? Enron...Halliburton...Cheney. Those were simpler times.
Of course, it's largely a bankrupt sentiment. You don't have to compose a diatribe reminding me of his sins in the comment section. I haven't forgotten. I doubt that anyone in this community has. I didn't come here today to write THAT diary. Nor did I come to praise him or soft-peddle the venality of his administration.
What I DID come to say is that there is something we can learn about ourselves from this strange confluence of emotions some of us are feeling these days. You may still be capable of being completely sober about the Bush admin — but most of us would still walk a precinct to replace the current disaster-in-chief with this guy if we could. We would do it knowing what an abject failure he was, because at some level we also know that what separated us from George W. Bush and his crew was a profound difference in world view and basic values. While what separates us from the current administration is their fundamental disrespect for the entire American experiment. Bush may have been desperately wrong and sometimes cravenly so...but he intended to leave a functioning country behind him. However disastrous the economy and the state of our foreign policy when he left -it wasn't his intention to burn the whole thing down.
In his book “War of the World's,” author HG Wells imagined a threat from outside forcing humans to pull together. Donald Trump is that threat for our times, and thus we may find ourselves willing to embrace folks we never respected before.
I think this is a good instinct. In any current hierarchy of needs I could relate to, our greatest need now is to protect the very fabric of our system. In that endeavor, we may find that a lot of former foes are potential allies. Some will balk at joining hands. I won't — and I'll join hands knowing full well that the person across from me might stand for a lot that I loathe.
We give lip-service a lot in this world to “agreeing to disagree” — but the prevailing political idea today holds that we are engaged in a battle to realize our vision and deny the others a chance to realize theirs. That wasn't always the case in America. There were times in which the goal was to find a way for people with many different world views to find some way to live with each other.
One of the most detestable things about Donald Trump is the fact that he seems to only view those who voted for him as being worthy of representation. The rest of us, he regards as losers and feels justified in ignoring. I can't think of anything more un-American than that. But I also cannot help but acknowledge that a lot of my compatriots on the left would love to be in the position to enact our priorities and fully ignore those that we disagree with. Am I wrong?
We live in a moment in which compromise is a dirty word. In which we see those who hold views we find abhorrent as people to be defeated and neutralized.
When I see the picture that accompanies this article — I don't forget who the man being embraced by the graceful woman is. I don't forget what he's done. But when I see that picture, it gives me hope for the whole idea of America. I have to believe that we can live together. But first we have to come together to survive the existing threat to who we are. Then we have to convince ourselves not to become the next threat.