Actress and "veep" star Julia Louis-Dreyfus perfectly underscored the dissonance of Donald Trump's macabre reign over America as she moderated the final night of the Democratic National Convention.
"When Donald Trump spoke at his inauguration about American carnage," Louis-Dreyfus said, harkening back to his ominous 2017 inauguration speech, "I assumed that was something he was against, not a campaign promise."
It was a searing observation. Every single sane person in this country has struggled at moments with whether to laugh or cry at the mindbending incompetence and ghoulish buffoonery Trump brought to the Oval Office on Day One, starting with his plainly ludicrous insistence that his inaugural crowd size was stupendous—unmatched! Hour-by-hour every day for more than three years, we never knew whether it was okay to let our guard down long enough to indulge an impulsive snort at the burnt orange carnival barker who was infecting every aspect of American life because something horrifically cruel—worse than we could imagine—was never far behind. Like the unthinkable family separation policy that traded the warm embrace of a child's parent for cages, concrete floors and foil blankets. Or Trump's personal attack on the pregnant grieving widow of a special forces officer who died in Niger. Or his blessing of the “very fine” neo-Nazis who marched in the streets in Charlottesville and ultimately took the life of a peaceful protester.
And so, as Trump continually made a fool of himself in front of everyone on this planet oriented to time and place, we questioned whether his absurdity was worth even a brief giggle because the freakishness that undergirded it always carried much too steep a price.
But right around February and March of this year, that dilemma melted away into a sea of anger and rage as we helplessly watched the mental and emotional anguish Trump exacted on first responders, medical workers, essential workers, the vulnerable, the elderly, the disenfranchised, struggling families, parents, and children. The toll Trump has taken on everyone who isn’t a cultist has been illimitable, relentless, and absolute. No sane person has been spared, though some have suffered greater losses than others and people of color have bore the brunt Trump's hideousness more than any other single group.
“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump had promised on January 20, 2017, as he delivered a dystopian preview of the landscape that would become our lives. Trump was preparing to destroy the world as we knew it, moment by moment, bit by bit, until the only thing left of it was his demented reality.
Indeed, that's the grotesque distortion that was reflected back to us by speaker after speaker at this week's Democratic National Convention.
"If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can and they will if we don't make a change this election," warned former First Lady Michelle Obama.
"The future of our democracy is at stake. The future of our economy is at stake. The future of our planet is at stake," said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, urging everyone to "come together" to defeat Trump. "The price of failure is just too great to imagine."
And former President Obama delivered the most stirring of warnings, telling Americans that Trump and Republicans are "counting on your cynicism" as they erect every possible barrier to voting and then assure people their vote won't count anyway.
"That is how they win," Obama said. "That's how a democracy withers until it's no democracy at all, and we cannot let that happen. Do not let them take away your power. Do not let them take away your democracy," he urged, telling people to make a plan right now for how to get involved and vote.
We are a broken and grieving nation right now, thanks to Donald Trump. He has spent years wearing us down to little more than a nub, and this week's most powerful speakers used their time to build us back up for the epic battle that awaits this fall. To assure us that we still possess the power to turn the page on one of our country's darkest and most perilous moments in decades, if not over a century.
Joe Biden just happens to be a man who has spent his life rebuilding in the wake of more tragedy than any one person should endure in their lifetime—rebuilding his kids, his family, his life, and his faith time and again after unspeakable losses.
“How do you make a broken family whole?” asked Dr. Jill Biden, who helped her husband rebuild following the death of his young daughter and first wife in a car accident in the early ‘70s. “The same way you make a nation whole: with love and understanding and with small acts of kindness. With bravery, with unwavering faith. We show up for each other in big ways and small ones again and again."
Biden showed up this week for a weary nation, offering the kindness and empathy that's been sorely missing from the well of our hearts and the grind of our days. He assured us that he believes in us at time when it so often feels like we've lost our way.
"This is our moment. This is our mission," Biden said, toward the end of his nomination acceptance speech on Thursday. "May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight," he said, pledging, "this is a battle that we, together, will win. I promise you."
It’s a battle we must win, we can win, and we will win. Believe.
