I know something like this has been written, perhaps here but what Trump has done is to hold up a fun house mirror to our nation, with the distorted surface amplifying some of our worst bits and receding some of the better part of us. By us and our Abd we, I mean Americans but I urge everyone else by to be complacent: this horror show, or its cousin could very easily turn up on your door step—from the inside.
I don’t really think people are so different from one place to the next. As individuals and as peoples, we are all flawed, insecure, sometimes overconfident, ignorant, lonely, heartbreakingly kind and generous and obscenely arrogant and cruel. Here in the US, our founders carefully built a system of governance with checks and balances, so that no one could set themselves up above the law, or not for long. We did not dream that a petty ignorant fool could so appeal to enough individuals to gain such power. I think that I mostly believe that Trump has been cultivated and sharpened and trimmed into a tool to slice us apart but maybe those flaws were always there, waiting to crack us apart—not open! But to shatter us into pieces that are all closed little entities, occasionally coalescing to cooperate enough to gain some specific objectives.
Please be aware and please do not shy away from a lot of self examination and reflection.
