Bottom of the Barrel

I'm running low on outrage, and I scraped the bottom of the barrel of disbelief a long time ago. I still have a bushel basket full of disdain and disgust, and a bucket-load of it-can't-happen-here that I drag along behind me as a penance. It's 2019, and we have a full one-year-plus to go before we can legitimately send Donald Trump back to New York, or wherever one sends tin-pot dictators when they've been overthrown.

He's still here, and if anyone could give Twitter a bad name, he has proven that he's the man for the job. He has been, and continues to be a graceless, lying, self-congratulating nightmare, whose biggest fan appears to be himself. He continues to prove with each rally, each positive poll, each outrageous attack that P.T. Barnum's axiom that 'there's a sucker born every minute' is indeed true. He has an innate propensity for turning facts on their heads, for weaseling his way through life blaming everyone but himself when things go awry, for casting himself as the hero in every scenario or the victim in every plot. He is a practiced and accomplished liar and con man. This is not a president of whom we can be proud.

He styles himself as the voice of the average citizen. No. I grew up in a lower middle class family, where college was not a given, where, if you wanted something, you had to pay for it. I had a scholarship, but lived at home, and worked from the time--literally the DAY--I turned 16. I bought a car; I managed grad school. I got along. But I never felt the need to step on others in my own upward climb. I was not made to feel threatened by people who didn't look like me. They were working too, trying to make their way in the world. Good for them. Good for me.

Donald Trump was rich. He was privileged. He had every advantage that money could buy. But money couldn't buy him empathy, or kindness, or honesty, or the intelligence to value those things. All that money bought was MORE. And somehow, MORE drowned out all the common virtues, all the common sensibility, all the leadership values we require in a president. The presidency simply became the next step toward MORE. More power, more vanity, more distance from real human beings. More departures from the truth. More exercise of his toddler-like tantrums.

And yet, I think the most hurtful aspect to me (and possibly, me alone) is the number of people who line up behind him and say "Yes" to his racism, his cruelty, his disregard for women, his cronyism, his extravagant waste of taxpayer money. They say "Yes" to all the lies he tells, and the embarrassment he causes our country. They say "Yes" out of ignorance, out of fear, or, perhaps, out of what has become a permanent state of American boredom and inattention: the insatiable desire for something new, for something to capture the nanosecond attention span of an over-stimulated populace. There are women out there, I am embarrassed to say, who support and believe this man. Do they not read? Do they not listen to anyone but him? Do they truly believe that the entire country is out to get him, that he is right and true, and everyone else is wrong? It is incredible.

They believe because they want to believe. They want to have someone shout out loud all the dark and despicable thoughts they keep to themselves. He is their voice, most assuredly, but he is the voice of the devil on their shoulder who urges them to ignore conscience, to ignore what is right, and give in to what feels good, whether it be immoral or illegal or horrifyingly cruel.

He is—need I say it?—not my president.