He’s the most visible, ugly, and virulent of the tumors. But
he isn’t the cancer.
The disease is fear, and both liberals and conservatives are
riddled with the infection.
Fear that if those God-hating gun-grabbing tax-loving
welfare-loving America-hating SJW libtards get into power, they will take away
everything we hold dear – our values, our freedom, our livelihood, even our
lives if they get the chance.
Fear that if those dumbass redneck ammosexual racist sexist
homophobic climate-change-denying Trump cultists retain power, they will take
away everything we hold dear – our values, our freedom, our livelihood, even
our lives if they get the chance.
The biggest problem with Trump is not the stuff he’s bad at.
It’s not that he has bad policy ideas. We’ve had lots of presidents with bad
policy ideas and survived. It’s not that he’s bad at diplomacy, makes volatile
situations even more volatile, and is pushing us into an unwinnable war – we’ve
survived that before. It’s not that he’s incompetent – we’ve had incompetent
presidents and survived. It’s not even that he’s corrupt – we’ve had corrupt
presidents and survived.
The thing we may not survive is the one thing he’s good
at: Deepening division and contempt between liberal and conservative Americans.
The relationship between our two groups, like any relationship, can survive
conflict, even heated and angry arguments; but it can’t survive contempt, and
that’s what he sows all day, every day.
Evangelical Trump voters often explain their choice by
saying they voted for a politician, not a pastor. But in fact, choosing a
President is a lot like choosing a pastor. You need someone who can take a
bunch of prickly, opinionated people and get them all on board with the same
message, the same goals, the same plan, the same budget. You need someone who
can convince the unconverted. You need someone who’s good at resolving
conflicts between people who ordinarily wouldn’t talk to each other, by
appealing to common ground between them. You need someone who won’t compromise
on issues of personal integrity but will compromise on ways and means to
achieve common goals.
What you DON’T need is someone who goes out of his way to
attack and insult half the congregation (and half the church’s staff) every
Sunday, who shouts about how evil and stupid and unhinged everyone who
disagrees with him is and how they’re a threat to the church’s values. When you
get a pastor like that, you very quickly stop having a church and start having
a schism.
Likewise, our country needs a leader who can get people that
disagree about means to at least acknowledge common goals such as strengthening
the economy, preventing wars, ensuring that everyone gets a fair shot at making
a decent living, ensuring that everyone can afford health care, ensuring that
everyone’s rights are upheld, ensuring that we are safe… and come up with a
plan that ensures that everyone’s needs and concerns are at least respected and
taken into consideration, even if they can’t all be resolved to everyone’s
satisfaction.
What we have instead… is Donald Trump, a guy so
abrasive that even a number of his own voters and party members dislike him. A
guy who can’t keep staff because no one wants to work with him. A guy who
attacks anyone who disagrees with him, even if he hired them to give him advice.
A guy who goes out of his way to make liberals and conservatives angry at each
other, every day, because he can’t stand to not have his name in the
paper for even a moment and has learned that negative attention is easy to get.
A guy who would rather threaten civil war if he’s removed from office than
simply try to defend his actions if he can, or admit that they were
indefensible if he can’t.
That’s the real threat he represents. That’s why he’s the
most virulent of the tumors in our increasingly angry and fearful society…
because he doesn’t try to decrease the anger and fear, he feeds it and feeds on
it.
But:
Getting rid of him, whether by impeachment or by voting,
will not cure the disease. It’s a necessary first step, but by no means the
last. Removing the biggest tumor doesn’t cure the cancer, not when the body is
riddled with the damn things.
We’re going to have a LOT of work to do, treating the
disease itself.
It will take a hell of a lot to get us to stop attacking
each other and start trying to work together to make a better society,
especially since on several hot-button issues (abortion, LGBTQ, guns, the
environment, how much government regulation is helpful vs getting in the way, how
we ought to spend tax money, etc) we now have very different ideas of what
making a better society MEANS. It will take a hell of a lot to get us to stop
being afraid that the people who disagree with us are going to destroy us, stop
assuming malicious motives from each other, stop being contemptuous of each
other.
It will take a hell of a lot to even start bringing the disease into
remission. It may even be too late for a lasting cure at this point. It may be
that it’s progressed too far to eliminate, and that we will always have this
disease and will always have to pour a lot of time and resource into treating
it.
But we must either get busy treating it, or get busy dying
from it.
© John M. Munzer
