A Lifeline of Decency

America desperately needs one.

I had high hopes, back in 2016, that there would be a silver lining.

Or at least some kind of cushion; some barrier against Trump’s wrecking-ball regime. I thought maybe his blatant incompetence would prevent him from actually doing damage, or that his minions — however loyal — would stand in his way when things got messy.

Four years later, his trail has been infuriatingly predictable and yet endlessly shocking.

Here we are, with a president who feels so thwarted by the concept of diversity that he has chided every minority group in this country, while claiming to be their prophet. A president who has been hailed by neo-Nazis — and who, just last month, hailed them back. A president who brags about his sexual conquests; who jokes about his potential to shoot people; who mocks fallen soldiers, people with disabilities, and all those other “losers” — because life is about “winning,” and winning means stooping so damn low. A president who conned his way through life; who dodged his way out of paying taxes; who campaigned as a champion of the common man, only to govern on behalf of the ultra-rich. A president who has abandoned international cooperation on climate change, while reversing and revoking over seventy environmental regulations on home turf; who is so unfamiliar with the notion of collective responsibility that the fate of our species is secondary to proving some sort of nationalist superiority. A president who is either so detached from reality or so pitifully insecure that he lies about everything, from the size of his crowds to the size of his bank account; who conjures imaginary threats while disregarding real ones; who, according to multiple sources, has made twenty thousand false or misleading claims while in office. A president who is so inconvenienced by facts that science itself becomes a hoax; who has no better defense strategy in the face of evidence-based journalism than to call it fake; who has eroded public trust in democracy as a whole. A president who, in contrast with all others preceding him, has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

This can’t be what America stands for — but then again, by definition, it is. Sixty three million Americans enabled this embarrassment of a leader. And most of them, if not more, will repeat that decision today.

Part of me is so jealous of the voters who tuned out from the start; who decided they had nothing at stake. To care, these days, is dizzying and exhausting and traumatizing — and I write that from a place of immense privilege and protection. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a direct and immediate target of his threats, his slurs, and his policies.

But to watch my own family member get loaded into an ambulance the same week that our president tweeted, from his own hospital throne, some bullshit victory statement about this pandemic — while taking credit for the scientific advancements and clinical fortitude that he has so obviously dismissed, delayed, and downplayed since Day 1 — was the greatest insult to injury; a glaring reminder that you can be as physically (and mentally) ill as you want in this country as long as your personal cadre of doctors provides you free, fast, and utterly unearned healthcare. The man who claims to understand frontline resilience doesn’t know shit about sacrifice; about paying your dues; about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. How dare he invoke the American Dream. And how dare he suggest that it’s somehow cowardly, excessive, or unpatriotic to let a public health crisis — and the moronic mishandling of it at the federal level — “dominate your life.”

The Orwellian script of 2020 — the impeachment, the early threats of war, the murders, the protests, the fires, the deaths of revered leaders, and the fact that a nonliving microorganism has brought humanity to its knees — has confirmed the fragile state of our country and our planet.

But the past few months (and years) have also highlighted an upward — and, some would argue, unparalleled — momentum. For all the energy spent analyzing, fact-checking, auditing, muting, curtailing, impeaching, and reporting about the Guy on Center Stage, we have been forced to confront everything underneath: the scaffolding of our society, the divisions in our desires. A lot of things are broken — but a lot of things are strong, too. And if early voting rates are any indication, so many Americans are taking a vested interest in our democracy. Young people, in particular, are more civically engaged than ever before.

Maybe that’s the silver lining. Millions of (moral) Americans came into political consciousness despite, or perhaps entirely owing to, this walking counterexample of human decency. So thank you, Donald J. Trump, for teaching us — in the most twisted of ways — everything you could not do. To listen, to empathize, to compromise. To pause. To read. To see nuance. To trust those indisputable things called facts. To admit to wrongdoing. To be vulnerable. To ask for consent. To sacrifice and comfort and unite. To respect our planet. To see a world bigger than your own.

Now, for heaven’s sake, get the hell out.