This is a very surreal July 4th.
Trump’s embarrassing reference to “the Prince of Whales”, his “not my type”
deflection of the most recent (sixteenth, I think) victim of his sexual
violence history to come forward, his dehumanizing/dismissive comments about
desperate adults and children at our southwestern border, his
militarizing/politicizing the Independence Day celebration in DC at the expense
of national park budgets, his relentless obsession to reverse anything with
Obama’s imprint regardless of the devastating harm done to the vulnerable or to
the environment, his daily belittling of all branches of government, his joking
response to a journalist’s question about Russian attempts to compromise our
national elections, his . . . – you think things cannot sink any lower, but
every day they do. And then mixed in with this 24/7 social/political
degrading came Trump’s jaw-dropping demonstration that he has absolutely no
concept of or advocacy for the ‘Western-style liberalism’ under frontal assault
by Putin et al when he (Trump) ignorantly assumed the subject was “what’s
happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look, and what’s happening in
San Francisco, and a couple of other cities . . . .” Has there been a
president so utterly hostile to a liberal democracy? so blatantly envious of
and aiming for authoritarian/totalitarian alternatives? The 30-40% of
voting-age US citizens Trump takes for granted (those who cheered his “I can
stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters”
claim, to recall his 2016 assertion) are predisposed for a
nationalistic/privileged theocracy rather than for a liberal democracy. They
are complicit in and accountable for Trump’s ruinous opposition to integrity,
decency, self-determination, modesty, respect, empathy, peacemaking, standing
with those at risk, sacrifice, caution, prioritizing an international social
contract, unfettered education, . . . – all defining traits for a way of being
diametrically opposite to the Trump et al definition of ‘America/n’ that in my
judgment remains worth living for, sacrificing for, and if necessary dying
for.
