The-Ave.US

From Atlantic magazine (read original article here):

• More than a quarter of a million Americans have died from COVID-19 so far; 2.3 million Americans lost their health insurance before the pandemic, and millions more during the pandemic.
• Trump pulled the U.S. out of 13 international organizations, agreements, and treaties. Refugee admissions fell by 86%. U.S. officials can’t locate the parents of 666 of the children they separated from their families at the southern border.
• Trump reversed 80 environmental rules and regulations. He signed only 1 major piece of legislation, a 2017 tax law that lowers the total tax rate of the wealthiest 400 Americans to below every other income group.
• He appointed more than 220 judges to the federal bench, including 3 Supreme Court justices; of these, 24% are female, 4% black, all very conservative. More were rated “not qualified” by the ABA than those of any other president in half a century.
• The national debt increased 37%, and this year’s trade deficit is larger than any under President Obama.

But numbers alone can’t describe the impact of Trump’s shooting-star flight through American politics. He leaves behind an America “less free, less equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier, meaner, sicker, and deader.” Perhaps worst of all, “It also became more delusional.” His more than 25,000 lies “contaminated the minds of tens of millions of people [and] will linger for years, poisoning the [political] atmosphere like radioactive dust.”

The biggest unanswered question is,

“How did half the country—practical, hands-on, self-reliant Americans, [who are] still balancing family budgets and following complex repair manuals—slip into such cognitive decline when it came to politics?”

The article’s writer believes it’s not because of ignorance or stupidity. They had “to summon an act of will” and “energy and imagination” to “replace truth with the authority of a con man.” They “abandoned common sense” to seek a “guide to the world in him.” For an explanation for this, the writer looks to Hannah Arendt’s studies of totalitarianism, its origins, and the susceptibility of masses to propaganda for answers.

If does look familiar, because it is. Human nature is universal across time and cultures. While Trump isn’t Hitler, he too appealed to dark impulses buried deep in human nature, and his movement is reminiscent of the mass movement called Nazism, with the same ferocious blind loyalty to a charismatic leader. The one good thing about such movements is that, being personality cults, they tend to disappear when the leader does. Thus, we can predict the Trump movement won’t survive without Trump, and when he exits the stage, it will too.

The reeking pile of wreckage Trump is leaving in his wake includes the Republican Party, which now “tries to hold on to power by flagrantly undemocratic means.” On a broader scale, he “leaves behind a society in which the bonds of trust are degraded, in which his example licenses everyone to cheat” and mock the vulnerable among us. He is a destroyer, if not of worlds, of the civility that bound us together as a nation.

With that civility gone, or at least badly frayed, some Trump supporters now talk of breaking up the nation. The seeds were already there, and perceptive observers saw such a possibility years ago. For example, in 1998, University of Washington law professor Stewart Jay predicted, “The 21st century will witness a dissolution of the current United States into a number of new national territories.” If this indeed comes to pass, Trump didn’t create or even necessarily initiate the process; but he certainly accelerated it. Leaving office, he leaves an America of two factions who can’t see how they’ll be able to live with each.

Trump likes comparing himself to Lincoln. We call Lincoln great because when America broke apart, he put it back together. Trump will be remembered as a president who nearly tore America apart. That’s about as far from Lincoln’s greatness as it’s possible to be. This is what really matters about Trump’s presidency; the numbers and statistics matter little and will soon be forgotten.

Photos: And they call us haters …

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