Us vs. Them
Dear Editor: The most thought-provoking – and gut-level disturbing – thing about President Trump’s racist, sexist, nationalist, jingoist Tweetstorms and follow-on double downs directed against “The Squad” – those four Democrat Congresswomen-of-Color – is that probably close to at least 45 percent of Americans agree with him.
That is close to the percentage of popular votes he got in 2016, and the steady approval ratings he has maintained on the job he is doing as president throughout his reign.
If Mr. Trump has accomplished nothing else, he has effectively dismembered what used to be called “The American People.” We are now a “peoples,” just like we were 160 years ago, on the eve of the first American Civil War.
Some of us now, like then, are obviously more “American” than others of us. Then, it depended on whether one was for the Blues or for the Greys. Now it seems to depend primarily upon whether one is a Trumpatista or not.
At this point – as the reality-TV extravaganza that is Year III of The Age of Trump continues to unfold in all its programmed chaos, and this nation and its whole system of government and governance continues to unravel into total collapse – one can only wonder if there will even be an election on the first Tuesday in November of 2020. And that, if there is, whether there will an inauguration the following January 20. Regardless of who wins; and particularly, if Trump doesn’t.
And because of that, one can then only wonder if there will still be a United States of America around to celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026.
When asked what had been accomplished with a new Constitution there in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, Benjamin Franklin put it very poetically, albeit bluntly: “We have given you a Republic; if you can keep it.”
At this point, we are perilously close to losing it. Much, much closer than any of us dare even imagine.
Those who would scoff at America being seven years from being no more are directed to the year 1984, of all years. This turned out to be seven years before the demise, destruction and disappearance of what used to be called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its Empire in Eastern Europe, and the seat of the global, monolithic, world-wide Communist conspiracy and the world’s second superpower.
Seven years later, the superpower USSR, its Warsaw Bloc, and the whole idea of worldwide revolution and the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” was gone; consigned to the waste dump of history’s failed ideas.
If America ends up in that waste dump, it won’t be because it was a failed idea.
It will be because it was (and still is) an idea that required (and requires) conscious, concerned and committed citizens to make it happen; and to keep it happening by demanding that their government and its politicians and bureaucrats do what it and they are tasked to do, and do it well.
America will end up in that waste dump – first and foremost of all – because Americans could never quite agree on exactly what those necessary, sufficient, and proper tasks of government actually, really are.
Consequently, as opposed to what government is supposed to be doing, what it actually is doing continually changes, depending upon who has how much political power (typically greased by economic wealth and socio-cultural contacts), and how they want to use government to accomplish their own personal, organizational, and/or cohort goals and objectives.
None of which has ever had anything whatsoever to do with the Republic that Franklin and his compeers gave us that muggy July afternoon, 232 years ago.
And that is why we are in danger of losing it.
Jeffrey G. Moebus, Sitka
