I was never a Hillary fan— and I spent time with her a few times, once in the White House at a reception when she gave me a deadly look because I made Bill laugh on the reception line by telling him a joke she couldn’t hear, and once at a Democratic Party campaign event in West Hollywood when all her attendants escaped and left her alone with me. That was chilly. I didn’t vote for her. Better than Trump? Of course… but a lesser evil at a time that I had decided not to vote for evils any more, lesser or greater. But there was one thing I admired in that 2016 campaign, something I bet she wishes she had never said out loud: “deplorables.” She hit the nail on the head. That’s what they were and that’s what they are now— most of the 62,984,828 people who voted for him in 2016 and every single one of the 74,223,975 people who voted for him in 2020. And the ones ready to vote for him today? Deplorables squared. But that’s over 70% of the white people in Wyoming and around the same percentage of white people in West Virginia… Yep, deplorable squared.
On Friday, John Pavlovitz noted that The Indictments of Trump are Indictments of His Supporters. Trump himself lately has taken to saying something like that too. Jesus-like, he claims to be suffering through this agony for them.
Pavlovitz rates the new indictments “more traitorous and sobering than anything we’ve witnessed in our young nation’s turbulent lifetime. Sadly, that isn’t the story here. There were days when far less than these charges would have elicited repulsion from patriotic Americans. There were days such things would been dealbreakers. They aren’t anymore. That is the story… Crimes against America were once intolerable to Americans.”
[A]s with every other abuse of power, every former filthy diatribe, and every past act of contempt for the systems and safeguards of this nation— Donald Trump has today engendered greater passion from his sycophantic base, deeper devotion from his beholden political partners, and increasing cultic fervor from his fear-addled disciples.
The indictments of this man have been indictments of his supporters.
They have served to ratify with laser precision the the complete tribal sickness that a terrifying portion of this nation has found itself afflicted with. There is no bridge too far. There is no uncrossable line. There is no unpardonable sin. He is incapable of losing their steadfast adoration.
The cognitive dissonance were living around simply escapes comprehension:
10 Commandments-wielding Christians embracing a profane and predatory pathological liar proven to have sexually abused at least one woman.
“Don’t Tread on Me” patriots continually falling prostrate before the very one with his foot upon their collective neck.
Self-identified morality police celebrating a prolific purveyor of every kind of wickedness.
Figuring out how to collaborate or even coexist with such people is a near impossibility; a truth which sits like a massive boulder in the center of our chests as we navigate our workplaces, churches, neighborhoods, timelines, and living rooms. There is no irreducible truth, no objective reality, no accepted virtue to connect our shared humanity anymore. When moral or legal laws no longer apply, there is no common ground to carve out.
For the past few years many of us have been waiting for the day when people we know and love would be shaken alive: pulled from their Fox News-induced haze and brought into the brilliant light of moral lucidity again. We’ve been praying for a moment when his immorality finally eclipsed their tolerance for it; when they would find reason and sense and empathy again and join us in the dawn of the nation that could be.
We may have to come to terms with the fact that this day is not coming, that we will not experience that beautiful dream in America’s waking hours, that we will need to dream a different dream without them.
These indictments are indictments of those who voted for him the first time, those who knew what they knew in 2016 but who empowered him anyway.
They are indictments of those who voted him a second time, staying faithful through his COVID incompetence and his four years of unthinkable executive overreach.
They are indictments of the people continue to defend him through sexual assault and election fraud and violent insurrection and high treason; who again today abide atrocities they’d have loudly condemned in any other human being at any other time.
Many of us have wasted countless hours trying to figure out the whys of this recent mass exodus from decency: these denials of Science, celebrations of discrimination, defenses of fascism, embraces of cruelty. This is a natural but fruitless pursuit at this point.
It may be that a cocktail of indoctrination and manipulation have rendered people unable to diverge from Donald Trump.
It may be that political self-preservation keeps them tethered to the Republican Party no matter how low the bottom runs.
It may be that pride prevents them from simply admitting that they once made a terrible mistake, and to avoid such a confession they will continue to make it.
Either way, we are left with the same sobering, infuriating, terrifying truth: to a large swath of the people we share this place and time with, it doesn’t matter what he does or how many people are irreparably harmed by his growing legacy of documented crimes and moral offenses— they are riding him into the abyss.
The rest of us cannot be pulled in with them.
We who remember what this nation aspires to and who believe simple goodness is a still hill worth defending (regardless of their past political affiliations), need to make sure that power is not placed in hands of someone like Donald Trump or those whose hearts provide safe harbor to his hatred.
In the coming days we need to find our collective influence and use it to declare unequivocally that this nation will not allow its legacy to be decided by this man and his movement.
If we fail to protect this nation with all that we know, that will be an indictment on all of us.
Blame Bill Clinton for loosening up FCC rules that limited media ownership. Without FOX to amplify and regurgitate TFGs lies 24/7 for years there wouldn’t be so many deplorables.
america reflected in Pavlovitz's 'too little too late' and still inadequate epiphanies.
"When moral or legal laws no longer apply, there is no common ground to carve out."
Absolute truth. But unsaid is it is the fault of the democraps and their voters that morals and laws AND THE CONSTITUTION have gone undefended, unenforced for over 5 decades. And it hasn't just been the nazis. It's been every single democrap admin too. YOUR pussy democraps let nixon, reagan, hw, cheney/w and trump all skate on treasons as well as other crimes (trump, by far, the most frequent committer of crimes... since about the same time your democraps started refusing to uphold laws, standards and the constitution).
"We who remember what…
the right time to do the right thing is always right now. there is no right way to do a wrong thing. we must be ever persistent in calling out the liars and their lies. our silence only condones and gives credence . we must force the trumpers to explain themselves when they parrot the lies, as it is easy to be a mindless dupe but harder to be a mindful one. and if faced with the reality of knowing something is wrong and you still support it, then you should be called out for being wrong and evil and deserve nothing but ridicule. thanks for another heart felt piece Howie. i felt every word.