Politics
Donald Trump’s Dark Political Legacy is a Bitterly Divided America
Our political reckoning in a broken post-Trump America.
America’s eternally fractious political debate devolved into a self-destructive maelstrom of hostility, lies, paranoia, and unmitigated rage in the time since Donald Trump first rolled down that golden escalator. His presidency left our politics in smoking ruins, as he stoked the fire of our division and expertly exploited our rage. American democracy has always been messy and loud, but not like this.
Across the political spectrum, there is fury. Partisan ideologues of every political persuasion rampage through the larger discussion, taking no prisoners. Nuance and restraint seem lost.
It’s no secret why America is suffering from such savage political rancor. Donald Trump built his political career on the backs of our anger, urging us all into greater and graver hostilities. He gleefully pitted us against ourselves, as he ran roughshod over our mutual values, our human decency, and ultimately our democracy.
I discovered for myself the bitterness of this political moment. As I’ve written, I’ve tried to approach American politics with nuance, accuracy, and the seriousness it deserves. Yet there is a deep and abiding rage coursing through us, and you can feel its pulse in the comments section of any political column, as troll-provocateurs from the internet’s vast commentariat disperse their gathered venom.
You can feel it in your stomach, as a political writer. Being attacked from every side, viciously, is perhaps simply an unfortunate rite of passage in the bedlam of modern American politics.
It’s not surprising that people are tense. Trump took this nation to the brink of civil war. He fomented a murderous insurrection, and he almost succeeded in holding onto power after the nation soundly rejected him at the ballot box.
Those on the left feel there is an historical imperative to act, and swiftly, to confront pervasive injustice, condemn seething racism, and resist the rising tide of Trumpian fascism.
Those on the right are mired in the spiderwebs of paranoia, fear, and conspiracy the right-wing media ecosystem so effectively weaves around them.
Being at the center of all this madness gives one a strangely unmoored sensation. Perhaps there is no center, any longer. Political positions have hardened into sealed bunkers, driven by the constant reinforcement of social media algorithms and cynical political machines built only to enrage.
Outrage seems to be the only thing we all have in common.
The impression of a broken American conversation is difficult to shake off even as Donald Trump departs in disgrace. The extremism, harsh rhetoric, and hardened ideological positions pollute the shared air of our politics until only our mutual screams can be heard in the muck. The simmering resentment is palpable.
Mao said, “Politics is war without blood, while war is politics with blood.”
That certainly feels appropriate right now in America. There is a surplus of raw political energy, as our society grapples with relentless and manipulated information intake online, fast-changing and grossly unfair economic conditions, simmering racism, and skilled and cunning political agitators like Trump who know how to burrow into our deepest cultural neuroses.
Yet I also feel a slight glimmer of hope that our political conversation can materially improve, that we can begin to see one another as human beings once again.
Trump worked incessantly to divide America. Blue states against red states. Rural against urban. White against Black. Fox against CNN.
We fell for it, and he exploited our weakness to separate us from one another still further, until every part of America felt under siege from every other part.
Atomized and under attack from hated outsiders, we were at the mercy of the politics of otherness, suspicious of and alienated from one another at the same time. Trump tore us apart, and set us upon ourselves, so that he was free to enrich himself with impunity as America cannibalized itself.
That’s over now. Donald Trump is out of power, and America can finally breathe.
He leaves behind a trail of pain in a nation with people who have forgotten how to coexist. Joe Biden, for all his flaws and past political sins, knows how to extend his hand out to the other side, if only as a human being. Our hostility is no longer embodied in our leader, and our leader no longer seeks to magnify and endlessly exploit our differences.
Rather, Biden speaks of unity and overcoming America’s adversities together. He speaks with compassion and empathy, instead of with disdain and lies.
Biden may be speaking in meaningless platitudes, but I believe he loves this country and the people in it.
Donald Trump loved nothing and no one but himself.
These are the things that make me believe we can have a renewed conversation, one where we hear one another, and recognize our mutual humanity. After the last five years of interminable animosity, it now feels possible that we might begin again. That’s the great hope instilled in a democracy. A renewal when things go wrong.
I’m not naive, nor am I ignorant of the enormity of the challenges that face us.
Rampant gun violence, political extremism, gross economic disparity, misinformation, racism, and more still threaten us.
I simply refuse to believe in the end of America quite yet.
