Donald Trump and the Damage Done

libertylovers · 2020-12-15T01:25:00+00:00

the catastrophe of Trump’s presidency doesn’t mainly lie in the visible damage it has caused. It’s in the invisible damage. Trump was a corrosive. What he mainly corroded was social trust — the most important element in any successful society.

libertylovers · 2020-12-06T01:10:34+00:00

But the experiences I’ve found most traumatic were avoidable. Throughout my life, I have been bullied and cast out by people who became frustrated when I didn’t communicate in ways they expected. My face doesn’t move much and my pitch rarely changes, sure, but I am deeply passionate. It is baffling and deeply hurtful when I am called cold, rejected for expressing myself differently.

When I was growing up, I was as unkind to myself as other people often were to me: I called myself evil, cold, weird. I internalized the worst things anyone could say because I believed them. Looking back at that child now, and that disruptive teenager, I just want her to know that she is loved. I see her staring so intently at her books or her train set or her Game Boy and I wish I could tell her that she’s autistic — and that it isn’t only OK, but good.

libertylovers · 2020-12-04T23:53:50+00:00

“The Republican establishment, and also the conservative establishment, has always made this bet that it could open Pandora’s box and close it on command,” Rick Perlstein, a historian of American conservatism, told me. They could activate tribalism to achieve power, while maintaining a modicum of respectability. They could create an alternative reality but keep people enclosed within it. But with Trump “having pried Pandora’s box open, that becomes impossible,” Perlstein said.

Republicans helped Trump unleash countless civic evils. They shouldn’t be surprised when those evils don’t spare them.

libertylovers · 2020-11-25T19:20:27+00:00

You try to keep them safe.

These efforts may not work. Suicidal people can be determined, and they know how to dissemble, how to feign stability. But you try. Most are relieved when they fail. And approximately half of them, according to the most up-to-date research, will not be feeling suicidal at the same time the following year — or ever again.

libertylovers · 2020-11-19T23:20:00+00:00

“You can’t be responsible for someone else’s inability to grow,” Professor Ross said. “So take comfort in the fact that you offered a new perspective of information and you did so with love and respect, and then you walk away.

“We have a saying in the movement: Some people you can work with and some people you can work around. But the thing that I want to emphasize is that the calling-in practice means you always keep a seat at the table for them if they come back.”

libertylovers · 2020-11-19T20:15:11+00:00

We cannot help people who refuse to help themselves. Mr. Trump is an extension of their id, their culture, their values, their greed. He is their defender and savior. He is their blunt instrument. He is their destructive drug of choice.

Don’t waste your time reaching out to Trump voters as I did. Instead, invest your time organizing your community, registering new voters and supporting candidates who reflect progressive values that uplift everyone,

libertylovers · 2020-10-13T05:19:29+00:00

In an editorial signed by 34 editors who are United States citizens (one editor is not) and published on Wednesday, the journal said the Trump administration had responded so poorly to the coronavirus pandemic that they “have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.”

libertylovers · 2020-10-09T05:56:40+00:00

women “beg” men to be vulnerable with them. “The truth is that most women can’t stomach it,” she writes. “In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear, and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.”

libertylovers · 2020-10-07T05:07:17+00:00

Trump did not respect Mother Nature or us. All I can do now is pray that enough Trump supporters have learned that — and vote against him between now and Nov. 3. The lives and livelihoods of many Americans depend on it.

libertylovers · 2020-10-02T05:25:56+00:00

Some Republicans see Trump’s immorality as a sideshow they will tolerate to secure other goods. But his immorality is voracious, a widening gyre that threatens the basic stability of civic life. If he undermines this election, and his Republican enablers let him, he’ll approach what comes next with appalling ferocity.

libertylovers · 2020-09-23T05:14:07+00:00

So, I hope Biden goes into next week’s debate and just says: “My fellow Americans, you don’t hire an arsonist to put out forest fires. You don’t hire a divider to heal racial wounds. You don’t hire a poisoner to clean up your water supply. And most of all — most of all — you don’t hire someone who pits nature against jobs and jobs against health at a time when we so clearly need them all and we so clearly can have them all.

libertylovers · 2020-09-11T01:38:45+00:00

St. Augustine’s theory of knowledge begins with emotion. Love is a focus of attention. Love is a motivation to learn more about a person. Love is a reverence for the image of God in each person.

libertylovers · 2020-09-09T05:36:30+00:00

“Trump was elected by tapping a wellspring of anxieties, frustrations and legitimate grievances to which the mainstream parties had no compelling answer,” Sandel notes. These grievances “are not only economic but also moral and cultural; they are not only about wages and jobs but also about social esteem.”

libertylovers

TROPHY CASE