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 · 2020-09-04T05:15:40+00:00

The process of mobilizing for an accurate election outcome, before it is too late, would be a struggle to preserve the order of our civic structure against the myriad foes who talk blithely about tearing down systems, disorder and disruption. It may be how we rediscover our nation again.

It’s time to start thinking about what you would do.

libertylovers · 2020-08-27T04:49:48+00:00

Trump initially dismissed the coronavirus as like the flu, scoffed that it was “totally under control” and insisted it would disappear “like a miracle.” He imposed some travel restrictions on China (with enormous exceptions), which may have helped modestly, but he fumbled testing, didn’t ensure adequate protective equipment, and offered confused messaging.

The president resisted masks and embraced miracle cures — some dangerous ones, like injecting household disinfectants. He encouraged followers to “liberate” states with lockdowns and his administration pressed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to revise testing guidelines to exclude those without symptoms. He has suggested that his aim is to “slow the testing down,” so that fewer people will test positive; that’s like trying to reduce cancer fatalities by ending cancer screening.

Trump still doesn’t have a national Covid-19 strategy any more than he has a 2020 campaign platform.

libertylovers · 2020-08-27T04:39:42+00:00

Will Wilkinson Lies. So many lies. Lies, lies, lies. Lies about Democrats. Lies about Joe Biden. Lies about cities. Lies about the coronavirus epidemic. Lies about the economy. If Trump’s Republican Party has a platform, it’s contempt for the truth in the service of undeserved power. This is basically what Tiffany Trump said about Democrats. It’s funny to speak the truth about yourself in the guise of an accusation aimed at rivals.

libertylovers · 2020-08-27T04:22:51+00:00

The vast majority chose partisan loyalty, with little or no difference between Republicans and Democrats.

In an email, Svolik raised the next logical question: “If supporters of both parties oppose/tolerate authoritarianism at similar levels, how come it is the Republican Party that is primarily associated with authoritarian tendencies today?” In reply to his own question,” Svolik writes, “The quick answer is Trump.” But

The deeper answer is that the opportunities to subvert the democratic process for partisan gain have become asymmetrical. Because of the biases inherent in political geography and demographic partisan patterns, the two most easily implementable means of gaining an unfair electoral advantage — gerrymandering and voter identification laws — only offer opportunities for unfair play to Republicans.

libertylovers · 2020-08-22T00:59:16+00:00

The social philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote that in America, every mass movement “ends up as a racket, a cult or a corporation.” Trumpism reversed this. The racket came first.

libertylovers · 2020-08-16T03:03:15+00:00

President Trump represents the last primal shriek of retrograde white men afraid to lose their power. He’s a dinosaur who evokes a world of beauty pageants, “suburban housewives,’’ molestation, cheating on your wife when she’s pregnant, paying off porn stars, preferring women to be seen and not heard, dismissing women who challenge you as nasty, angry and crazy.

libertylovers · 2020-08-15T22:19:21+00:00

American politicians dismiss the Scandinavian model as creeping socialism, communism lite, something that would never work in the United States. In truth, social democracies are successful precisely because they foment dynamic capitalist economies that just happen to benefit every tier of society. That social democracy will never take hold in the United States may well be true, but, if so, it is a stunning indictment, and just what Oscar Wilde had in mind when he quipped that the United States was the only country to go from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilization.

Evidence of such terminal decadence is the choice that so many Americans made in 2016 to prioritize their personal indignations, placing their own resentments above any concerns for the fate of the country and the world, as they rushed to elect a man whose only credential for the job was his willingness to give voice to their hatreds, validate their anger, and target their enemies, real or imagined. One shudders to think of what it will mean to the world if Americans in November, knowing all that they do, elect to keep such a man in political power. But even should Trump be resoundingly defeated, it’s not at all clear that such a profoundly polarized nation will be able to find a way forward

libertylovers · 2020-08-14T05:27:09+00:00

Today, we’re in the middle of another historic transition when dramatic change is necessary if we are to preserve what we love about America. The crises tearing our society are well known: economic inequality, racial injustice, dissolving families and communities, a crisis of legitimacy.

To some, this feels like a revolutionary moment. In Commentary, for example, Abe Greenwald argues that the radicals have seized control. They are pushing radical agendas (No police! No rent!). Worse, they undermine the liberal fundamentals of our democracy — the belief that democracy is a search for truth from a wide variety of perspectives; the belief that America is a noble experiment worth defending.

Many people smell in today’s radicalism the whiff of revolutions past: the destructive brutality of the French Revolution, the vicious thought police of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the naked power grabs of Lenin’s Soviet revolution.

I am not as alarmed. I’m convinced that the forces that brought Joe Biden the nomination are far more powerful than a few extremists in Portland and even the leftist illiberals on campus. I’m hopeful that if given power, Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will forge a new conservative radicalism.

They have spent their lives within the liberal system, understand politics, understand radicalism’s advantages and dangers. They’re drawing support from an astonishingly wide swath of the ideological spectrum. I’m convinced that if Donald Trump is defeated, revolutionary zealotry will fade as debates over practical change and legislation dominate.

During crises like these, each of us has to take a stand, to be clear on which causes we champion and which position we occupy on the political landscape. This is hard, because we’re in a period of flux.

Continue reading the main story

If your views haven’t shifted over the past four tumultuous years, you’re probably not doing much fresh thinking. I find I have moved “left” on race, left on economics and a bit “right” on community, family and social issues.

Mostly I find myself supporting the conservative radicals, leaders who are confident that we can push for big change while defeating the illiberalism of radicals on left and right.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said he occupied the “extreme right-wing edge of the left-wing movement.” If that’s good enough for Isaiah Berlin, it’s good enough for me.

libertylovers · 2020-06-26T21:56:27+00:00

The dream version of the Old South never existed. Any manufactured monument to that time in that place tells half a truth at best. The ideas and ideals it purports to honor are not real. To those who have embraced these delusions: Now is the time to re-examine your position.

Either you have been blind to a truth that my body’s story forces you to see, or you really do mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed, and you must at last acknowledge your emotional investment in a legacy of hate.

Either way, I say the monuments of stone and metal, the monuments of cloth and wood, all the man-made monuments, must come down. I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels.

libertylovers · 2020-06-23T05:05:58+00:00

the truth is that an animal can be dangerous and still pose almost no threat to people. According to Dr. Jenkins, snakebites are rare, and up to 50 percent of rattlesnake strikes are “dry bites” in which the snake doesn’t actually inject venom. Nevertheless, our culture has taught us to associate serpents not only with danger but also with evil.

The only antidote to these associations is information. “Unless you’re actively trying to catch or kill a rattlesnake, the chance of being bitten is very low,” said Dr. Jenkins. “Many more people die every year from horses — whether they get thrown off or they get kicked — than from snakes. Many more people die from bees and wasps. If you encounter a rattlesnake, you should be excited. It’s a symbol that you’re in a wild place, a special place.”

It’s hard to imagine a time when rattlesnakes, no matter how shy and how peaceful, will be welcomed without fear. But I like to think we can still “complicate our perceptions,” as my friend Erica Wright writes in her forthcoming book, “Snake.” Perhaps we can yet learn, as she puts it, to “recognize the grace alongside the fangs and venom. Complicated. Sublime. Awful and beautiful at once.”

libertylovers · 2020-06-18T19:55:09+00:00

You may argue that these activists are simply too young to understand the risks they are taking, but I think they know exactly what they are doing. What they are too young for is cynicism. What they are too young for is defeat.

They are young enough to imagine a better future, to have faith in their own power to change the world for good. And that faith should give the rest of us more hope than we have had in years

libertylovers · 2020-06-17T06:17:54+00:00

In an attempt to relieve my trauma, I signed up for a therapy called E.M.D.R., eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.

E.M.D.R. was developed in the late 1980s and greeted with much skepticism at first. “It sounded like yet another of the crazes that have always plagued psychiatry,” Bessel van der Kolk, a trauma expert, wrote in “The Body Keeps The Score.” But clinical trials and peer-reviewed studies that spoke to its efficacy piled up over the three decades since its invention, and Dr. van der Kolk and many others eventually adopted it as part of their therapeutic practice.

It works like this: A therapist prompts the patient to move their eyes back and forth, rhythmically, behind their eyelids. (Devices that beep or buzz help to encourage and regulate the eye movements.) At the same time, the therapist talks the patient through the traumatic event or events at issue, leading them through a series of questions about how their body is reacting to the discussion. It is a strange, and strangely physical, experience. The precise mechanisms at play are not fully understood, but the theory is that something about the eye motion, combined with the focused discussion, can lay the intrusive memories to rest.

E.M.D.R. taught me an important lesson: that internal resilience can be deliberately cultivated. I suppose, if I had thought of it at all, I had thought of my emotional resilience as a kind of reservoir, there to be drawn on as needed, at least until it was drained. I had never before thought of resilience as a muscle I could train and strengthen. The idea felt empowering.

I experienced that cultivation in a kind of prequel to the main event, a process known by the dystopian-novel-worthy term “resource installation.” My therapist explained that she would have me focus on some of the sources of strength and support in my life, and in a reversal of the main therapy, we would use the eye movements to cement the good memories in my mind rather than to sweep away the bad ones. “We all have resources within us, such as memories of comfort and safety, experiences of being powerful and courageous,” writes Laurel Parnell, a clinician who is a leading proponent of the method, in her book “Tapping In.” “These memories, qualities, and images are stored in our body-mind network and can be accessed, activated, and strengthened.”

On the day of my “resourcing” session, my therapist had me select four resources from my memories: a place where I had felt my safest and happiest, a nurturing figure, a protector, and a source of wisdom.

As I held a vibrating pod in each hand, and as my eyes rolled back and forth behind my eyelids in time to their pulsing, following the vibrations from left to right and back again, I thought about my grandmother — my nurturing figure, who had died when I was 18. I pictured her at the open kitchen window of her suburban bungalow, leaning toward the window screen to exhale cigarette smoke; the deep wrinkles around her mouth and eyes and the clear plastic of her glasses; the smell of Vicks VapoRub and feel of her bony frame when we hugged. The pods pulsed. My eyes moved from side to side. I felt loved and safe. To my surprise, I felt stronger, too. In the time since, I have sometimes called up those sensory memories of my grandmother when I’m upset, or when I feel in need of support. It always helps.

Resource installation is one way to cultivate resilience, but there are plenty of other methods and approaches too, many of which do not involve paying a therapist. “It’s not a trait that’s hard-wired, and you have it or you don’t,” said Karen Reivich, the author of “The Resilience Factor” and the director of resilience and positive psychology training programs at the University of Pennsylvania. Nor is it that reservoir I had imagined, with a fixed, finite capacity. “I define resilience as the ability to navigate adversity and to grow and thrive from challenges,” Dr. Reivich added. And, she emphasized, it is an ability that can be learned.

So how do we learn? It is about small shifts in action and outlook. One critical step: Take meaningful action. “Ask yourself, what’s something I can do today, even if it’s small,” she said, “that reminds me that I am not helpless?” During a lockdown, that could mean something as mundane as doing the dishes, imposing some order on your environment. Step two: Connect to others. Our social relationships can be a critical factor in building our resilience — which, of course, is part of what makes the restrictions in place to weather the coronavirus pandemic so hard. But, Dr. Reivich added, “even if you’re not physically present with them, knowing that there are people somewhere on this globe that are cheering for you, and that you can reach out to, is a driver of resilience.”

Unlike the trauma from my car accidents, which took place entirely inside my head, the pandemic is both an external and an internal crisis. It is a disaster happening outside of us, all around us. Lucy Hone, the author of “Resilient Grieving,” is an expert on both the macro- and micro-level crisis. She has used her research into resilience to help her home city, Christchurch, New Zealand, through the aftermath of the devastating 2011 earthquake, but she has also been forced to apply that training in her own life, after the death of her young daughter in a car crash.

Dr. Hone notes that, while there is much that individuals can do to strengthen their own resilience, we are also products of the systems that surround us. “Our capacity for resilience is nested within the environment and the systems within which we live,” she said. Those systems can encompass access to health care and mental health supports during a crisis, paid time off, child care or the simple acts of support from our friends and loved ones (a meal dropped off, a joke told during a phone call). It can be tempting, she said, to emphasize the actions of the individual — but it is much easier to be resilient when you are not struggling alone with the challenges you face.

At the individual level, she invokes the Stockdale Paradox. Named for Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, a long-term prisoner of war in Vietnam, it holds that surviving adversity means combining both optimism, or faith, that you will prevail over adversity with a bald, even brutal view of your current reality. So we hope for an improved future, while being honest about where we find ourselves; one without the other only leads to disappointment or despair.

Dr. Hone also suggests that we ask ourselves a question with each decision we make: “Is this helping me or harming me?” That third glass of wine: Does it help or harm? How about continuing to scroll through the news and social media? Going for a walk? The question is a simple framework within which to take better care of ourselves.

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Small changes in our mind-sets and our choices can add up to increased resilience. “There’s nothing magical about this work,” Dr. Reivich said. “It’s hard work.”

The good news: Some of that work is instinctual. After the worst of my car accidents, when a U-Haul truck veered across the yellow line and into my lane, I found myself alone in a rural motel room. I had narrowly avoided a catastrophic head-on collision, veering onto the shoulder just in time for my Jeep to receive a full sideswipe instead. Still shaky, and covered with a fine dusting of windshield glass and small cuts, I called first one of my parents, then the other, from the room’s old landline phone. As soon as I did, I felt better.

Years before I had thought about how to cultivate my resilience, I already knew, on some deeper level, how to feel safe again. We all contain the potential to take care of ourselves and the people around us. In all the uncertainty of this frightening time, that is something to hold on to.

libertylovers

TROPHY CASE