Fear and Loathing in America
Steeped in fear and driven by hatred, we have seen an alarming trend toward polarization that has crept into nearly every facet of our lives.
America is angry, addicted to outrage, and has no yearning for a cure.
Have we ever been this divided? Perhaps so. The blinders of modernity prevent us from seeing history beyond our own recollection. History, to us, is viewed in the abstract. The pages, the pictures, they’re little more than art to our curious eyes. We once had a war that tore our nation in half and left over half a million brothers to rest eternally on the battlefield. We had moments of intensive strife during the Civil Rights era. Are we more divided today than we were when the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated just months apart?
Those are questions with which historians will have to contend in the future, but for us living in today’s America, it certainly feels as if this is the worst it has been in our lifetime.
As Democrats celebrate the lack of a “red wave” coming to fruition in most states–save for wins in Florida and impressive gains in New York–and Republicans search high and low for any excuse for their loss that isn’t related to the 45th President, there is an incredible lack of introspection across the political divide.
In the weeks leading up to the 2022 midterms, I wrestled with leaving the Republican Party, regardless of the results. As long as I can remember, I have identified as a Republican. I’ve spent my entire adult life committed to its ideals and electing its candidates, both with varying degrees of success and failure.
As the primary election season started in 2016, I was just beginning to discover what kind of Republican I was. I rested my support on Rand Paul, despite my never being a big fan of his father. I found the Senator to be agreeably libertarian while also still maintaining appeal to a broader electorate. I was excited to finally participate in a presidential election (I turned 18 just a few months after the 2012 election).
As we know, Rand Paul didn’t receive the nomination.
I never expected Donald Trump to win the nomination in 2016, much less the Presidency.
It was the first presidential election in which I was eligible to cast a vote. How could I not vote for the nominee of the party for which I work? Alas, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I wrote in Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a man I had met just a few months before at a party function. A decision that is seemingly ironic today, considering his recent victory over the man for whom he voted instead of Donald Trump in 2016. On election night, my attention was turned toward local races, believing that Donald Trump stood no chance of becoming our next President.
I distinctly recall the excitement coming from the downtown San Diego hotel where Republicans rented a ballroom every election night. An individual ran up to me and said “Isn’t this exciting?” or something to that effect. I replied “Our party just committed suicide tonight” and quickly walked outside to get some nicotine.
Since then, my remaining in the Republican Party has been with the belief that I could help in some small way steer the party away from whatever it was heading toward. For the record, I didn’t cast my vote for him in 2020 either. I wrote in Senator Mitt Romney–it seems I have a thing for Senators from Utah.
I recently heard somebody put it well when they said that the Republican Party, in the era proceeding Trump’s ascension to the helm, was reverse engineering its ideology. Organizations have hired policy teams to take burps of Donald Trump’s speeches and tweets and attempt to find enough philosophical flavor and fluff to advertise itself as a well-thought ideology. “America First” they call it.
When he lost in 2020, I thought the end was nigh. But as we know, Donald Trump did not retire to Mar-A-Lago to paint portraits, nor did he decide to return to The Apprentice or to his standard corporate adventures. Allegations of a stolen election, starting his own social media company, and maintaining his oversized influence over the Republican Party added chapter to chapter to what I had hoped was a dime-store novella. It has become the goddam magnum opus of political misery.
For candidates and elected officials not beholden to the former President, it becomes a game of chicken, continually dodging questions on his candidacy or stating a position of support that stems from a fear of the base rather than an earnestly held sentiment. Interviews with now cast-aside members of congress, such as Peter Meijer of Michigan, reveal that the vast majority of Republicans in the body want nothing more than to be done with Donald Trump, but they are afraid to speak.
Afraid of what, exactly? Surely, afraid of the base of Republican voters! But their fear isn’t that their life is in danger or even that their careers post-Congress are in jeopardy. Instead, it is their fear of losing the power and prestige of being a member of Congress. Perhaps, what they should fear more, is what conclusions their grandchildren will draw when reading the stories of their ancestor’s cowardice.
The Republican Party has been, for generations, the best vehicle for the conservative movement. Without a suitable replacement, it most likely still is, but the pain that the movement will have to endure to achieve momentary victory in every next election is potentially too great to survive. In 2020, the party declined to even adopt a new platform.
And now, Donald Trump has announced his third bid for the Presidency.
Donald Trump is antithetical to conservatism. Full stop. While his expansion of the executive branch, friendliness with dictators across the globe, and protectionist trade policy is enough to discredit his facade of conservatism, it is his disregard for our institutions that solidifies it. At the core of conservatism is a belief that the institutions established in the Constitution by our founding fathers are sacrosanct, and at the core of Donald Trump’s moral center is the belief that they are mere obstacles to his continued holding of power.
There is no doubt that any individual who still yearns for Trump’s return residency in the White House will find my words, thus far, to be nothing short of treasonous. For this, I make no apologies, but I will cast my ire across the political pond for a brief moment.
The average individual aligned with the “Never-Trump” movement looks upon the average Trump-supporting American with derision when the national moment calls for curiosity. The found solution may be disagreeable, but the hopes and fears of many millions of Americans are not to be met with such callous disregard unless further division is sought. Indeed, I find myself disagreeing with the direction of the political party that I’ve devoted my entire adult life to advancing, but I try to do so with disappointment, not disgust.
Admittedly, my own mind is troubled by those who find themselves devoted absolutely to a man who I find valueless, narcissistic, and otherwise unintelligent, but to submit to this reaction is to discard the mind in favor of the heart.
Conservative-aligned groups that spawned from and in disagreement with Donald Trump’s rise to power, such as the Lincoln Project, have been just as quick to disregard the principles they sought to preserve. Understandably, organizations such as these quickly found that the pool of donors and surrogates who were willing to take a stand against Trump while still defending traditional conservatism was relatively small. Beyond that, what vulnerable Republican would accept support from a group that seemingly betrays its own base?
Fortunately for this special class of grift, there is a large pool of people angry at Donald Trump willing to give their hard-earned dollars to any organization that promises to fight him.
Donald Trump may very well be the object of your hatred, but extending that hatred to the millions who supported him without giving careful regard to their reasoning is nothing short of dehumanization. For decades, many of these Americans have felt that the ruling political class has ignored them. Whether their logic or conclusions are at fault or not, their emotions are just as real as those you feel toward their chosen leader.
By all means, work to prevent Donald Trump from ascending to the Presidency again. In that effort, I lend my support, but do not pretend as if the bubbling current of populism and nationalism running beneath our political landscape rests solely upon his chances of being elected again. Any true effort to bring an end to reactionary politics begins with a deeper understanding of those with whom we disagree with — and an effort on all of our behalf to recognize the humanity in those who think differently.
Most Americans–be they Trump or Biden voters–are good humans. If you disagree with such sentiment, then I suggest you not concern yourself with who ascends to the Presidency, and instead focus upon the next life. Solace will seemingly always escape you in mortality.
So, yes, I remain a Republican, if for no other reason than to take a final stand for the political party that spawned the likes of Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan.
