Driving home from work, I was thinking about a
conversation I’ve been having on Facebook, resulting from my relative’s post
about how we must “keep all Muslims out of the U.S.” Even though the other man involved in this
conversation and I both seem to agree that good Muslims exist, he seems to
think we just can’t risk letting any into the country, because “as a whole
they’re bad; we can’t permit terrorists to slip in among any good Muslims.” I don’t think we can make a blanket judgement
on a billion or whatever people. I think
many Americans exhibit paranoid hysteria.
I’m much more likely to die from a traffic accident than from a terrorist
attack.
So, driving home, listening to early reports from the
Iowa caucuses, thinking about all the elections and campaigns I’ve watched in
my lifetime, going all the way back to 1960, I suppose—although at ten I was
too young and only remember the actual election in November , not the
primaries.
I worry about the country.
And I wonder why people end up the way they do, as far
as their political views.
My family has always been almost entirely
Republican—why have I always been a Democrat?
I grew up in a conservative military environment. When I graduated from high school in 1969, I
had spent eight of my twelve school years on Air Force bases. I had spent two years living a half-mile from
an Air Force base in conservative New Hampshire. I had spent my other two years living in
conservative Virginia. How did I end up
a Democrat? It just always made more
sense to me. And, in the 1960s, even
though the segregationists in the South were Democrats, so were John Kennedy
and Lyndon Johnson, who were supporting civil rights laws. In 1968, before I could even vote, it never
entered my mind to support Richard Nixon, much less George Wallace. I think that they seemed hateful and
vindictive, while the Democrats—the Kennedys, Johnson, Humbert Humphrey—seemed
hopeful, seemed positive, seemed to speak to a greatness of spirit. The Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther
King inspired me. Barry Goldwater,
Richard Nixon—they didn’t.
To me, the Republicans always seemed disgruntled,
self-centered, and selfish.
But then—the movement against the Vietnam War was also
disgruntled, angry.
# # #
Currently, I’m not angry. I’m sad.
Trump talks about “making America great again.” What?
He thinks we’re no longer great?
The richest country in the world, the country with the most powerful
military, the world trend-setter in so many ways? What he and his supporters really want,
perhaps, is for the United States to be able to do whatever it wants to,
without anyone daring to challenge us. I
think that’s what they actually want—“how dare anyone oppose us on anything?!”
I’ve sometimes had an intuition comparing Kaiser
Wilhelm and George W. Bush. Not meant to
be mean-spirited; I lived in Germany two
years (with the U.S. Army); I don’t consider Wilhelm a monster; just a leader
with certain shortcomings.
More recently, my intuition has connected Trump and
Hitler. Again, not mean-spirited. I recognize the horrible things that Hitler
was responsible for, but—dare I say it?—I don’t viscerally hate him; I just
regret that he did what he did. I’m not
suggesting that Trump would do anything like him, but—just something about
Trump’s personality disturbs me, in a way that brings to mind Hitler.
I’m sad about so many things: the way people think of politics and
politicians; many of our peculiar American attitudes. I don’t feel we live in a tyranny. I don’t really dislike the federal
government; I tend to support it and indeed treasure it. So in this year of the “angry voter,” I am
not angry.
I’m not terribly worried by foreign threats; I’m more
disturbed by the possibility that Americans are beginning to distrust one
another, and their government—any government, whether federal, state, or local. There is much too much talk of “treason”
these days. I sense that the primary
threat to the country is internal:
Hateful citizens turning against one another. I shiver at the prospect of another Civil
War, or of Americans turning against one another in anger and violence. I see no good coming out of it.
