Blurts & Spasms

Thanks for the A2A. The second part of the question leads me to focus on what had the most profound impact on my views about governance and leadership as a U.S. citizen. So, with that in mind, the answer is likely the election of Donald Trump in 2016…and the seemingly louder echo of the same choice in 2024.

I’ve found it pretty devastating. Not that I was enthusiastic about Hilary Clinton — I saw her as the lesser of two evils at the time, and I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary — but because Trump was such a transparently and profoundly poor choice for POTUS, and yet 70+ million people voted for him in 2016…and still more in 2024. It wasn’t just mind-boggling to me, it was really, really depressing — and of course dangerously irresponsible for both the future of the U.S. and the future of the rest of the world.

I am a big believer in human potential and our capacity to rise above petty grievances, hateful anger, ignorance, and self-destructive impulses to achieve the greatest good, for the greatest number, for the greatest duration. But the 2016 and 2024 elections declared loudly that some half the U.S. population really didn’t agree with or want that. Instead, they wanted to celebrate perceived grievances, wallow in hateful anger, willfully commit to remaining ignorant, and elect a petulant man-child who could not help but do the maximum amount of harm to our country and the world.

I think Trump’s impact on society — at least as the purveyor of the MAGA movement — is to amplify the very worst, most toxic and destructive qualities in human beings. The “Trump effect” has created a permission structure for folks to lie, cheat, steal, abuse, destroy, and generally become the shittiest human beings possible. How could reason, science, truth, and the rule of law stand up to Trump’s whiny, self-victimizing celebrations of falsehood, conspiracy, and fear-mongering? In the course of tearing down the most basic ethical norms, the only thing he seems capable of lifting up is himself.

And yet so many people fell for his con-job. So yeah, that was pretty devastating. I really believed humanity had moved past such flirtations with “tearing it all down,” and the return to fascism leads me to wonder if civil society — and indeed the human species itself — will endure at all. I see it as sort of a bookend for what began in the Enlightenment…a return to the Dark Ages of wallowing in ignorance.

I do have some thoughts on why this happened…I don’t think it was “out of the blue,” and I don’t think it was the fault of Democrats, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden. I hope to circle back to add a link to that longer essay in the coming weeks.

My 2 cents.