All my friends and family know how passionate and positive I am about this coming election, so it is with sorrow and some resignation that I share the "fear and trembling" of the upcoming election, and the real possibility that Trump may win. I just finished reading Adam Gopnik's wonderful article in this week's NEW YORKER "As Bad As All That," and it cemented my anxieties that there are many people who #1, Believe his lies and #2, The lies don't matter. Every day is a new revelation. Just the last two alone SHOULD be sufficient in moving --at the very least--swing voters and independents--to vote for Harris. First he said he WANTS HIS GENERALS TO BE LIKE THOSE HITLER HAD. He had a copy of MEIN KAMPF on his nightstand, and this is not the first time he has sounded like Hitler. He speaks about people, immigrants in particular, as rats and vermin. And speaking of denigrating people, the number two outrage--revealed just yesterday--was his promise to pay for the funeral of a murdered soldier, but after-when he found out the cost, he exclaimed, "I am not paying that amount for a f.....k...g Mexican." And he didn't.
Clearly he has mastered the techniques of a gangster; indeed he is Teflon Don; he uses profanities at every rally, even when there are children there; he blames bad policy on "the other" candidate, when it is, in fact his policy. Every day is a new barrage of insults and injury: the Hatians" who eat dogs and cats;" January 6th, which was a "love fest;" FEMA, who is not helping, but instead hindering relief efforts by giving money away to immigrants. How could he continue to spew such blatant lies and get away with it???? To quote Gopnik in his piece,"Trump's politics may be ugly, foolish and vain, but ours is often an ugly, undereducated and vain country. Democracy is meant to be a mirror; it shows what is shows." Trump is a vile and spectacularly malignant political actor (Gopnik 16).
What fills me with grief is that this matters so little to the American people, some of whom say, "I dislike him, but like Vance," another villain in the making, already poised to deny the American election if they don't win. Gopnik says people are mesmerized by the villain; they have a particular charm and a strong cult following. Villains in fables-Ursula, Scar, Hades, are rarely grounded in any cause larger than their own grievances. Bane is blowing up Gotham because he feels misused, not because he has a better city in mind.
Trump is that villain (a concept of a plan for healthcare?), but once he comes, he stays. "He will tell another lie so preposterous, malign another shared decency or just engage in unhinged behavior" but he is here to stay. HIS CHARACTER AND BEHAVIOR MATTER LITTLE TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC. Their claim that they love his policies is irrelevant, since when I have asked people--what policy--they don't have an answer.
"The dark comic-book movies are part of our great cinematic history; our monsters from the id fill the franchise." But where is the hero to save us? He has already said, I am not leaving. Once he is in and upends all our norms (believe him!), the lunacy will only escalate. "It is a Gotham gone mad, and a Gotham against all settled rules of fable-making, without a Batman to come to the rescue. Shuttling between the comic-book villain and the grimacing, red-faced and unhinged man who may be president in a few weeks, one struggles to distinguish our culture's most extravagant imagination of derangement from the real thing. The space is that strange and the stakes are high" (Gopnik, 16).
Welcome to America!
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