CONVERSATIONS

MAY 16, 2020 – This past week I had three political conversations: one with a strong Trump supporter, two with vehement anti-Trumpsters. The Trump supporter was convinced that Corvid-19 was hatched in a Chinese lab and aimed at bringing us down; that our best foil is a re-opened economy.  One of the anti-Trumpsters, meanwhile, was thoroughly convinced that Trump is going down in flames.  The other anti-Trumpster argued that what’s needed now is an FDR-like character who can unify the country.

My head still spins.

The Trump supporter has consumed too much Kool-Aid dispensed by GoebbelsNews in the Age of Hoax.  He and his associates—at the golf course and around their private pools beside and behind their big-money homes surrounding the golf course—share the same tastes, outlooks, and attitudes. In Trump they find the raised middle finger at all that frustrates #MeNow. They will vote, rest assured.

The anti-Trumpster predicting Trump’s fall has been drinking loads of fresh Don Lemmon-Aid. He cites the suffering of many millions harmed by #MeNow and offended by obscenity personified—Orange Man. “These people will soon be in open revolt, and Republicans know it,” he says.  “Trump is now the Republicans’ disaster.”  But will those millions vote? Will Republicans pull every lever—excepting dumping Trump—to prevent such a disaster?

As to the anti-Trumpster in search of FDR, he believes that the unifying, oratorical, and political genius of that president would provide much essential leadership and cohesion. But such days have long passed. Even a reincarnated FDR could find no platform, no microphone, no medium by which a unifying message could be communicated. Unlike past generations, Americans today are no longer all tuned to the same channel.  Long gone are the days when the President could command the attention of the nation simply by speaking to millions of families gathered around the radio—the same reassuring voice on every channel in every living room.

Except in the time of Fireside Chats, we’ve been a splintered society, divided by state, race, region, ethnicity, social class, economic status, and religious affiliation—despite the unifying effects of the NFL, Walmart, and Wells Fargo.  But now, at a time when our problems are unprecedentedly universal—what could be more universal than the threat of an air-borne virus or the effects of climate change?—we are more divided than ever.

Ironically, the inventions that gave such unifying promise—the internet and “smart” phones—widen the schisms among us. If we’re at war with a virus, we’re really at war with ourselves as to how—and even whether—to wage that war with the virus. What awaits us when unemployment hits 25%? When the “second wave” strikes? When more acute political crises mount, in anticipation of November’s election or in wholesale disruption of it—by design or by an out of control virus?

When November 4 arrives, what will the headlines say? What conversations will I be having then with Trumpsters and anti-Trumpsters?

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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson