MAY 4, 2020 – My wife often observes how some see the glass half empty while others see it half full. The latter group, she says, are more likely to seize victory from the jaws of defeat.
Generally, I’m a “glass half full” person. When the forecast is “partly cloudy,” I think, “partly sunny.” If I hear “50% chance of snow,” I shout, “Great skiing ahead!” After raking half the yard, I proclaim, “I’m halfway finished!”
When it comes to politics, however, the more I try for “glass half full,” the more the glass is “half empty.” I’ve been at this since Election Day 2016. Initially, I focused on the fact that Naked Emperor had lost by three million votes. I told myself optimistically that more than half the voters saw what I saw—a charlatan without clothing. All we’d have to do was wait (a short while) for the Village Idiot to do the idiotic as president and even the idiots who’d voted for him would chant, “Down with the Idiot!”
Turns out I was the idiot. The glass of America is truly “half empty”—or, depending on your definition of “empty” (and view of the electoral vote!), the glass of American democracy is “half full” . . . of idiots.
In any case, I’m not optimistic. I see America as halfway to losing its mind, heart, and soul; halfway to disintegration, at least as a viable federal, representative democracy. In moments of despair, as when I interviewed Naked Emperor supporters outside a rally in Minneapolis last October, or when in January I saw Republicans making pretzels from facts, logic, and principles, or when last week I saw images of gun-slinging protesters breathing contemptuously into the faces of security guards in the Michigan state capitol, or . . . any time I read a tweet by Naked Emperor or hear him speak—on such occasions of despair and disgust, I see the American Experiment as now the American Failure.
The inexorable question is how on earth can it be that after a continuous, conspicuous display of Naked Emperor’s gross sociopathy, ineptitude, dishonesty, corruption, demand for personal fealty, contempt for facts, dishonor of democratic principles, embrace of authoritarianism, and impulse to divide . . .
. . . Let me amend: how in the name of Jesus the Son of the Christian God, can enough of the nation still support Naked Emperor such that come November, the glass—half empty or half full—will overflow?
By “overflow” I mean “spill, pour, then gush disastrously over the edge.” The country cannot survive another four years of Naked Emperor—assuming it survives through October. It cannot survive another four years of contemptuous disregard for facts and truth; of executive orders, decisions, actions and inactions based entirely on one of three motivations: 1. It’s the opposite of Obama—solely because it’s the opposite of Obama; 2. It’s red meat for adulating throngs wearing red caps; or 3. It enriches the already obscenely rich.
If “war against a virus” can’t unify and bring us to our senses, we’ll lose more than the war.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
