JULY 16, 2020 – Ever since 63 million Americans cast their votes for a person who, in my 60+ years’ experience of gauging people, was utterly and patently ill-suited for any position of authority or responsibility, I’ve wondered—how can this be?
By way of background, I attended school—kindergarten on up. I’ve held a number of jobs with a variety of organizations, from a handful of employees to over 100,000 employees. I’ve participated in numerous non-profit organizations, again, from “start-ups” in which I was a “starter,” to well established organizations founded long before I arrived on the scene. I’ve interacted with tens of thousands of people outside of work and volunteer settings. Many exchanges have been a single, limited transaction—a purchase at a convenience store; a call to a “help” line. Many encounters have involved a minute of conversation. Thousands more have involved substantial interaction over a period of years, even decades.
In short, I’ve been around a lot of people. Yet, in this respect I’m no different from tens of millions of other Americans, including the ones who voted for the man who, judging from his first cumulative five minutes of media coverage, was so glaringly unfit to serve as president.
All of which takes me back to that persistent question—how could so many people . . . ?
The answer is writ large and in ways that make me cringe, particularly now that I’m barred from entering Canada or boarding a plane bound for Europe.
By way of example, consider the refusal to wear a face mask in public because “no government is gonna tell me what to do.” (Okay, great—you’re excused while you put the rest of us at risk.) Let’s move on to the number of firearms in America (over 1.28 per person; Yemen is second with 0.53 per capita) and gun owners’ embrace of the Second Amendment. (Again, fantastic, but given your adherence to “original intent,” why aren’t you toting a period piece—flintlock pistol—instead of an AR-15?) And let’s not forget about the nation’s flag fetish or, back in the day, appearances by the Armed Forces at sporting events. (Nothing like a captive audience for recruitment!) All of which take me full circle to the . . . anti-vaxxers, who “aren’t gonna let no government tell me what to do.”
No, one doesn’t need to look far to see why tens of millions of people jumped on board with a guy of astonishingly poor judgment. Every damned one of them has astonishingly poor judgment in sizing up someone for a position of authority and responsibility. Sorry, I include some close friends and associates in this blanket indictment.
As Voltaire is said to have said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” But I wonder. If that great intellect behind the French Revolution were alive today, what would he say?
Might it be, “I disapprove of what you say because it’s just plain disastrous for all of us”?
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
