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I am the problem. It's me

I am the problem. It's me

Welp. I thought we had this behind us. I really did. I was wrong.

For the past few years, my Twitter feed has been full of MAGA trolls telling me that people like me are “the problem.” I never believed them. At least I didn't until my country confirmed it last night. It turns out that people really like me Are That's the problem, and I have to admit that as Donald Trump enters his second presidency, I don't know what to do about it.

The thing is, people like me don't want to believe that half of my countrymen support the things that Donald Trump supports. We thought four years of corruption, lies, incompetence, venality and cruelty had cured our affair with our authoritarianism. It turned out that the following four years of recovery had only whetted her appetite.

People like me believed that the office of president would humble even the most hardened of hearts, as it had done with every previous occupant (well, there may have been a few exceptions before Trump). We thought that even if a humbug took office, the other two-thirds of the government would keep him under control. We thought even the most cynical politicians would put the nation's interests ahead of their own. We were wrong.

I know Trump voters told pollsters it was all about the economy, and maybe it was. eggs and milk Are higher. I don't deny that, but people like me thought our fellow Americans recognized that the cause of this inflation, initiated by the Trump administration and continued by the Biden administration, was keeping the economy afloat and that President Biden was keeping the nation headed in a softer direction. A recovery that every economist thought was impossible. People like me were wrong.

In 2016, we thought Trump's blatant misogyny would turn off enough white voters to prevent him from winning. In 2024 we thought of a revolution roe would do the same. Both times we thought American misogyny wouldn't prevent a highly qualified candidate from winning. We were wrong.

In 2016, we thought Trump's blatant xenophobia and racism would alienate enough white people of good will to deny him a victory. In 2024, we thought enough Latinos would rebel against it. We were wrong.

Time and time again, people like me have been wrong about our fellow Americans. These Americans have repeatedly told me that I live in a Hollywood bubble (even though I live in Savannah, GA) and that I don't understand the problems of regular people like them, even though I come here from a relatively humble background myself. I repeatedly rejected these people's opinions of me because I didn't want them to be true. It turned out to be true. If the “normal people” want to lead them, then I really don’t understand it at all.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump
Elon Musk

Because I don't understand how a nation founded on the highest aspirations of a people can choose to be led by someone who only responds to the lowest aspirations of a people. I do not understand how a nation that has fought so hard to overcome its worst sins can so easily fall into temptation again.

How do my fellow Americans imagine mass deportations? A country that locked 120,000 people in internment camps just 80 years ago will now do the same to millions? This is what my fellow Americans just voted for. Unless they don't really believe he will. In this case, they vote for someone who they believe is lying to them. Forgive me, I don't understand.

America obviously wants a return something… I wish I had ever heard a convincing explanation for this Whatbut there was apparently a time of American greatness that was somehow also a time when men were men, women were happy and, as Garrison Keillor so lovingly described his mystical hometown of Lake Wobegon, the children were above average. In other words: it is a fiction. Worse, it is the fiction of a fiction. Because The America loved its neighbors. This America is spitting on them. Or maybe I just misunderstood everything.

Speaking of Garrison Keillor, another disgraced octogenarian making a comeback. I remember Trump's victory in 2016. Keillor wrote:

Democrats can spend four years growing heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling the country, tasting craft beers and Republicans can build the wall and continue the trade war with China and deport undocumented people and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can take a long, brisk walk and smell the roses.

I remember reading these words for the first time and feeling righteous indignation. How dare he I thought, When he has the privilege of reading Jane Austen and smelling his damn roses. Eight years later, I share his point of view. The world will keep turning, one way or another, and people like me can't do a damn thing about it. No longer.

The then US President Donald Trump, 2018.
The then US President Donald Trump, 2018. KEVIN LAMARQUE/Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

People like me feel stupid today. Not because we lost an election, but because we trust in those stupid higher ideals that founded our nation. I know, I know. Trump supporters will say the same thing, and both of us will believe the other side got the same stupid founding documents wrong. But when I read the opening of the Constitution, I don't read it in the voice of Donald J. Trump. I hear it in the voices of my grandparents and great-grandparents with a migrant background. From my friends and neighbors and the people I interact with every day. What does it mean for Donald Trump to form a more perfect union? What does it mean for them?

Are we more of a union today or less? People like me believe in one direction. In everything else we are wrong. I hope we are wrong here too.

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