He isn’t us

Who is he? Who are we?

A central guiding principle of writing is to write to a single, specific person. Writing to, and for, a bland, unspecified, generic audience will inevitably lead to bland, unspecified, generic writing and clichéd and vague generalizations – with little to any, original insights or observations.

So what follows is a set of my questions and statements to a very specific person in my circle who is so, so, disappointed in what had been his gloriously celebrated candidate for US president.

The theme that made him so excited was the belief that, at long last, here was a president – and his supporters and appointees who were, or at least promised to be, “one of us”.

DJT was many things, but being “one of us” would, and could, never be one of them.

Not only was he never “one of us”, he never valued, believed in or respected any of the core principles of citizenship, faith, friendship, or basic good neighborliness that most of us took as a given for generations.

You won’t find compassion, generosity, kindness, mercy, courage, patience or integrity anywhere around him, his staff or his policies.

From Biblical calls for justice to Boy Scout oaths of loyalty and service, you won’t find any aspirational ideals that lead to, and in fact are essential to, a stable and civil society anywhere on their horizon.

What have we become when public figures, acclaimed and financially rewarded, invert, despise and openly mock these basic bedrock presumptions of any durable civilization?

We will see soon enough.

The question, or at least my question is very simple; is there a barometer, a yardstick of vile behavior, crude language, predation and corruption that one passes? Or is any level of appalling behavior and sleaze acceptable as long as larger issues – or perhaps petty biases, impulses and feuds – are shared?

Is that how being “one of us” is being defined? Is it that, as long as our fears and prejudices are being proclaimed, any actions or polices, no matter how (self) destructive are tolerable, even cheered, if our personal agendas are being prioritized?

Do you commend his actions and statements so strongly that you would like your business partners or employers to use them?

Would you like your children, or the younger generation to absorb and express his values?

Is his world, your world?

Is his world, with his name and visage on every coin and mountain, the world you want to pass on to young people?

Obviously many of “us” have chosen his world. But more of us are finding ourselves targets more than beneficiaries of this new dispensation.

More and more of his ardent supporters are distancing themselves (or are being openly rejected) but those people, and many others seem to be operating on some kind of floating scale of moral and ethical propriety. For many that I talk to, corruption, up to a certain level, or committed discretely, is okay. And harassment and violation of basic rights is tolerable – as long as it is not people we know.

Law and policy have become, for some apparently, the ultimate experience of subjectivity.

For many, apparently, law and policy (or at least their enforcement) is absolutely arbitrary. Relativity has become, not a scientific term, but the grounding of social law and policy – at least for some. Who you know has taken on a whole new meaning.

Impunity – in all areas – has become the ultimate award – more universal than wealth or power – but also more inherently fragile.

Like power, and perhaps even like wealth, impunity requires a network of enforcers and advocates. And requires an abundance of the acidic opposites of justice; fear and favor.

With legal institutions in a state of moral free-fall like this, the implosion of a society cannot be far behind.

But surely you knew this. In fact I distinctly remember you cheering it on.

But that was a lifetime ago, when collapse happened far away, to people you didn’t know.

You never expected “this” to happen. Who would have known that such an irreversible set of conditions would be set in motion? Who would have guessed that an avalanche could be the result.

Anyone with eyes to see. Even our canine companions.

It has been said that dogs are the best judges of character. You may have noticed that, for whatever reasons, he, and most of his staff, and dogs are rarely seen together.

Dogs are known as “man’s best friend”. But not for him. In fact friendship itself, even among his own inner circles, is, for all practical purposes, nonexistent.

So how was he ever “one of us”?

In spite of his life of privilege, protection and impunity, he found himself energized by an infinite source of self-pity, resentment and viscous vengefulness – as if the world, in catering to his every whim and depredation, was, and could only be, never enough.

His resentments might have gold-plated, but somehow you thought you shared them.

The ever-rotating cast of “those people” were out to get us all; they were taking our jobs, defrauding government services, wasting our tax dollars, filling our colleges and, diluting – if not undermining “our” culture.

Once we got rid of them, the country would be “ours” again. And prosperity would follow.

And he did get rid of many of them. And many more, future Nobel Prize winners and entrepreneurs among them, have seen the “promise” of opportunity and refuge grow stale and barren – even menacing.

But without that promise – and those who seek its fulfillment – who are we?

Who will harvest our crops or do our landscaping? Who will our doctors and medical staff be?

Without those “foreign” students, universities will close. Even local public schools will close.

Instead of becoming “one of us”, many of us have become like him.

You and I may have had our disagreements, but they were civil and based on distant abstractions and opinions on procedures on everything from theological differences to taxes to street maintenance.

But we always shared a horror of government waste, incompetence and corruption.

Sleaze and deception consistently appalled us both. But now, it seems, wrapped in “efficiency” or even patriotism, they are acceptable, and in some cases even commendable to you.

It is not, as many have said, about politics any longer.

How convicted felons – convicted of everything form sexual assault to fraud – are not only allowed to run for office, but are held up as heroes by many, will be an unsolvable puzzle future generation will argue about for decades.

But you take it as normal.

Or at least better than “woke”.

I’ve never understood what “woke” might mean. It must be important, since so many relationships fractured over the term, but what it actually meant – or what so many seemed to believe it threatened will be yet another puzzle for the ages.

If standing in defense of those who, for whatever reason, cannot speak for themselves against exploitation and outright harassment is your definition of “woke”, I guess the term fits. And if your first impulse is to defend any oppression or violation – especially of those who cannot defend themselves, from those who have a history of abusing their power over others, I have to wonder what became of the person of decency I used to know.

Some people have abandoned their once iron-clad allegiance, but many have not. Some have pledged their hope and faith in the president no matter what he says or does.

Their belief is closer to religion than politics.

But as we know, this president, like every president, is a human after all.

He may or may not “be us”, but at the most basic level, no matter how much he, and his true believers might object, he is in fact “one of us”.