Hillary Clinton lost an election, but we lost a nation.

There is a vast body of analysis on why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.  It gives scant comfort to know that Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes.  She won  48.2 percent of the vote to Trump's 46.1 percent.  However, Trump won the electoral college with 304 votes to Clinton's 227.  The electoral college severely contradicts the popular vote.  But all this analysis does not answer the question of why, after the honesty and decency in the White House of the Obamas, so many people would choose a seething glob of corruption like Donald Trump.

There is also a hefty body of explanations about how Trump won.  Most of it examines what the candidates did, but it tends to assume that candidates are the sole determiners of election outcomes.  We talk much about holding candidates accountable, but shy away from holding voters accountable for their decisions.  Those who believe that America strives for freedom, equality, and justice for all must face the fact that 42 percent of their fellow Americans do not share those values.  Studies, in fact, shows that the most important factor behind Trump's election to the presidency is his appeal to prejudice.  Those people who voted for Trump because he affirms their prejudice and bigotry are often demeaned by him.  Talk show host Howard Stern notes "The people Trump despises most love him the most."

America is not the nation that is characterized by the Greatest Generation.  Trump represents a nation that values his constant lying, his financial deceptions, his false slanders and libels against political opponents, and his vile personal behavior because he endorses their anti-American hatred and bigotry.  The America Trump represents is not the America that once was a powerful voice for the democratic values of freedom for all, for equality, and for justice for all.  And the differing attitude for those values is what defines the political divide in the nation.  A significant portion of the American people denies the values that once defined the aspirations of American democracy.  It denies science and clings to its hatreds.   

This election is not merely choosing between Trump and Biden. It is a choice between Oceania, the oppressive nation described by George Orwell in 1984, and the United States we once dreamed about.

Can you say Antifaschistischer Schutzwall? Translation: Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart

                                                                       Antifaschistischer Schutzwall

This past weekend Germans noted the 30th anniversary of the events that led to the reunification of their country.  That celebration notes the end of the Berlin Wall,  the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall.  The literal translation of that German name is the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart.  That name has relevance in our current American time because of Antifa, the leftist movement that has taken up the matter of systemized racism in our country.  Antifa is an acronym for anti-fascism.  Its adherents have given up on the idea that racism can be dealt with through policy changes.

Naziism is having a resurgence in Germany, as it is in the U.S.  While the Soviet Union had control of East Germany, the Nazis were banned and suppressed.  They went underground.  Factions that went clandestine in communist East Germany are now supplying the leadership in the resurgence of Naziism in Germany.  

Democracy has always had to work against, and sometimes with, contending totalitarian political forces:  fascism on the right and communist authoritarianism on the left. The U.S. allied itself  with communist Russia in the war against the Nazis, but then heated up the Cold War in opposition to the Soviet Union.  Dealing with multiple and sometimes opposing viewpoints makes international relations a harrowing business at times.  As America emerged as the world leader after World War II, it developed a policy of being very clear about where our democratic policies stood in relationship to the policies of other countries, but at the same time to extend our friendship to the rest of the world.  But under Trump, even Americans are not sure what the American stance is.  Trump is building a wall along the Mexican border.  He wants to build a rampart to ward off Mexicans.  If Trump expresses what  America is, a lot of people are not sure they want to be Americans anymore.

However, Nazi groups and QAnon nutcases see Trump as a way to advance their causes.  As dictators often do, Trump wants his attorney general to arrest and prosecute his political opponents. He has made up charges which are remarkable for the lack of any evidence for which he wants them locked up.  As news reporters have been forced to point out, the charges are purely products of Trump's malice, as is his wall.  By the end of 1991, the Germans had totally dismantled the Berlin Wall.  Trump's wall is still under construction,  and the pandemic has largely eliminated the opportunities that people crossed the border to take advantage of.  Covid-19 has brought immigration across the southern border to a standstill.  

It is helpful to those of us who realize that America has spent four years going backward to examine Robert Frost's words that

 Something there is that doesn't love a wall...

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.' 

  

Here comes the violence

Trump's election to president produced some of the biggest protest demonstrations in U.S. history.  Protests at his inauguration were held in every population center in the country.  But they were largely subdued with women wearing pink pussy hats and  being gentle in demeanor.  Protests and armed counter-protests have recently involved some shootings and destructive acts that have become almost routine in the reporting of daily news.  

A friend who is a dedicated pacifist once told me that he would never abandon his belief and practice of non-violence, but admitted that society seldom changes its bad ways without the force of violence to drive the changes.  He, a historian,  can rattle off a long list of examples.   He says that as much as people may advocate for non violence, the fact is that society seems largely impervious to mere words.  People seem not able to take constructive action until outbreaks of violence threaten them.  Despite the massive opposition demonstrated against Donald Trump, it has been largely dismissed and forgotten.

America has sometimes had leaders who could acknowledge opposition and engage opponents in a dialogu leading to workable compromises.  At other times, such as the present, it has leaders who ignore and dismiss the opposition, and some opponents become convinced that the only way to assert themselves is through violence.  And the leader urges people to take hostile sides rather than work to reconcile or accommodate differences.

We tend to prattle about the divided nation, but at the same time harden down into our opposing attitudes in the belief that the only thing that registers on the brains of our opponents is a good whack on the head.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the case.

Resident expatriates

A  hundred years ago, after World War I ended, a number of young people, including the writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, fled America to become expatriates in Europe.  They centered their lives around Paris, although they ventured into many parts of Europe.  They were called the Lost Generation.  Their movement was not political as much as a cultural and social rejection of what their home country was becoming. They felt that the values they inherited were no longer relevant and they felt alienated within their country.   So, many left.  That left many other people in the country who felt disaffected, but did not have the means or opportunity  to leave.  They were resident expatriates, who felt culturally and socially alien in their homeland.  

We have a number of resident expatriates in our current population.  They don't receive much notice.  They are people who have given up on the nation's political process and do not  participate.  I realize that, more and more, I am drifting into that category.   This is not the country I once served to defend. In many ways, it has become what we were defending against.  When the people chose Donald Trump as president, it made many people question if the USA was the kind of country they want to be a part of.  They realize that something is wrong in America that can't be corrected by an election.  It is an infirmity that is too deep and beyond the reach of any political process to make right. After years of making progress in matters of civil rights and equality, the nation has taken a severe lurch backward.  Trump is the symptom of a deeper malaise that possesses the nation.  

For people who truly want freedom, equality, and justice rather the petty advantage and corruption that seems to be the ideals that so many seek, it seems a time to pull back citizenship and see what the country wants to  be.  It seems better to escape the inane political dialogue than to be part of it.  It is not a matter of leaving the country.  Sometimes it's a matter of the country leaving us.

On the matter of the CEO of the United States

I was the business editor for a newspaper, a job I did not particularly like because dealing with some businesses was disagreeable.  Those were the businesses that tried to get things published that were not true, things that created a favorable image that did not correspond to the reality of the business.  Because businesses buy advertising and have promotional organizations such as chambers of commerce working in their behalf, it can be hazardous for a local newspaper to publish accurate reports on how some businesses conduct themselves.  Newspapers are careful not to offend the business communities that support them.   So, often they print pieces that give businesses good but false images.

The editor of the newspaper wanted to keep an amiable relationship with the business community but said we should never print anything that was not true.  When we received glowing press releases from businesses, our task was to boil them down to the hard, verifiable facts.  That often led to contentious calls with public relations personnel.  Such press releases often contained quotations from high corporate officers, and our attempts to verify and clarify facts often led to confrontations with those officers.

CEOs do not like to have their pronouncements challenged for clarification or evidence on which they are based.  Within their companies, anything the CEO says is gospel and no one who wants to keep their job dares refute it.  Thus, when a CEO must defend a statement before the press, they get enraged that their words are not accepted with the same obsequiousness as they are within the company.

That is the problem Donald Trump is having in trying to be president of the U.S.  He thought he could run the country like a business, but he finds that he is called out when he lies, his bumbling is criticized, and his vanities are not tolerated.  He reacts by insulting and abusing those who challenge him.  And he throws juvenile tantrums in public, which erode any inclination to  work with him.

On the other hand, those who support him and carry out his orders are regarded as degraded sucks.  Being a suck does not reap the same rewards in a democratic  nation as it does within a company.  

Trump is demonstrating for the world why a democratic organization can't be run like a business.  A  leader who tries to dictate in a democracy  is constantly challenged by people with better information and better minds.  A leader has to respond to the people and has to find ways to reconcile differing ideas and ways of doing things.  That is beyond anything in Trump's experience and abilities.  And his absurd lies degrade the entire nation.  Here is an example of one of his tweets today:

‘VOTING STARTS IN VIRGINIA TODAY, AND WE ARE GOING TO WIN. YOU HAVE A CRAZY GOVERNOR WHO WANTS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR GUNS, WHICH HE WILL DO WITHOUT ME IN OFFICE. HE IS IN FAVOR OF EXECUTING BABIES AFTER BIRTH – THIS ISN’T LATE-TERM ABORTION, THIS IS A STEP WAY BEYOND!

Report on the decline of America

 The Social Progress Index indicates that America is one of the few countries in the world that is rapidly sinking to a lower state. The Index measures 50 factors of national development, such as nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education, and the like.  The U.S. has sunk to 28 in national rankings.

U.S. citizens have been so indoctrinated into believing America is the citadel of freedom and progress  and the greatest country in the world that they cannot perceive what is actually going on in America.  Any criticism about the nation is considered unAmerican.  They are totally ignorant of the critical edge that elevated America into world prominence.  They are blinded by jingoism to what America has become.

To people who have studied the development of America, its decline is obvious.  One of the glaring symptoms is the election of Donald Trump as president and the fact that so many hang onto every inane word he says and act that he does.  The rest of the world sees and understands America's decline.  A huge segment of Americans doesn't.

I was recently witness to a discussion in which a man said that if Trump were re-elected president, America will have become a country in which he could no longer be a citizen.  A women said she could not see how he could say something like that.  And he said that is precisely the problem over which he would have to leave.  Trump is what voters chose, and many people realize those voters have degraded America.  They are what the nation has become.  Trump embodies the nation's moral and intellectual failure.

 The New York Times reports:

The decline of the United States over the last decade in this index — more than any country in the world — is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate President Trump and that festered under leaders of both parties. Trump is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration

The eternal battle against stupidity

At times, when I was in elementary school, the walk to school was ominous.  Houses along the way would be posted with orange quarantine signs.  Some schoolmates would reside in those houses. I was warned to stay away from those houses.

The diseases that were the occasion for posting such signs were measles, scarlet fever, maybe small pox, diphtheria, and some I don't remember.  But those diseases have been controlled, some eliminated, by vaccines.  Having one of those signs on a house was a great embarrassment.  While intended to designate a germ source for the purpose of limiting contact and disease transmission, it also stigmatized the occupants of the house.  Children who lived in a designated quarantine house were avoided by other children at the instruction of their parents long after the sign was removed.  Humans have a boundless capacity for stupidity and cruelty, and a quarantine was a fine excuse to unleash it all.  

I was reminded of this when I heard some elementary kids in the neighborhood taunt some other kids by calling them covids. Children reflect adult society.  Those neighborhood children reflect the absurdity of adults dividing  themselves over wearing masks.  People are showing up at local government meetings that deal with rules for trying to control Covid-19 and expressing their opposition. They say they aren't afraid of the coronavirus, as they deride those who wear masks, as if disease  can be avoided or combatted with defiance.  

The pandemic has exposed a deeper failing in American life.  In his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln prompted the nation toward a life "with malice toward none with charity for all," at which the country has failed spectacularly.   Perhaps fail is not the right word.  It is more that a great number of Americans simply choose otherwise.  They choose malice as a way of life.  And malice is the product of stupidity.  Before a nation can successfully conquer a pandemic, it must first deal with the malice that accepts 190,000 deaths among 6.2 million cases of coronavirus as a normal course of life. It is a matter of malice when people do not take care to possibly spread  a disease to other people.  It is the same kind of behavior as drunk driving.  That means a confrontation with obstinate stupidity, which for many people is a matter of choice, not necessarily a condition at birth.  

Civilization has always had a battle with stupidity.  It has not yet determined which side will win.