Some Questions for Republicans

Some Questions for Republicans

Does it matter if your leader cares about your well-being?

It’s been shown that the way Donald Trump mishandled the Covid pandemic resulted in some two hundred thousand more Americans dying than would have if the nation had a President of normal competence and caring.

(And, because of the ways Trump fought against recommendations of the experts, a disproportionate of those unnecessary deaths were people who followed Trump.)

Despite these facts, Trump has shown not the least bit of regret about how he botched the federal response to that once-a-century public health crisis.

What does that lack of regret mean?

What kind of person would not be devastated to think that nearly a quarter of a million people were killed by that pandemic because he failed to do what the nation needed a president to do? Not devastated, but actually asserting himself again as a guy the nation should choose to be president again.

Either he doesn’t understand how badly he blew it, or he doesn’t care how much worse he made that pandemic for so many people.

Either way, why would anyone want such a person to be the most powerful person in the world, and the person we Americans depend on the most to protect our security and our well-being?

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How do you interpret the really off-the-wall things that Trump has been saying lately?

I am assuming that you can see how absurd it is for Trump to declare that the big crowds that have been greeting his opponent are faked, generated by AI.

Every one of those events – with crowds in all the swing states in the 10,000-20,000 range – is fully documented on video by many dozens of media organizations. Real people in real places.

• If Trump actually believes what he declared, he’s crazy.
• If he knows it’s all a lie but says it because it serves his purpose to deceive people, he’s corrupting our politics with his deception. Which is “Evil.”

(One interpretation of Trump’s AI message, which stressed how the Democrats are Cheaters, has been interpreted by various observers as an attempt – with such false accusations – to lay the groundwork for deceiving people again about the election being stolen from him, if he loses again.)

Either crazy or Evil. (And is not “Evil” an apt word for using falsehoods to create division and conflict, for using a Big Lie to undermine American democracy and foment civil strife?)

The question of whether Trump believes what he says has been around for a long time.

When he became President, he insisted that his inaugural crowd was bigger than Obama’s—despite the falsehood of that claim being irrefutably shown in photographs. At first I thought Trump was just lying, but eventually I came to believe that he believed his truly “crazy” claim.

It seems that there are some crazy things Trump says because he can’t face the truth. Prosecutors have used the testimony of Trump’s own people who told Trump he’d lost in 2020 to “prove” that Trump knew.

But it seems possible that this was a reality he simply couldn’t absorb. It’s known how intolerable Trump finds the idea of his being a “loser.” Perhaps that overpowered what his people told him, and he’s been living in a fantasy world – Big Steal – since the 2020 election, a fantasy he holds to be true because he believes what his emotional desperation makes him need to believe.

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How many Republicans will become part of this remarkable tsunami that has lately bolstered the hope that American Democracy will survive the upcoming election?

Something extraordinary has happened since the Democrats – at almost the last minute — changed their “champions.” We’ve witnessed a tsunami of political passion that has markedly changed the dynamics of the presidential race.

There are two main possibilities of how this tsunami will play out:

1) One is that the wave will be confined to the Democratic world — i.e. to those who have long felt that it would be a catastrophe for America if Donald Trump were to win the upcoming election. For them, the switch — from a candidate that a majority of the electorate thought too old for another term to a younger, more effective candidate — meant an intensely moving switch from dread to hope.

The Democratic National Convention – described by many as “electrifying” – showed how powerful that rebirth of hope has been.

2) But that same convention showed the Democrats working in multiple ways to get this tsunami to spread beyond the bounds of party into a much wide swath of the American people.

Republicans of some prominence took to the DNC podium to speak to their fellow Republicans. Some reported how they’d witnessed how Trump’s expressing contempt for his followers, and Trump’s continuous effort to deceive them. These Republicans encouraged other Republicans to support the Democrats – who this year better represents their “conservative principles” – not as “Democrats” but as “patriots.” They spoke of the importance of putting “country over party.”

How far beyond the Democratic world can this tsunami – in defense of basic American values – spread among the people of this nation?

Whether this election is a nail-biter, or yields another extraordinary and surprising political development, may depend ono the answer.