Actor Jeff Daniel who has proven himself to be a very thoughtful and articulate American recently said about Donald Trump: “We are supposed to elect our best, not our worst. He represents everything wrong not just with America, but with humanity as a whole.”
That in a nut shell sums up the Trump presidency. When this awful man is finally gone, the nation will need to take a collective bath to cleanse itself of his filth. The Trump stench has covered the nation to the point where the only way we will rid ourselves of it is to purge every single reminder of him. All of it.
What is more, every woman and man who collaborated with him should he held accountable for their actions, including in every possible way being prosecuted for any crimes they may have committed.
None of us ever imagined this second Trump presidency would be as sleezy, mean, and downright anti-American as it is.
But what he is trying to do more than anything else is to suffocate the American spirit, that unseen force of love and generosity, selflessness and helpfulness, that power of discernment that opens our eyes to what matters and what doesn’t, helps us see more clearly what we have in common instead of what divides us, and connects at the soul level where no person or power can break us apart.
The American spirit is why tears ran down our faces last week as we remembered those who died on 9/11.
It is why first responders risked and in many instances gave their lives trying to save others.
The American spirit is what drove those passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 to rush the cockpit that led to it crashing in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania to prevent it from flying into the Capitol or the White House.
The American spirit is also the joy we feel as we cheer for athletes that represent our nation in international games, the determination we show when we rebuild what those who wish us harm tore down, the love that overwhelms us when we hug an injured or abandoned child who needs the assurance that they are not alone.
Trump is trampling on the American spirit right now because it is everything he is not, as if the rest of us want to be the selfish, self-centered, cruel person he is, a people who are greedy, spiteful, vengeful, without any capacity or will to sacrifice for the sake of another.
He is in our face so much that it is hard to stay connected to that spirit that makes us humans made in the image of God. It’s hard to believe in a good America when the person who represents us to the world is such a bad person.
It’s hard to smile when you feel so sad, hard to hope when you feel so discouraged, hard to be positive when you feel so angry.
All of that is why renewing the American spirit will not be the primary task we will have after Trump is gone, difficult as it will be. But so many other things he has already damaged will demand our attention – economic justice for all, the rule of law equally applied, the fair and just treatment of refugees and immigrants, changing the political environment to one where we may be opponents, but not enemies.
There will be so much work that will have to be done to fix the presidency he broke in ways we already know about and in ways we have yet to discover.
There will be so many holes to repair in our democratic institutions to ensure the kind of abuse of presidential power Trump engaged in never happens again.
But it is the American spirit that we must attend to as we do everything else. Without it we really will be a shell of the people we were before Trump. Without it we will never be able to renew the good will in the world we once showed, nurture the friendships we once treasured, stand up to hate and tyranny, be an inspiration for freedom that gives hope to others.
Ironically, though, I think it will be easier for those of us who despise everything about the Trump presidency to recover the American spirit than those who support him.
You see, it is precisely because we believe in the power of the American spirit that we oppose him.
His supporters abandoned that spirit the moment they chose to follow his lies instead of the truth, chose to close their eyes to his corruption, refused to see the damage his perpetual adolescent view of the world is doing, chose to believe he cared about them when his entire life has been a testimony to utter human selfishness.
Trump’s supporters will never reclaim the American spirit because I don’t believe they ever actually embraced it, but the rest of us will.
That is what sustains me in these dark days we are living right now. The more Trump proves how right Jeff Daniel was about him, the more I see the American spirit spreading across the land.
It is a strange twist of fate that people become aware of how precious what they once had was only as they see they are losing it.
There have been other times when we have come close to losing the spirit that makes us the nation we are, imperfect, but determined to be better. The Great Depression, the Viet Nam War, the three political assassinations of the 60s, the Great Recession of 2008, the Covid pandemic, and now the Trump presidency.
This one is harder, I think, because we are the ones who brought this assault on our soul on ourselves. We opened the door to Trump’s ugliness gaining position and power.
We did not have to elect Trump to a second term, but we did. Those who voted for him bear most of the responsibility, but so do those who chose not to vote at all.
It is easy, and I would say more than common, to see nothing hopeful in this fog of political chaos and failure that makes all of us question the future of our nation.
But I simply cannot go there, dwell on that, see the worst as if there is no good to see at all. Instead, I choose to focus on the ways Trump is failing to quench the American spirit, focus on all the examples where that spirit is standing up him and exposing him for the empty bully he is.
I see the ruins of a once and great nation just like everyone else, but what sustains me is seeing how resilient the American spirit is, seeing it bend without breaking, looking as if it has lost its breath only to see it breathing strong again.
That is a power I simply don’t believe Trump will ever fully suffocate. It will be here when he is gone. It will live on because that is who we are as a people.
The American spirit is a blessing we may not deserve, but one that reminds us of what is right about America, and right about humanity as a whole.
That is what I choose to see before I see anything else.
linnposts.com 
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