Can anything good come out of the second Trump presidency?
First thought is NO. The man is too corrupt, too incompetent, too narcissistic for his administration to produce anything good for the country as a whole. Maybe for his rich friends, but not for the rest of us.
At the same time, good has a way of emerging unexpectedly in spite of rather than because of anything a person does intentionally, even Donald Trump.
He brings out the worst in anybody and everybody, whether wittingly or unwittingly, and I want to suggest in the process has managed to expose things we have learned about ourselves and our nation we didn’t know or fully know before now.
Let me suggest several of them for you to think about.
We’ve learned that being Americans has not prevented us from making the political mistake of getting what we want only to discover too late that we don’t want what we got.
We’ve learned that there are literally millions among us who think the government is so bad that having a petty, vengeful, and incompetent autocrat would be better.
We’ve learned that Republicans in Congress lack the moral character to put loyalty to the Constitution over loyalty to a man regardless of the consequences.
We’ve learned that millions of Americans don’t believe in education, reject the findings of science, and believe expertise is a form of elitism.
We’ve learned that millions of Americans don’t mind political leaders telling lies as long as those leaders support their causes and cater to their prejudices and biases.
We’ve learned just how dangerous and damaging a petty, small, vindictive, and self-consumed president can be.
We’ve learned how discouraging it is when Supreme Court justices make rulings that suggest they are putting their personal political beliefs above their obligation to the nation’s Constitution.
We’ve learned that too many Americans on all sides of the political spectrum vote based on a single issue rather than concern for the common good.
We’ve learned that money is more important than corporate integrity to more businesses, law firms, and universities than we ever imagined was the case.
We’ve learned that claiming to be religious, especially Christian, doesn’t exempt you from being drawn to power more than humility and success more than service.
We’ve learned that the harder it is to hold on to enduring values like truth, justice, inclusion, compassion, the more important it is to do so.
We’ve learned that being able to trust in the power of what is good and right under intense stress shows what we’re made of more than when things are going our way.
And perhaps most of all, we’ve learned just how easy it is to take for granted the treasures you have until you’re about to lose them.
These, then, are some of the things we’ve learned about our nation and ourselves since Donald Trump took office for a second time that we didn’t know before or had paid little attention to.
The question now is whether we have not only learned these things, but are willing to learn from them and, where called for, change our ways before we find out we’ve lost our country and ourselves with it.
linnposts.com 