I've said it before I'll say it again.
There is only one person who can ratchet back the division and toxicity right now and that is the President of the United States.
He is the end product of a decades long process to undermine liberal democracy in this country.
He expresses NOTHING but hate and division in every act he takes.
While he absolutely rode the wave of division that has been implemented for years by an anti-democratic republican party enabled by a pathetic democrat party, he, single handily, has taken us from a dysfunctional but essentially working culture (while I had massive differences with McCain and Romney I did not doubt they loved their country) to where we are now on the cusp of something VERY dangerous. We have a party that controls all levers of government power, destroying our functioning government that worked, however poorly through some level of compromise, yet universally acts aggrieved that people do not share their narrow view of humanity, led by a man that has destroyed so many norms that allowed our country to operate. A president that demands sycophantic adulation that would make a North Korean dictator say "that is too much".
I will not accept any blame for this. No matter the motivation of this assassination, people can only be pushed so far. People WILL fight back in the only way they can.
Since one man was the primary driving force, one man could lead us out. Trump COULD, single handily, turn everything around and, believe it or not, fairly quickly. he could do the following:
1. Give an Oval Office speech that is comforting and conciliatory to every American that calls on the better angels of our nature.
2. He can use his unique role in the nation to promote unity and reduce conflict-imagine him using this Truth Social and daily pressers and all the bullshit we put up with daily to actually unite the country, to call on our common love for our country to stop sowing so much hatred and division.
3. He can stop calling dems and liberals and the press and anyone who disagrees with him the enemy of the people and other vile descriptions.
4. He can use his influence over his very loyal maga supporters to get them to join the rest of us. And we liberals and centrists can welcome them and not judge them i.e. stop the conflict from our end
5. He can stop the truly divisive and dangerous policies like ICE raids and actually develop a humane but secure immigration policy.
6. He can stop the attacks on the important bastions of our nation like universities, law firms and the press
and more stuff along these lines.
I won't happen overnight, but the healing would happen fairly quickly. Despite leftwing and centrist caricature, we actually do not want conflict with our neighbors, we just feel under direct threat by this administration.
We have little power to actually effect change, because the tactics we would need to employ-patience, compromise, compassion will be used by Trump and his minions to inflict further authoritarianism on the country.
No, it is up to him, he could actually be a truly great president if he responded to this moment with humility, empathy and a vision of unifying our country. He could be a savior like Lincoln in that regard.
And again, it is all up to one person.
But I suspect to a near certainty that he will act completely the opposite and use this killing as a justification to further crack down and further paint 60% of Americans as enemies.
