I truly believe that America (and to a lesser extent) the world is suffering an ongoing trauma inflicted by one person aided and abetted by a slew of horrible people. There is psychic damage being inflicted on the masses on a daily basis, be it threatening allies, stealing foreign country's resources for personal gain, a verbal and physical assault on American citizens, cruelty inflicted on the vulnerable in full view, the constant assault on reality through lies and gaslighting, manipulation of the economy through tariffs, flagrant and mind-blowing corruption of a scale a that would make a tin pot African dictator blush, the public --------- of a sick man by his cabinet and business leaders, the assault on research and public health, the complete and utter abdication of power and responsibility by Congress (who in one year accomplished one single solitary thing-cutting taxes for billionaires and the gutting of the social safety net), the absolute cruelty of just stripping aid to the most vulnerable people on the planet, the defacing and destruction of monuments to the secular good like the White House or the Kennedy Center and so much more.
This is a daily assault on any thinking person's mental health. The incessant need to try and make sense of the cognitive dissonance befuddles brains, the assault and weaponization of empathy, the complete inability to stop actual murder, the hypocrisy, the lawfare, the subversion of governance, the actual malice of the leaders of our country towards the vast majority of Americans, the normalization of lies and lying, all this and more inflicts serious harm to normal everyday people.
There is no whataboutism here that is even remotely applicable. No administration Republican or Democratic comes close to the absolute and flagrant nastiness of this regime
The actions of this regime are far, FAR beyond anything that has gone before.
For those that truly love America, that love actual representative democracy, that actually respect freedom, the destruction being wrought on the American experiment is beyond endurance.
All being inflicted by a uniquely American man, a man so obviously deranged, so obviously morally demented, the logical end point of unfettered capitalism-greed and cruelty, nay all of the seven deadly sins wrapped together as virtue, entwined in a sick, diseased, hypocritical, nonsensical mess, that too many Americans believe in. A conman so obvious that it staggers the mind that anyone let alone people of a supposedly educated nation would fall for his schtick. A rapist, conman, felon, insurrectionist, liar who Americans chose over a normal human being.
America is in the midst of a trauma that may take decades to repair if that is even possible at this moment. America has for decades been unwilling to face and deal with trauma-be it Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9/11, COVID. One group of Americans denies the problem, while another group acts the co-dependent and refuses to take a stand.
But a person or society can only take so much stress before collapse. An individual suffering this sort of trauma may commit suicide or lash out and harm others. When a nation collapses like this it is bloody civil war or economic collapse.
I do not see a scenario where, post Trump, our country can heal, the Trump enablers will NOT accept responsibility, like neocons after Iraq, they will go silent and evolve into some other type of selfish and mean-spirited entity and those never-Trumpers aka the resistance will be incapable of doing the hard work of healing. Healing will require holding accountable the multitudes who have committed atrocities, it will take a cleansing of government of the regressives and it will take an honest accounting of our faults and sins. Like an addict America is incapable of such honest introspection.
I fear for the future.
