The election is in a few short days and I believe we are going to have a new president. I also believe the damage has already been done to the morale and credibility of the American people. Cynicism is the new normal, and the media manipulations, both of our own doing and as a result of foreign actors, are so severe that this idea of truth has all but vanished. Moreover, there is a growing sense that representation is becoming increasingly unbalanced and outsized. This is true or half (or greater) of the American people are MAGA people and truly in line with the old school philosophies of the present administration. How this can be true is beyond me. If this really was how our country felt then we would never have seen an Obama presidency. It feels more likely that this idea of hope truly floats and what people are hoping for is not uniform. Many Trumpers really want an America that is fundamentally distant from who we were at the end of the Obama presidency and, it seems, reminiscent of the Reagan years. However, time doesn’t move backwards–not in our understanding of the phenomenon at least. You cannot go back. Only forward.
Make America Great Again is a backwards philosophy that argues we were not great at the end of that era. However, we rose out of the housing depression stronger and with a better control on our debt than ever. Unfortunately, this new era has pushed us backwards in that way as well.
The blame, of course, will fall on the democrats (I refuse the use the diminutive ‘dems’ term) and this self-destructive binary reality will continue to tear us apart.