The Malaise of Our Times: Trump Is Stealing Our Soul

I read that America is divided into two deeply hostile political tribes. The depth of the disconnect, as well as the hostility between the tribes, is evident in how we see events like this month’s tragic killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Based on our political priors we, as well as our so-called leaders, already know what happened. We know who is to blame. No investigation, no facts, no independent assessments are needed.

While the division and hostility are all true, it seems to me that for many of us, it’s not primarily hostility to “the other side,” that describes our situation, our emotional state, or why we are so distraught. It’s something other than, deeper than, hostility to “the other side.” Beneath and beyond the acrimony and rage, what we are experiencing is unremitting, compounded-daily grief.

Something precious is being degraded and demeaned on a relentless, and — though it is a terrible word to use — “casual” basis. Our national identity, our soul. At risk is the idea that America is, if not exceptional, then at least different. Different than a world where the only law is that might makes right, where there is no law but the law of power and violence.

Our national identity is not that. America is a land where people have an “inalienable right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It is a nation where law, and equality before the law, actually mean something.

I concede that we have failed to live up to this identity and these ideals in many ways. But even the indictment of our failures testifies to the reality of these ideals, and to a national identity that asks something of us. Why point out the failures if there is not some level of genuine commitment to the stated values and ideals? We could be called to account because there was some standard, some story, to which we were accountable. This is what we are losing, and this is the loss we are grieving.

Like all those who grieve, we are often numbed, stunned, and disoriented. We do not simply have policy disagreements. We have a death, the death of our country, of our identity, our sense of self.

Foreign and domestic policy now appear realms where might makes right. We will snatch a nation’s head of state and shoot a 37-year-old woman because we can. We have the guns. “International law”? Don’t be silly. The right of citizens to speak and assemble freely? “No, this is a left-wing, domestic terrorist, so anything goes!”

We are pre-occupied with Trump not simply because we disagree with him politically, but for something far deeper. He and his supporters are stealing our nation’s identity, and with it, some part of the identity of each one of us. Like a malignancy, he eats away at who we are and what we understand to be real.

To what end? What is the end game for this mad king? I do think that it seems ever more evident, day by day, week by week, that he is indeed mad. Forget “Make America Great Again,” whatever that means for it seems to be about nothing more than this strange man’s ego, his own identity, his obsessions with winning, bigness, and gaudiness. He is robbing us of our identity, our heritage — what for? Only to burnish his own.

He loves the cinematic, the made-for-television, news-highlight moment. The extraction of Maduro “will make a great movie.” What happens after the dramatic moment, after the spectacle. Well, who cares? The news cycle will have moved on.

Why does he even want Greenland, when the U.S. already has legal access to extend its military presence for our “national security” purposes there? It is like declaring the “Gulf of Mexico,” to be the “Gulf of America.” Greenland looks good on a map. Dominion extended. Flags planted.

We have lost something very precious: our nation, “America the Beautiful,” “land of the free, home of the brave.” The occupant of the White House is a thief of something more precious than money (although he is garnering plenty of that). He is stealing our soul.