I can see a man like Donald Trump and accept that he is who he is. Donald Trump is a man who never had to work for anything in his life without the fear of poverty or ruin if he fails. And he has failed many, many times in his life. But he has always had the safety net of privilege and money to protect his failings. He’s never had to worry about bankrupting a business and having nowhere else to go. To worry that, if he fails, he will be left penniless.
Donald Trump has never had that fear. And he’s been gifted so much, for so long, that he doesn’t even know how protected he is. He truly thinks he has done all this on his own. That he has risen from the ashes and created his fortune on his own.
Donald Trump has no idea.
So I can look at his narcissism and his paranoia and his insecurities and accept that’s just who he is.
But what terrifies me so much is that millions of people, millions of Americans, are so comfortable in the Delusion of Donald. They see a king, a savior, the answer to their prayers. And it only makes the delusion grow stronger. It only makes Donald feel more powerful.
Add in a power hungry republican party, willing to ignore all the awfulness around them, and you have a powder keg of issues waiting to explode.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump does not scare me. Knowing that so many in America can fall for a false prophet does.
And we are going to have to accept that. We are going to have to understand that the mess we have to climb out of, the hurdles we will have along the way, goes so much beyond Donald Trump. Whether he is gone in January or, gasp, four years from now, solving a problem like the Donald means figuring out how to deal with his zealots while also figuring out the issues in our country that have always needed repair.
We can’t ignore his loyalists. We can’t brush them aside. We need to find away to reach them. To understand what it is they hoped Donald would fix for them. What life did they hope he would improve. And we need to try and improve it.
Some of them we won’t be able to reach. The racist, vile, angry lot who only want an ancient view of our country.
But many people just want a better life. And for whatever reason they feel they’ve been left behind and Donald was their way out.
Donald Trump doesn’t scare me. A system of government that can allow his abuse of power to happen scares me. And to fix that broken system we have to fight through millions of his zealots. And we have to do it perfectly otherwise we are blamed.
Our issues have been around long before Donald Trump and will clearly be around long after. His base has proven that.
