After Three Years, Who Are We Now? By Connie Schultz

[babylonsister]

https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz/05/20/after-three-years-who-are-we-now

After Three Years, Who Are We Now?
By Connie Schultz
May 7, 2020

snip//


If ever there were a time for self-reflection as Americans, it is now. Regardless of who we are supporting for president, we have changed in these three-and-a-half years of Trump's presidency.

Everyone notices, as Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole recently wrote with devastating clarity:

"The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

"If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the U.S. would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the U.S. as the world's leading nation — an idea that has shaped the past century — has all but evaporated.

"Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Dusseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?"

Who were you before Donald Trump lived in the White House? What did you expect from your leader, your president? What did you take for granted as you slid into bed and turned off the lights? What vile rhetoric did you assume would never be uttered by the leader of the free world?

How do you talk about the presidency now with your children and grandchildren? When is the last time you felt comfortable pointing to the television screen and saying to a child you love, "You could grow up to be president someday"?

Who were you before Donald Trump was elected?

Who are you now?

[luvs2sing]

1. Reading the FB on this yesterday helped me so much.

Most of my friends and family avoid talking about how they really feel about the last few years, but people bared their souls in the comments, as did I, and I found I am nowhere near as alone as I thought I was.