But this particular spasm, where I could feel the waters of emotions rising, rising, rising, will fade, and more people will wake up. They will shake their heads, and wonder why they were so hysterical, why they were shouting so much, NOW, when they didn’t care about the same problem when Obama was President.
Relaxation tends to follow tension, in even moderately healthy people. You can’t be completely wound up all the time. It’s not possible. Even on the Left they only rarely reach fever pitches like this.
This whole thing might have been fantastic if it had happened the last week of October. But it is June. I can’t say of course if the media had been holding this in their pocket, and pulled it out to counter Trump’s success with North Korea, and the very ugly charges in the IG Report which make it no longer really possible for reasonable people to deny the FBI has been politicized, or more generally that something we may as well call a Deep State in fact exists. There is a referent. Trump was right. He’s right about a lot of things. He speaks the truth.
You can’t run long term campaigns purely on emotion. It fizzles out. This is why John Wooden taught his player to avoid the highs, so they could also avoid the lows.
We are in an informational war. We have two cultures which have evolved next to each other, one based on our history, certain foundational principles, and ethical ideals like fairness, hard work, responsibility, tolerance and the like. The other, of course, manifests more or less as a collective neurosis which abhors all unwanted truths, which refuses to demand of itself consistency in behavior or principle, and which is maintained through a continual drum beat of outrage and self congratulation.
Small daily truths, spoken from on high, as Trump’s position gives him the ability to do, are anathema to these people. Trump is no monster. On some level they have to realize this. Who he is does not even REMOTELY warrant the revulsion, anger, and violence they direct at him. Truth is like a bell which exorcises demons. It is unbearable, physically painful to them, and he keeps speaking it clearly and regularly.
And my best guess is that when this wave finishes sweeping over us in a week or two, a lot of people are going to wonder “what just happened?” Why did I call my friend a fascist? Why did my blood boil so hot? I call myself generous and tolerant, but I don’t want to remember all the ugly, nasty, awful thoughts I just had. None of this makes sense. Where did it come from?
Yes, it is awful that Trump supporters and people who work with him are being attacked again. But in the long run, this works to our favor. It is indefensible. All of these charges of bigotry and corruption are not even good lies. They have no serious basis for even the most open minded of people to consider them remotely justified.
If we keep doing what we have been doing, the tide will begin turning. Yes, the maniacs will get worse, but at some point the knife edge will have disappeared, and their screamings will be met with equal and even superior responses so often they will begin to realize how it feels to be a target, and some may just begin to feel some remorse. One can hope.
It’s a hard fight, what we are doing. Not easy. Painful. Difficult. But very, very much worth it. We can built not just a great nation, better than we have ever been, but a great world, too, and a great future for humanity.