And all the good people will do nothing
What do you tell your kids?
You tell them the truth.
You tell them that the majority of Americans are good people. But, you also tell them they can’t rely on the good people of this country to protect them from evils because here, being a “good person” does not require actually being good. Being a “good person” merely means not being actively evil. Here, you can still be a “good person” if you don’t stop an evil. You can still be a good person if you don’t even try. You can still be a good person if you just maintain an unawareness that you’re being evil.
You tell them the truth that the majority of Americans are either hateful or find hatred acceptable.
You tell them the truth that you are very sorry that so much is being placed on them, but that not telling them this will leave them unprepared for the inevitable day they find out on their own. When someone grabs a woman by the pussy. Or rips off a man’s turban. Or chokes out a man for selling loose cigs. Or builds a wall. And all the good people will do nothing. And you’ll be tempted to be yet another good person.
You tell them being a good person is not enough. You tell them being a good person is a participation trophy. Evil thrives off the existence of good people. You tell them do not accept being a good person.
You tell them to be a great person.
Voting for Trump isn’t just voting for a very right-wing person or for very right-wing policies. It’s voting for a profoundly bad person, bad in many ways – ways I’ve been enumerating for months, along with many other people. It’s a vote for badness. It’s a vote for cruelty, insults, assault, contempt, ridicule, shaming, mockery, bullying – for nearly every kind of moral badness you can think of. That’s what Trump stands for. Not the rage of the underclass, not a rebellion against the elites, but badness.
So glad I don’t have kids and have to explain to them what we have done to their future…
This goes to the heart of one of the tropes I’ve hated for years…there’s no such thing as a bad person. Exhibit A: Donald J. Trump.
I always realized, because I grew up in a family full of bad people. I grew up in a family where Donald J. Trump was the norm…at least the racist, misogynistic, hedonistic part of him, not the billionaire part. And poor Donald J. Trumps are just as bad as rich Donald J. Trumps, except they haven’t the power to hurt more than the people around them.
And…not voting in the face of a Trump candidacy, or engaging in the high-chair-banging ‘protest vote,’ are evil acts as well. In some ways worse.
I’ve been listening to Stein voters rationalizing. This is in California so they didn’t actually help the Big Cheetoh into office directly. But the smugness, the invincible ignorance and credulity, the unhinged spite, are not that far from Trumpism.
Yesterday, I heard one say that they thought ‘some good’ would come of all this. Yeah, just like 2000, or for that matter Reagan’s first term. An essay on Moyers’ blog had the courage to consider how likely a second Trump term might be. With full control of all three branches in Republican hands (gee, thanks again non-voters) and a midterm to eliminate any remaining ‘enemies,’ its a terrible possibility.
Unless he gets tired and wants to try some other game.
See Ophelia’s latest post.
The problem is, when he gets tired, there are plenty of others just as bad (though not as blatantly obvious about it…in other words, more housebroken) waiting to step in. Several pundits were saying they thought Pence was basically playing this campaign to plan for a run himself in 2020. Cruz is definitely willing to step in and take advantage of a new Republican century, and there are Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, and a myriad of others in the basket of deplorables ready to rob the working class to pay the rich.