Trying to Understand

I am really trying to understand what is going on in this country.

The Right is in the White House. We are being led by people who hold white nationalist ideas. We are being told to be afraid of Muslims, to keep Mexican immigrants out of the country. We are being told that when the news media (which does have issues) reports a fact, that it is “fake news.” We have a commander-in-chief who is shameless in his lying and hypocrisy, and aides to this man who say that his power is not to be questioned.

It feels like we are slipping into a dark, cramped space. The “drained swamp” is filled with the very people this president criticized his opponent for having relationships with. Billionaires, all over the place, are going to make policy. They, who have never done much to help America’s underclass, are going to be the ones to “make America great again.”

People who support the administration say, “We suffered for eight years. Now it’s your turn.” What does that mean? I don’t recall ever hearing that kind of rhetoric before. I know people did not like the previous president, but for many of them, that hatred came not because of what he said, but because of who he was. When he was elected, people on the Right were heard to say, “We want him to fail;” “We want to make him a one-term president.”

This president is hated not because of the election results. He is hated because of what he has said, how he has insulted everyone, called people names, encouraged Russians to hack into American cyberspace. He has been crude and dishonest, has known it, and has not cared. He has drawn white supremacists, white nationalists to him, with love. He has embraced Vladimir Putin, a long-time enemy of America and a leader whom many has called a “thug,” saying he admires him because he is a strong leader.

Maybe it was the progressive agenda that was making its way into American life that has some people genuinely upset. Many Americans have been distressed at how the world has changed and is yet still changing. America will never be what it “was” in the eyes of those who have always had privilege. But this administration – and its followers – seem to be intend on trying to make the impossible, possible. They want the days back when sexism, racism, heterosexuality, and God knows what else, reigned, when the voices of the underclass were muted by policy and by practices.

Hate crimes are rising; little children in school are being permitted to spew hate language at other little children. Immigrants are frightened; Muslims are frightened; black people realize that the promise of “law and order” on the part of this president probably means really bad news for them. Jewish-Americans are frightened. David Duke says this president has opened the door for white supremacy to reign again.

Evangelical Christians are happy, though there seems to be not much of the God I know in what is going on.

The trouble is, the language of this administration and his crew keeps the angst going. It keeps people up at night. It is causing people to suffer from real depression.It feels like every single thing that has made America what it is is being attacked. Nothing feels safe anymore – not the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press.

And nobody on the Right is saying anything. Those who have claimed to be so patriotic and religious …are, for the most part, silent.

It is beyond comprehension why people who said they hated the presumed dishonesty of Hillary Clinton are not bothered by this president’s dishonesty. It is beyond comprehension why the Congress isn’t railing about the presumed relationship of Gen. Michael Flynn with the Russians, when they spent millions of taxpayer dollars for hearings on Benghazi. It is beyond comprehension why a man who welcomed leaks when they were helping him is now saying that leaks are illegal.

Nothing makes sense. You can see the pieces of the puzzle, but it’s like the pieces in front of you do not belong with the puzzle you’re trying to put together. It feels like this nation is headed into a maelstrom, and will be hurled downward to a place from which we will never emerge the same.

Many supporters of the new administration say what he is doing is making America safer. I think not. I think this administration is feeding an anger and frustration in many, many people who at this point feel caged in and trapped and who will fight ferociously to get out.

That is not good.

I am trying to understand what is going on. I do not know. But I do know that it feels very, very scary.

A candid observation…