Another Trump Article Even I Can’t Get Through
Has it seriously only been three years? That can’t be right.
Are we stuck in some kind of political time warp? This is legit the longest presidency in the history of presidencies… and we’re still in the first term.
Political fatigue is alive and well, affecting almost 70% of Americans. And quite frankly, I don’t know how Trump isn’t exhausted with himself. It has been a long and grueling three years.
Remember the Mueller investigation? Yea. That was this decade.
But we’re on the cusp, guys. We’ve made it. 2020 is in sight. I can taste it.
Let’s Face It — Plan A Didn’t Work Out
I’m sorry. I know it’s a tough pill to swallow. We gave it our best shot.
Trump was a terrible candidate, he’s made a shit president, and he’s managed to blur the lines of our constitutional understanding on more than one occasion. But, we didn’t get him removed. So let’s move on.
I know this impeachment inquiry has your attention. It’s justified and long overdue, but we can’t direct our energy towards this right now.
We have candidates to evaluate and this is the very point in time, my friends, that is extremely important for us.
The Impact We Can Make
If we want to have any real influence on who becomes president, we need to focus on this very moment in time when the candidates are looking to build their followings.
At this stage, we get to decide who advances to the next level and we need to know these candidates inside and out.
We are no longer competing with party loyalty. This is a high-level mob cult.
This is the Seventh Day Adventist Branch Davidians meets John Gotti meets Whitey Bulger.
We need to work differently this campaign cycle and stop getting swept up by the Trump shit storm.
His followers, er supporters, don’t seem to be interested in his policies, his progress, or even his presentation any longer. It’s like they’re supporting him in defiance of the left.
We need to focus on the candidate/s who can effectively compete with Trump and shake out the center-right and center-left candidates.
How Can We Work Differently?
That’s a great question and I don’t have a great answer for it yet.
In 2016 I really don’t know what went wrong; I don’t know if it was strong hate for Clinton or if Trump had some inspiring message that spoke to people? I don’t know. It’s all a blur right now anyway.
Neither candidates’ message really spoke to me in 2016, but I was afraid of what a Trump presidency would look like… obviously with good reason. So I didn’t vote for him.
What I do know, is that we have to really pay attention to what’s important to most people. And we need to support candidates based on a scale of how many things we can agree with them on, not how strongly we agree with one point.
This is the time to choose a candidate based on who can do the most good for the most people. This requires thinking outside of the box of what you deem as “good.”
Thinking Outside the Box
People, and by people I mean most liberals, regard themselves with overall good and fairness and inclusivity.
But we also alienate certain people and certain groups because our “accept all” is not as all-accepting as you might think.
I don’t mean tolerating intolerance. I don’t mean allowing people to hate, in any capacity.
I mean, some people aren’t fully on-board with single-payer healthcare. We need to listen to those people. Maybe they have suggestions to make our current healthcare system better. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel but there was a time when wheels were made of wood and now they’re made of rubber and metal… things can be improved upon without being completely changed.
On that same token, there are reasons a lot of countries have adopted single-payer systems and that needs to be meaningfully explored.
Some people cannot get behind gun control laws. I am as pro-gun control as they come. I’d vote to ban guns if it was on the ballot. #Sorrynotsorry.
The point is, we need to be softer about our pursuit of happiness for everyone. We need to be inclusive and not roll full-steam ahead over people who are trying to acclimate at a different pace. Or, who may have a different perspective and different solution that could be just as helpful.
Some People are a Waste of Time
This leads me to a very important point — some people are a waste of time.
While I believe we need to move forward in an adaptable and inclusive way, we also need to focus our energy in smart and useful ways.
Some people are ignorant and uninterested in change. Great. They’ll be steamrolled by change, eventually. Progress always wins. Even if you move backward for a while, you’ll always move forward again because that’s just the way the current flows, clockwise.
Some people though are capable of change, acceptance, understanding, and even explaining their beliefs in a way that might lend to evolving your own mindset. Some people have good ideas that are not conventional.
Let’s focus on those people.
With the volatility of the 2016 election and the inevitable dumpster fire that followed, we’ve turned our noses up at even those who we could be aligned with, if we put in enough effort to understand each other. We should try to identify where the bridges can be made. Then we should try to build bridges.
All it takes is one talking point — one point of agreement, one meme, one engaging FB comment — to spread a new concept. If you can boil an idea down to a catchy tweet, you’re golden. You’re contributing to change.
Let’s bring people together that way.
Bring Back Healthy Debates
We need to not focus on Trump. We need to focus on what we want, what others want, what’s good for our country and our world.
Since 2016 it seems as though people are either angry or ignoring issues. There is no middle ground, every debate becomes personal. And while many debate topics are personal, we have previously been able to change each other’s minds and implement policies that serve the greatest amount of people. We can’t do that anymore.
Real issues are affecting this country and we can’t successfully resolve any of them by shutting our minds down because we’ve discovered someone is a ‘Trump supporter’… or they’re not.
We’ve all started acting as petty as Trump, his childish demeanor has seriously affected us.
A rotten apple will spoil the bag. So it’s time for some self-reflection and an exercise in endurance…
It Won’t Be Easy
I know you know this. Turning back the clocks to when we were able to debate for longer than 95 seconds at a time without destroying relationships forever will be hard.
Having discussions with people who are being passive-aggressive, dismissive, or flagrant with their thoughts and opinions will feel impossible some times. But we have to do it.
Somebody needs to extend an olive branch and we need to get everyone back on the same platform. We can keep our bipartisan politics if we must, but for the love of all things democratic we have to get rid of the cult of personality that permeates pro-Trump and anti-Trump alike.
Foresight is 2020
All that energy that followed the 2016 election, the energy that’s now been extinguished by 24-hour news cycles, sensationalized scams, and long, drawn-out, less-than-useless investigations, needs to be ramped back up. It must now carry us through November 2020.
We can’t be going at this like offended snowflakes who just want Trump out of office. I mean I do want to stomp my feet, block my ears, and yell at his supporters, but we need a better strategy than that.
I know we’re exhausted and dizzy with confusion. I know a lot is happening in Washington and it’s hard to focus.
But keep your eye on stability. Keep your eye on the next opportunity to remove Trump. Keep your eye on Plan B.
If you thought the last three years were long lookout for the next 13 months because we’re about to enter the longest phase of our lives.
Good luck.
