Trump's Reactionary America

(c) by Mark Dempsey

"We’re in the early stages of an attempt to divide America fueled by a backlash against the Civil Rights Movement, marriage equality, immigration, the negative impacts of trade deals, and the technological revolution. Trump is trying to normalize a heavy-handed response by the federal government. Right now, people are sympathetic, but their tolerance will eventually run out. If crack downs become too harsh or the unrest lasts too long, he may pay a political price. It’s probably going to be a long, hot summer." - from Thomas Mills

 The term "backlash" is appropriate. The "No Kings" protests were an inevitable reaction to Trump's attempts to deport the "illegals," which was a reaction to recent economic circumstances, tainted with the bigotry forbidden by civil rights laws, and those laws were a reaction to the history of slavery, a reaction to...well, this causal chain can go as far back as Adam and Eve. Whether backlash sticks or provokes another reaction is anyone's guess.

If you want to find out where an abusive person got their ability to react, it's always good to look at the history. A child abuser was often an abused child of other abused children, whose parents were abusive, whose grandparents were abusive, etc.

The only way out of this doom loop is what Christianity calls "forgiveness." Resenting Trump voters as bigoted morons--as many of my Democratic friends do--is just another reaction in the chain of reactions.

At least in my world, Trump voters were reacting (legitimately) to the fecklessness of the Obama administration, which not only committed war crimes, it gave Wall Street a non-penalty for what arguably amounts to the largest theft in human history. I'm certainly not the first to say it, but Trump voters were angry, not stupid. Admittedly, an angry response is not always a sensible one, but given Obama's corruption, what other choice did they have?