Maybe This is a Breaking Point
Maybe this is a breaking point.
Yes, there’s a certain zealous base that will always stand by Trump, no matter who he shoots on Fifth Avenue. But, inexplicable though it may seem, there are decent people who voted for Trump and still haven’t abandoned him. There are good people who made a mistake. Some simply haven’t been paying attention. I think we should make it easier for them to come clean and join the resistance.
Many people just don’t follow politics. They tune in around elections, and then tune back out. They’re not following every little development. Their approval of Trump didn’t waver when he dismantled the State Department, because they didn’t know he dismantled the State Department, and they may not really know what the State Department is. Okay. They can learn that. Let’s try to forgive them. Let’s try to help them.
Apparently, Trump’s shameful conduct in the wake of Charlottesville has made an impression. To us, it seems absurd that anyone could be surprised by Trump’s cruelty and overt racism. But let’s get past our incredulity on that point, enough to cheerfully welcome all new recruits to the cause of kindness, compassion, and equality.
Neo-Nazis, waving Nazi flags, committed murder on American streets, and Donald Trump defended the Nazis. People have noticed. People whose “wait and see” attitude has lasted this long are now sick of waiting and have seen enough. The truth is too obvious to ignore, and too painful to live with: Donald Trump is a Nazi sympathizer and enabler. He is not just a racist, but a symbol of racism, and a hero to racists. This can no longer be reasonably refuted. It can no longer be dismissed as vitriol or hyperbole. It’s the simple, obvious, heartbreaking truth.
So if some of his supporters are changing their minds, opening their hearts, and joining the right side of history, I can find some benefit of doubt for them. Being late to the party is much better than not showing up at all, especially when the party is civil society itself.
It keeps happening, since Charlottesville: “My brother called me in tears and apologized for voting for Trump,” goes one representative tweet which flew across my screen yesterday. One of Trump’s rare celebrity defenders revoked his defense: “Remember all those times I defended [Trump] and believed he was not actually racist?” tweeted Clay Aiken. “Well… I am a fucking dumbass. I’m sorry.” (Lightly edited for non-Twitter clarity.) Many conservative pundits are now saying enough is enough, and distancing themselves from Trump and other white supremacists. Shepard Smith reported that Fox News (Fox News!) tried to get a Republican to come on and defend Trump’s Charlottesville remarks — and couldn’t find anyone willing to do it.
So maybe it’s time to carefully, lovingly reach out to the specific people in our lives who contributed to this catastrophe, offer an olive branch, grant that we all make mistakes, and find common ground. We may never walk more fertile soil for reconciliation. Opposition to Nazis and the KKK should not be a difficult thing to agree on. If you’re against the Nazis, you’re on our side.
Maybe we have to swallow our outrage a little, at times, to provide a framework of forgiveness, calm, and non-judgment. I’m not talking about Trump and his cronies, who deserve judgment; nor am I suggesting forgiveness and non-judgment as an approach to neo-Nazis. I’m talking about the people we know: our conservative uncles, our next-door neighbors with Trump bumper stickers.
I know how bad the numbers can be: Half of Republicans polled would be willing to postpone the 2020 election if Trump wanted to — and other terrifying statistics. Yes, a lot of people are apparently capable of saying that, when filling out a survey, and that’s disturbing. But let them look you in the eye and say it. Let them sit face-to-face with someone they love, and declare indifference to democracy and fealty to an autocratic racist. Some of them will break our hearts all over again, but some of them won’t.
My eyes always tear up at the very end of Manhattan, when Mariel Hemingway says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world: “You have to have a little faith in people.” I think that’s true. You just have to, sometimes, because what else is there?
