Dipping My Toe Back In

You may have noticed that these blogs have become somewhat less frequent of late.  That is partly due to a resolution on my part to stop engaging in the relentless cycle of outrage that has become our political milieu.  It's just not constructive.  I owe this in part to my wife, who gets very nervous when I talk to people or write about politics.  I do not agree that conflict or argument is a bad thing, but I appreciate Michele's elevated sensitivity to human emotional states and I think that, during the election and in the first few months of the Trump presidency, I did get a little too wound up about things. I needed to think a little more and talk a little less, in short, I just needed to take a deep breath.
I'm trying not to go back under water, so I'm going to just talk about something I think is important and constructive for all of us. I will try to express the equal disdain I feel for both sides of the aisle, because one thing I have become reasonably convinced about is that the whole system is pretty broken, it's not just Republicans, it's not just Democrats.  As tempting as it is to just make blanket pronouncements about the thieves and liars up the road, I would like to try and offer something constructive and maybe a little bit hopeful.
Thus, I'm going to dip my toe back in the water of politics, just for a minute.  I want to say something that I did not expect to be saying, but here it is: I do not want Donald J. Trump impeached, or otherwise removed from office.  I am not saying there is no cause, or that there is.  My opinion of Donald Trump, after watching for several months remains that he is an inveterate and possibly compulsive salesman.  I do not believe he is evil.  I will admit that some of his behavior is troubling, his loose attitude towards the truth ruffles my sense of trust in his decision making process. His authoritarian sensibilities seem like a threat to our democratic republic.  His constant appeal to our most isolationist and xenophobic demons is not to be shaken off, and I truly regret the fear that his rhetoric has fomented in our immigrant and minority communities. And perhaps most of all, I lament the way that his election has seemingly created strife in our nation.
The thing is though, he is a symptom, not the disease.  The strife was there before he ran.  Our anti-immigrant prejudice was there before he started talking about a wall.  Our fear of Muslim terrorists was there before he started talking about an immigration ban.  The sense, deeply felt by much of middle America, that they were being left out of the conversations and the decisions of "coastal elites," was there before he put on that red hat that said "Make America Great Again," and got people chanting, "Drain the Swamp."
Impeaching Trump will not cure that disease, in fact, it might make it worse.  What I read in the overheated, breathless panic of the neoliberal establishment is a sense that Trump is a Russian Stooge, or a budding Mussolini.  There may be evidence of that, but I think it is correlative, not causative.  Our enemies, whether we are talking about Russia or Al-Quaida are pleased with a Trump presidency, because he is exactly what they have always said we are: pompous, impetuous, decadent, fraudulent, imperious and imperialistic.  They point to what Trump winning this election says about America, and they say, "see, we told you the west is not all freedom and democracy, they hate you and fear you and they will bomb your cities if we give them an excuse." Trump is basically an incarnation of western decadence and arrogance, and Putin, ISIS, Kim Jong Un, or the Taliban will have no trouble pointing to that with glee.
But we need to own this reality, he represents who we are at this particular moment.  He mobilized enough people in the right places, and played on his opponents most glaring weaknesses.  He won the democratic contest as fairly and squarely as it is possible to win it.  He still has the support, if we believe the polls, of most of the people who voted for him, even though that number is woefully small as a portion of the general population, our own apathy and the flaws in our system allowed him to legitimately win the electoral college, it is not worth whining about now.
These voters were not swindled or gaslighted, they thoroughly expected Trump to be what he is and so the fact that he is proving to be just that does not change hearts or minds.  The narrative that the people who voted for Trump were somehow fooled is a fantasy of the neoliberal corporatocracy who basically had the political market cornered until Trump and Bernie Sanders showed up. After controlling the "center" of both Republican and Democratic parties since WWII, the rise of candidates that drew support from what they thought were the fringes seemed impossible.
Trump voters are not drowning in regret, they are waiting to see if he delivers on the promise of "Making America Great Again."  If he does, fine, if he doesn't, so what? They have no confidence that the system or their lives were going to improve under Hillary and the Democrats anyway (I can't say I blame them).
The thing is, I think the Donald has a clock ticking.  Very few of the people who voted for him are die hard supporters, they were desperate for something different, and he certainly is different.  If he does not deliver, and I mean really deliver, not just claim victory, they will not swallow the same pill twice (I hope). On the other hand, if we do squeeze an impeachment out, he will undoubtedly go out shouting that he was framed and that the liberal elites and the residents of the swamp were out to get him.  Some, maybe a lot, of Trumpland will buy that story, and the fabric of our nation, and trust in our institutions will continue to erode.
If Trump is, as I said, a symptom of a disease, it is a disease that I think our natural immune system needs to learn how to handle.  It's sort of like when doctors find a tumor, the knee jerk reaction is to want to just remove the tumor, but you need to be able to be sure that the tumor is contained, that its limits are discreet and that you get the whole thing.  If you don't, you have just created a metastatic time bomb.  If we focus too much on Trump and not on the conditions he represents, I fear we will get sicker and sicker.  If we endure and abide and see this sickness through to the end, maybe we will develop a better immune response for next time.
This is my bit of constructive advice: don't buy into the breathless panic, this disease does not have to be fatal to our republic.  Don't think that getting rid of Trump will make it better, in fact, stop looking to politicians to be your savior.  Encourage them to do their job and do not support them blindly because they have an R or a D after their name.  We the people are the lifeblood of this grand experiment we call democracy, our own involvement, awareness and convictions are the immune response to tyrants and crooks, we need to stop abdicating that function to the viruses of greed and selfishness, or to the cancer of corruption. The next time someone offers you a placebo in place of a real solution, learn to see it for what it is. Keep breathing America, the fever will break.