To a remarkable degree, virtually every aspect of Donald Trump’s personality is being reflected and magnified in the policies and conduct of his administration. As a result, it can feel like the country is becoming a bizarro world facsimile of itself: a morally shriveled place where racism and cruelty are state-sanctioned, might makes right, incompetence reigns, expertise is mocked, and our democracy and the rule of law that sustains it is attacked on a daily basis.
The indisputable facts prove this. Trump, and now his administration, is:
It’s as if the worst features of humanity have been concentrated in a single individual, and that individual — who by a ghastly coincidence happens to be the most powerful person on Earth — has infected our country with those features. As a result, our country is now facing its gravest danger since the Civil War.
As that war was drawing to a close, Lincoln stated in his Second Inaugural Address that “it may seem strange” that anyone would support slavery. It may similarly seem strange that anyone would want to live in a country remade in Trump’s image. But as Lincoln went on to state in that Address, “let us judge not that we be not judged.” Instead, let us embrace the growing number of people (as shown in Trump’s declining poll numbers) who are deciding that living in such a country is not what they signed up for. And let us together fight for our very different vision of America.
Speyer is a lawyer and a volunteer for Lawyers Defending American Democracy.