WaPo has published semi-interviews with two pro-Biden and one pro-Trump voters who have, perhaps, outsize influence on the electorate. I liked their viewpoints. First up, pro-Trump Pastor Frank Amedia:
On camera, Amedia, who hosts “Potus Shield,” a YouTube series devoted to praise of the president, predicts an apocalyptic future if Trump loses, a time of secular riots and biblical upheaval. But off camera, the preacher seems more anguished than angry, more searching than seething.
“Both sides agree that the soul of the nation is at stake,” he said in an interview. “I know that other nations faltered by becoming divisive, amoral, totally based on personal ambitions and agendas. We seem to be there.”
Amedia believes Trump was chosen by God to lead the United States, but he has no illusion that the president is an admirable character. He laments the “sad political discourse in the country that has developed into a win-at-almost-any-cost mentality.”
“How did we end up with Joe Biden and Donald Trump?” he said. “We’re supposed to have certain ideals and I don’t think either of them musters up to it.”
Amedia’s recognition of Trump’s disastrous flaws is encouraging. Too often, we get complete blindness from the religious right towards the man-child for which they advocate. And he recognizes, at least partially, the importance of the automatic renewal of America – that is, the new generations:
The pastor, 68, wants to believe that the nation’s energetic and idealistic young people will pull the country back from a disturbing rejection of truth, science and faith.
Although he ignores the fact that young people are less and less inclined to be religious – based, I believe, on their observation of the actions of people such as Pastor Amedia.
From the two pro-Biden interviewees, I’ll pick psychiatrist Thomas Singer. He was searching for a picture for the cover of his new book …
He stumbled on the famous image at the end of the original 1968 version of “Planet of the Apes,” the harrowing discovery of the ruined Statue of Liberty sunken into a beach — a haunting symbol of a country that lost its ideals and collapsed.
“Sometimes art anticipates reality,” Singer said. “This was an apocalyptic sense that democracy as we know it will crumble.”
But in the time between choosing that image and publishing his book, Singer came to a different conclusion about the United States in the time of Trump.
The psychiatrist, 78, recalls the anguish that the divided country went through in 1968, “this sense that everything was coming apart.” Yet as a young man, he said, he and his peers never thought their future was doomed.
Now, however, he hears young people lament that they have no path forward, that the Earth is in fatal decline, that new technology threatens the future of work.
Although many of the forces contributing to that despair were at work before Trump came along, Singer views the president as an engine of mistrust.
“He has contributed enormously to this sense that we can’t agree on what’s real anymore,” he said. “He thrives on chaos. He is profoundly rebellious — and that goes to the absolute core of American identity.”
Once again, we go to the new generations, and it invigorates me that they recognize these problems. Indeed, the current sclerotic political warfare, along with the critical environmental problems, and their reactions to them do not mean that they’ll become happy little warriors in the Republican or Democratic parties.
It means they will look at these problem with fresh eyes and ask how they can solve them without becoming these problems. We see this in the decline of those who see them as GOP or GOP-inclined, and the growth of the independents. While the Democrats’ share of the electorate has grown since Trump took office, I will not be surprised when it shrinks (nor when old Trump cultists cry with glee).
Since 2000 – or even back to Gingrich, if you like – the activities of dominant portions of society have acted as an illustration to the younger generations of what’s going wrong, and what’s going right, regardless of how the older generations, invested as they are in current power structures, feel about them.
I expect that in the next few years, we’ll see the discrediting of numerous institutions and intellectual concepts by the younger generations, whether it’s through formal debate, or by simply walking away from them. I have a few candidates, which may betray my own outmoded biases:
Victory at all costs: Seen in the dishonest activities of Fox News over the decades, as well as the marketing efforts of the GOP, the recognition that there are limits will become relevant once again.
Critical Race Theory: Only recently popular, it’s apparently been around for a while. It has recently capitalized on White guilt to gain recruits, but its illiberal nature and inevitably authoritarian practices will, I hope, persuade Americans who are accustomed to raucous debate to abandon it.
The GOP: At least in its current incarnation.
God Is With Us!: To my agnostic eye, God is famously mute on the subject of just who he favors, although I think the US Army had it right when they observed that God fights on the side with the biggest artillery. While there will always be those Americans who need to believe that God is personally backing them, the immoral activities of the emblematic White Evangelical community, already losing membership, should, for the observing youth, bring the entire concept into question, between the White Evangelicals’ backing of a profoundly immoral Trump, and their disbelief in climate change.
I could go on with subjects such as reevaluating socialism, UBI and its tension with the belief that people are inherently lazy, etc, but I hope to that the real point here is this:
The young generation, rather than accepting the “wisdom” of the older generations, should re-evaluate without the social power structure investments which weigh on the judgments of the older generations.
And they will.
Trump is serving as a tool to bring all these mistakes to the surface of our ocean of ideas, where they can be viewed, evaluated, and removed. Trump may win the next election, but after that, even if the term limits are removed, he’ll be done. His supporters will die of old age, and the youth will go the other way. Whether he’s removed by voting, or by force, or by old age, he’ll be gone.
And so will the rungs of the ladder he climbed, composed of sycophancy, dishonesty, and greed.
