Decent People of Good Will

If there is indeed a recorded history of these times, it could well point to 9/11 as the start of the decline of the American empire and the election of Donald Trump as the signal event in its ultimate and rapid downfall.

In some respects, 9/11 sowed the seeds of the Trump ascendancy, and in that sense alone it doubtless surpassed Bin Laden's most fervent wishes. The events of that fated day plunged America into endless, unwinnable war, and put the country into a frenzy of almost mindless initial patriotism. There arose the Department of Homeland Security with all the echoes of “fatherland” in its very name. 

And the wars continued even after the people found they had been lied to about their causes. The shiny coffins continued to be quietly ferried to that remote Delaware hangar. National Guard units were on their third deployments. Nothing was changing. Was victory even a possibility as America's longest war plodded relentlessly on?

America, it must be said, reacted to the stunned aftermath of 9/11 and the Bush charade around it by the truly historic election and re-election of Barack Obama. Yet the war went on. Now there were killer drones. And while the Obamas were a popular presidential family, the Congress of the United States of America was loudly and deeply mistrusted by the people, who routinely gave them failing marks. 

Into the Obama vacuum came Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The movies were long over and Ronald Reagan with them. Reality TV set the table for Trump and the internet finished the job. He knew instinctively where a certain large part of America lives and he went there and did what he conditioned them to want him to do and he stirred up a sufficient and frightening following that he and his Russian enablers were installed in the White House, however surprised and unprepared.

Trump's presidency has been truly terrifying beyond even what the most pessimistic pundits predicted. He has put America on the path to becoming a failed state. And in plain, criminal sight.

But if a true and surviving history of these times is indeed written it will be because the decent people of good will in America have spoken in the only way that they truly can: with their single votes, one by one, voice by voice. 

These decent people of good will put the future of America before the hate-ridden politics that they see on a daily basis from the highest levels of our government, led by a president glorying in his villainy. 

There is the so-called Trump base who are a given, unswayable, who must be sadly written off. But yet there are among those who voted for Trump many decent people of good will as there are among the people who chose not to vote. It is these people who have seen the horrors of the Trump presidency and not reacted with the fervent approval of the base, but whose innate goodness and decency has shown them that, for whatever reasons, they were mistaken in their support of a man who cares nothing for the country he was chosen to lead. 

One must believe that there are enough decent people of good will to truly matter in America and that they will matter.

And that there will be a history.