American democracy is experiencing death by a thousand cuts. Executed by a reckless, vulgarian in the White House. Aided by a do-nothing republican congress and protected by a gullible minority. Trumps casual racism, crass materialism, relentless self-aggrandizement and pathological lying, speaks to just how lost the Republican party has become. By exploiting the racist fears, the economic insecurity and the political ignorance of a paranoid subgroup of voters, the modern conservative party is participating in one of man’s oldest exercises; a moral justification for individual selfishness.
The outcome is a fringe minority of voters, who are absorbed in narcissistic fear, judgement and intolerance. They argue with their reality and cling to an obsessive identification with race, gender, religion and nationalism because they feel like the world has left them behind. This emotionally volatile electorate has taken a detour that celebrates a deficiency of imagination, an illusion of knowledge and lack of intellectual curiosity. They believe that immigrants, women, gays, minorities and political correctness are threats that are compromising their way of life. The fact they finally have someone in the oval office, who looks like them, talks like them and thinks like them, reveals just how dangerous this situation has become.
Republican voters have willingly abandoned their empathy for the promise of protecting an illusion. In so doing, they have become detached from human suffering. Thus, the more obsessive and the more they identify with their inner delusions; the more muddled their awareness turns out to be and the more calcified their thinking becomes. Until truth can no longer recognize truth. The nation has a progressive history. It has the laws and resources on its side. The only thing it lacks is the heart and the humanity of the collective vote to insure social justice for all its citizens.
