Understanding the Difference

The deeper we get into this politic season the more real the possibility that Donald Trump may emerge with the nomination of the Republican Party for the Presidency of the United States. Despite all of the pronouncements of the talking heads populating cable news and social media, the momentum that Mr. Trump is generating may bring to him enough primary delegates to require the Republican Party to name him their standard bearer for 2016. What is horrifying about what we are witnessing is not necessarily what is coming from Mr. Trump’s mouth on a daily basis. As base and despicable as it is he is not the first candidate for national office to espouse the type of nativist, anti-immigrant, bigoted, racist and phobic views we are beset by on a daily basis. What is new and particularly alarming is the amount of support that he is receiving in so many areas of the country that is propelling his candidacy forward. That so many of us are embracing Mr. Trump’s hatred of everything the nation has historically stood for raises anew the same question Abraham Lincoln raised in his address to that small gathering in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the one year anniversary of that critical battle.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure”. 

Though we are not engaged in a civil war of the type that tore the country apart in 1861 we are nevertheless in the throes of a battle for the heart of the nation and without question its future.

There are certainly many reasons for why we find ourselves where we are today. The litany and complexity of issues that have conspired over the past several decades to bring us to this point are too many to count or to analyze for the purpose of this essay. Nevertheless what is clear is that there are a lot of people who are afraid and tormented by fear of what the future holds. They have become so fearful and so desperate for a way out that they will follow anyone whose words give voice to the fears that rattle around in their heads. The louder the words are spoken the more believable they become and the more the gathering crowd screams its agreement as though witnessing an innocent being hung from a tree in the center of town.

 

So much of what we are witnessing can be explained by a few lines in “The American President”. Acknowledging that the populace was so thirsty for leadership that they would “crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand” to which the President, played by Michael Douglas, responds so eloquently: 

“We've had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand, because they're thirsty. They drink it because they don't know the difference.”) https://youtu.be/HKTqS4bXug

People are quite simply drinking the sand. So desperate are they for something that provides a lifeline that they are willingly drinking the sand never understanding that they will not find anything life sustaining in the act. The Republican base has been told and has come to believe that their lives have been ruined by a supposedly ineffectual government so much so that they are desperate for anything and anyone who offers them even a glimmer of hope for the future even if that future is completely antithetical to everything that the country stands for…intolerant of non-Christian religion, intolerant of non-white America, intolerant of personal freedom unless that freedom is secured by openly carrying high powered automatic weapons. That much of what they have been told is either not true or highly distorted has no place in the echo chamber in which they exist. Neither truth nor facts are either sought or accepted if they do not fit the narrative that has so dominated their lives for so long. The consequence of all this is that they willingly drink the sand never realizing that its consumption provides anything but nourishment for their souls and the soul of the nation.

I can only hope that whoever stands before the nation in November 2016 in search of the nation's vote is prepared to demonstrate clearly and unequivocally that there is a difference. That is a responsibility that we all share. Our future may depend upon it.