The first essay ever posted on the DR detailed my estrangement from a trusted, father-figure colleague due to his devout subservience to Fox/AM and the President it created. In describing my alienation I drew a line in the sand as to the intolerance I was willing to generate when it came to accommodating MAGA-infused tropes and the nihilist narrative, refreshed on the hour by Fox/AM and Trump’s twitter feed, they constructed. As otherwise wonderful as my friend “Jim” was, as many great talks we had engaged in over the years, as much wisdom as he afforded me on everything from spirituality to parenting, his wholehearted embrace of MAGA became a bridge too far for me, and that was that.
He died recently. We had met for lunch just before the national Covid lockdown, a too rigid and awkward encounter his unsettling physical decline and the intractable division our world views assured setting a tone no degree of mutual good will could fully offset. I left sure it was the final time I would see him, distressed such certainty didn’t unnerve me more. Had “Jim” passed five years ago, I would have surely spoken at least some words at his send off. As things turned out, I didn’t attend, unsure his widow wanted me there, while confident a number of my former work colleagues did not.
Meanwhile, it appears I lost yet another friendship several days ago. He was by no means a MAGA adherent, just sick to death of stridency on the subject, which it seems he now deems as hurtful obsession he won’t tolerate; I am the “radical left” and don’t care about him or his wonderful family at all, only my hatred for many people he still counts as friends. The blow up came on Facebook, where else, and almost immediately after he renounced me I was saturated with regret and reached out to apologize with no caveats. I made clear I was out of line pushing the thread past the good-natured bounds he established, regretting I had not first chatted about personal inanities before pressing my point. I tried to reassure him I was anti-MAGA, not radical left, but either way, it wasn’t worth blowing up a decades-long association with one I held in such high esteem. There were no “buts” in my entreaty; the apology was unconditional. So far no response.
It is Breeder’s Cup time, the World Thoroughbred Championships. Before 2016, my routine was to head to Ocean City and hook up with several fellow horse fanatic buddies, who I went back decades with. A weekend of bonding around exactas and pick 4s was an annual highlight that came as sure as daylight savings time. Now I’m persona non grata. OC is Trump country, up and down Coastal Highway there is little love for “libs” publicly disdainful of the Trump train. Haven’t had so much as a word with any of them since 2018. If civil war is not upon us this Saturday, I’ll be betting alone from my living room. Whatever great calls I make on racing’s biggest day will go unnoticed.
The personal wreckage the Trump Presidency has inflicted is vast and lasting. Whatever direction this election takes, it’s doubtful what I’ve lost will be regained despite anyone’s best efforts. That this same story is told and retold coast to coast speaks to trauma that won’t dissipate any time soon. How much it’s weakened us is not yet quantifiable, but the effects will be felt in countless ways moving forward.
The national brand we took for granted – our effortless ability, facilitated by shared confidence in the peaceful exchange of governing power, to benignly cast politics as more sport than conflict, more discussion than argument – has been lost, probably for good. Of course, things can still get much worse. Regardless, we have learned these last four years that civic failures – the first one electing a President who made clear from the outset national unity was the last thing he cared about, the next permitting our collective response to pandemic to become fodder for his rabid political requirements – can produce existential calamity that takes on a life of its own. The world’s shining beacon of freedom is now a heaving mass of divisive dysfunction, savaged by a malignancy that, if not removed, will metastasize into a terminal condition and kill our democracy. Win or lose tonight, Trump will show us his worst, which is all he’s ever capable of.
Trump didn’t just happen in a vacuum; he is a hideously debilitating symptom, but not the root cause of the disease. MAGA has been bolstered by a number of developments. Profound economic dislocation ushered in by the Great Recession, a torrent of political dark money made possible by Citizens United, insidious blowback produced by our first black Presidency, the increasing, often overwhelming complexity of daily life, all amplified by an unhealthy preoccupation with social media platforms, has collaborated to create a perfect storm for projecting destructive grievance and resentment.
Yet and still the Rosetta Stone is as clearly identifiable now as it was in 2016. Fox/AM’s narrative reconfirms every hour, 24/7, the validity of an alternate universe based on lies and distortions, the Orwellian proposition that news equals preconceived bias and facts are the enemy of truth. Millions of its devout consumers, including our current POTUS, have developed the entirety of their world view without reading a word, instead investing hours absorbing the monologues of Limbaugh, Beck, Levin and Hannity. For near three decades more learned and thoughtful opinion makers insisted confronting Fox/AM slander was beneath their pay grade. Incredibly, even now, the breadth of its influence and perilous scope of its ever-present malevolence still escapes too many of them.
An old college friend of mine, a DC veteran and perhaps as sage about national policy as anyone, has always been a challenge to discuss political matters with, never wanting to place to much importance on a single perspective, always carving out space for other contributors, different explanations. These days his outlook is pessimistic and the reason is singular: the GOP is now beholden to a fantasy with no relationship to the reality it claims to explain. What good can be expected from such a situation? Millions certain in the veracity of easily discredited lies defines North Korea. That it now also explains the Republican Party means national unity requires the rest of us to accept lies geared to aggrandizing Trump, doing so only makes us one and the same as Kim’s pitiable subjects. Bitterly divided or totalitarian, pick your poison.
Whatever happens today, whoever wins this election, by however much, Fox/AM will be spinning it tomorrow with the same absurd dishonesty they spun it yesterday. That narrative is why we suffer today and why, even if Biden prevails and Trump is vanquished, national “healing” and bipartisanship will not be possible. Years ago, about when I was becoming fully cognizant of how damaging 24/7 white resentment on the AM dial could become, and the Fox News channel appeared to be ever more popular in doctors’ waiting rooms and on televisions in fitness centers, I asked my father his opinion. He shrugged and called it “the price you pay for freedom of speech.” On election night 2020, with our fate as a going democratic concern in the balance, I have no better answer than he did, but I am certain the price has gotten much higher. More importantly, it’s hard to see how we can keep paying it indefinitely without destroying what it’s meant to protect. BC