Here’s one I found on Facebook the other day. An acquaintance (Facebook does not define my friendships) has been an advocate of Donald Trump since the 2016 election. His posts are “acerbic”: he not only advocates for Donald Trump, but he constantly questions the intelligence of anyone who is in opposition.
So yesterday’s post fit right in. He tried to explain why Trump refuses to acknowledge the Biden victory.
Does anybody understand why Trump protested the election results for as long as possible?
Answer: To keep the rural Republicans from burning this Country to the ground.
If you doubt this hypothesis, it is because Trump is a whole-ton smarter then you are. You should be able to fully understand everything that Biden does.
His logic is the “inscrutable mind of God” argument. Since we are not gods, we cannot understand how God thinks. We “mere mortals” are unable to comprehend the Trumpian strategy. But since we voted for Biden, who, like us, is a mere mortal, we will have no problem following him.
For my “acquaintance” it is just another needle in the “progressive eye”. But it brings up a larger point. Maybe all the fear that Trump supporters will NEVER accept the legitimacy of the Biden Presidency is overblown. Maybe they really do “get it”, and they are just looking to “alternative” reasoning to justify the inevitable result.
Through the Night
If the “inscrutable mind of Trump” is what his supporters need to get “through the night” of their election defeat, that’s fine. As long as come January 20th, they will step up to be Americans, willing to work with their fellow Americans to solve our most pressing concerns. That is Joe Biden’s message.
And that isn’t really about Trump. It’s much more about McConnell, and Jim Jordan, and all of those Republicans who have determined that it is more important to defeat Democrats than it is to govern. It’s been going on since Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. The division has been going on so long, that when it started Trump was a Democrat (hate to admit that). So Trump, “inscrutable mind” or not, may be the ultimate and inevitable result of the political trend that started with the “Gingrich Revolution of ‘94”.
While the spoils of victory may have been worth it in terms of Supreme Court seats and State Legislatures controlled, it has left our nation unable to solve our most pressing issues: COVID, immigration and healthcare, climate change and racial justice. Instead of the “inscrutable mind” we need to choose another religious analogy, “the middle path”.
Our Bitter Pill
And for my fellow Democrats, that will be a bitter pill. We don’t want the “middle” anything. Democrats want our spoils, and we want them now. We don’t want to compromise, in fact we can’t see HOW to compromise on COVID, climate change or racial justice. There either IS a plan to combat COVID and climate change, or there’s not. There is either going to be racial justice so long neglected in this nation, or there’s not.
And we want payback, to be honest. Payback for what we see as the atrocities of the Trump Administration. We want a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to examine everything from Russia to Ukraine, child separation to emoluments. But to get those paybacks, we may have to give up opportunities to move forward. That is a choice every “Resistor” may need to make.
I want the “progressive agenda” as much as anyone. But I also realize that, at best, there will be a Senate evenly divided, with any one Senator, Democrat or Republican, able to swing the outcome. And we Democrats chose the “middle path” when we selected Joe Biden. Bernie had his chance, but was unable to deliver “the expanded majority” he so promised us all. So instead of demanding “it all”, we need to take a breath, let out the mysterious “OM”, and try to make things incrementally better.
Separate or Together
I took an early morning walk in my neighborhood this morning. The Trump signs are dwindling, as if the sure knowledge of his defeat is slowly being accepted by his supporters. They are gradually be replaced by blow-up Santa Clauses and Christmas gnomes. Maybe time is the answer, and our nation will grudgingly move to work together on something. If a COVID Thanksgiving apart didn’t teach us what we have to lose by being separate, a COVID Christmas certainly will.
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