This election is about more than policies. More than personalities. And most certainly more than political affiliations.
Following decades of increasingly simmering tribal tensions, we’ve spent the past nearly 10 years enmeshed in a boiled-over national wrestling match over what amounts to the soul of our country.
Regardless of our political leanings and backgrounds, none of us quite knew how to process and digest Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, or president, or former shadow president, and now as yet another presidential candidate. Whether you voted for or against him in 2016 or even to some degree in 2020, it wasn’t totally clear what a vote for him truly represented beyond traditional party-line policies and stump speech promises.
But we have clarity now.
For those like me who despaired and campaigned publicly and privately against him, it’s likely always seemed somewhat obvious.
For those who continue to unabashedly and enthusiastically cheer and celebrate him openly, there’s realistically little point in you reading this any further.
But for my conservative friends who have held their nose and checked the box by his name, I assume that the pull of right-leaning policies on immigration, abortion, tax rates, the Clinton brand and supreme court justice picks was enough to justify the ends that resulted in Donald Trump’s norm-shattering means.
But now we know better.
And beyond the talking points from both campaigns about who has done and who will do what about the border, Roe v Wade, inflation, Gaza, election integrity and even the sanctity and preservation of the Constitution, another more foundational and elemental realization continues to overwhelm my thoughts about this election.
To me, it couldn’t be more apparent that this election is essentially a stark referendum for all of us as Americans where it’s incumbent upon each of us to answer one base-level question that transcends political parties and platforms:
Who do we think we are?
Assenting to Donald Trump’s worldview demands that we view ‘winning’ as a zero-sum proposition, machismo as the ultimate currency, personal belittling and namecalling as the only obvious rebuttal to ‘others’, bullying as the true definition of strength, revenge as a prerequisite to acceptability, blatant fabrication of ‘alternative truths’ as respectable calculus, and unchecked hubris as a necessary component of any half-decent leader.
It further requires that we consider humility as weakness, empathy as soft and pathetic, listening as childishly foolish, curiosity as laughably useless, willingness to admit imperfection as a tragic flaw and basic human decency as an expendable waste of effort.
And most importantly for someone seeking the ultimate position of leadership, it means that the prospect of holding oneself accountable for their own words and actions is an illusory mirage.
None of the above is related to how any of us may feel about hot-button issues or traditional policy debates. Instead, the compromises required of us as a society if we accept Donald Trump as our president are deeply fundamental – especially at this point when we can now be crystal clear about who he is, what drives him, how he views the world around him, and what he feels the world (and all of us) owes him.
I’m not naive. I know that my optimistic, generally kind-hearted approach to believing the world holds more people wishing to do good than inflict harm is a slight stretch. But I’m not prepared to abdicate the high ground of what America is and has always been as a country.
Are we as a society really prepared to go all in on being what approving Donald Trump will require us to become?
And it is that dramatic of a choice.
If we knowingly sign up for his vision and value system with full awareness of what another Donald Trump presidency represents for our democracy and, indeed, our very decency, we will be actively choosing the dismantling of the American experiment. The irony of the MAGA slogan is overwhelmingly bewildering in this regard: if we allow the cynicism and autocratic ego so celebrated by Donald Trump to win the day, we will be proactively deciding NOT to (phrasing very much intended here) keep America the greatest country the world has ever known.
This is no typical election-year game. It is not a cute water cooler discussion regarding two normal but differing candidates. It is no longer simply a sport worthy of a sassy debate amongst friends. America as we have always known and thought of it will not be able survive the ruthless brand of authoritarian fascism that electing Donald Trump will unleash.
So who are we as a country? Who do each of us think we really are? What does it really even mean to be American? When we look at Donald Trump at any given moment, do you truly see a mirror reflection of what you think the best version of America can be?
I really hope not.