Trump Archives - Fran Moreland Johns

KINDNESS MUST STAND UP TO CRUELTY. AND TO SELFISHNESS AND SELF-INTEREST

(In response to two reader requests – the second prompted by Shock & Awe executive orders and repercussions in the past few days – I’m posting this essay which appeared earlier on Medium and Substack. If you’re interested in political observations, specifically re acts of kindness and how to support them, you’re invited to visit The Optimistic Eye where those are posted on Fridays.)

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Monday afternoon, January 20, 2025:

I couldn’t watch the inauguration. I’ve watched inaugurations since they were first televised, and listened to them on radio before that. Presidents I admired and presidents I opposed; mostly I wished them well.

But seeing my country inaugurate a cruel, vulgar, self-obsessed, foul-mouthed, misogynistic, vindictive convicted felon and compulsive liar who values wealth and the trappings of wealth over decency and himself over his country — it was too difficult to watch in real-time. I’ll read about it in tomorrow’s newspapers.

This was not our shining hour.

So instead, I joined a few thousand of my friends to march in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr on the national holiday honoring him. We were in the San Francisco sunshine; other observances — prayer breakfasts, service projects, gatherings and marches — took place around the country where other thousands celebrated in cold and snow but with similar enthusiasm.

Dr. King was no saint, but he was a man of God. Our new president proclaims himself anointed by God. It felt far better, for this citizen, to be marching in celebration of the godly man than watching the self-congratulations of the man self-proclaimed to be saved by God so he could become leader of my country. I’m just not so sure about that.

Marchers came in all shapes and sizes (Author photo)

Here are the things we were marching for — in addition to the hope that justice will roll down:

Kindness. Compassion. A free press. Brotherhood. Morality. Decency. Respect. Equal protection under the law. Human rights.

And our endangered planet. It’s a little unnerving for the absolute sole authority to launch a nuclear war to be handed to a man known more for a vengeful temper than for thoughtfulness.

This is the only planet our grandchildren can inherit. No rational person could know of the floods and fires and weather events of the past year and still believe that climate change is a hoax. But the people with whom our new president surrounds himself are people who don’t believe in science and simply want to Drill Baby Drill. On his first day of shock & awe our president withdrew our country from the Paris Climate Accords. (And, inexplicably, the World Health Organization.)

Here are just a few of the organizations that will be working to preserve and protect all of the above: The American Civil Liberties Union. The Project on Government Oversight. The Center for Reproductive Rights. Ploughshares. Climate One. Take your pick, or pick another. We can all support organizations doing the work.

We can all be kind.

In the cold wind before starting the march (Author photo)

“DARKNESS CANNOT DRIVE OUT DARKNESS: ONLY LIGHT CAN DO THAT. HATE CANNOT DRIVE OUT HATE: ONLY LOVE CAN DO THAT.” — MLKJr.

SURELY AMERICA, AND AMERICANS, ARE MORE THAN ONE PRESIDENTIAL VOTE

Photo by Anatol Rurac on Unsplash

“That’s not who we are!”

It may have been the most repeated phrase of political speeches — particularly among Democratic candidates — from the moment Donald Trump was officially named the standard bearer of the Republican party last summer.

The phrase morphed, after the recent election, into a new and perhaps applicable form: “This is who we are.” I heard it repeated, on November 6, in anger and through tears.

But perhaps it’s a little early to declare our national identity. Perhaps we’re still, as we have happily been for centuries, an amalgam of shapes, sizes, colors, opinions and origin stories. Even if a majority of us voted to install, as our leader, a man utterly abhorrent to the rest of us.

Does that mean — because he is a vulgar, misogynistic, narcissistic, adulterous felon incapable of compassion or other human virtues — that we are also defined in those terms? That this is, indeed, Who We Are?

I think not.

Whichever way you voted, you’re still who you were on November 5, right? A regular human being full of contradictions and complexities. That holds true for the American citizenry, as far as I can tell. So the rush to define “us” in one grim-group term is, it seems to me, premature.

A recent article in the New York Times bore a headline proclaiming that the victory “tells us who we are.” I respectfully disagree.

Very few Americans voted for Donald Trump because of the characteristics listed above, despite the fact that they are universally known. Here are just a few of the fellow citizens who voted Republican, and why. Some were pictured in the Times story, others are pulled from other reports.

A woman in a hijab believed Trump’s promise that he “will end the Israel-Hamas war.”

A man from storm-damaged Western NC believed Trump will “take better care of citizens who don’t have homes.”

A man in New Orleans voted Republican for the first time in many years, he said, because he blamed the Democrats for letting inflation get out of hand. He acknowledged that he and his wife both held good jobs and were making more money that four years ago (the reporter asked,) but said he felt weighed down by the struggle to get ahead and believed Trump when he said he was “going to fix things.”

A Muslim man in Pennsylvania blamed Biden for enabling Netanyahu’s genocidal actions and thus had to vote for Trump.

A first-time voter in Arizona believed illegal immigrants were going to take away his job, and that Trump would “solve the immigration crisis.”

A woman in Ohio believes that “Ukraine is not our business,” and said Trump “will end that war.”

Another North Carolinian believes Trump will “protect us and keep us out of future wars.”

A woman in Georgia feels vaccine mandates violate personal freedoms.

(Interestingly, I have not yet read of one person who voted Republican out of a desire for a national abortion ban, something I greatly fear.)

Were any of these fellow citizens concerned about our next president’s vulgarity, utter immorality, felony convictions or common cruelties? Just asking such a question would have created hostility in a nanosecond.

But the fact that you and I perceive Donald Trump as unfit and would disagree with most (or all) of the above arguments does not make us ‘better,’ and certainly does not make us ‘right’ in the national eye. It only makes us part of the complicated mix of a democracy.

Democracy really does die in darkness, and it will take all of us to keep the lights on. You and me and every one of the above. Because all together, all of us in the mix — this is Who We Are.

There’s work to do.

Tag: Trump

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