Trump Gave Us A Box of Darkness
Are we brave enough to look inside?
Note: If you’d prefer to read this on Medium, it’s here…
Happy Friday…
Yesterday, I read 2 posts on Medium that left me staring into space, sipping coffee and woolgathering as thoughts knitted themselves together.
The first was a post about the landslide that didn’t happen.
It repeatedly asked, how could this happen? How could this happen? How could so many people vote for hate and racism?
I’m not sure they did, but that’s beside the point.
Some of them, sure. But not all of them.
More on that in a bit…
The second was a personal story by a heartbroken woman.
She lives in a tiny little town. The kind of little town that’s straight out of a storybook. Neighbors chatting over fences. Weeding gardens together and watching over each other. Just a tiny town that was a friendly place to live and maybe raise up kids.
Was. Past tense.
Until the political signs started going up. First they were standard campaign signs. Biden. Trump. Then the signs started getting bigger.
Then the hand lettered signs started appearing. They started getting ugly. Now her tiny town is filled with fear, hate and animosity.
One sign is threatening to anyone who voted Biden.
She’s frightened, yes. But mostly she’s sad.
She wants to know if it’s ever going to get better. Can they ever go back to what they were? What they had? That’s what she wants to know.
Or is it ruined forever?
I couldn’t bear to answer. Her pain haunts me more than a little.
You know what they say about opening Pandora’s box.
Prejudice isn’t partisan…
We love to think that, don’t we? Nazis were bad, Jews were victims. Democrats are woke, Republicans are hateful racists.
Except, it doesn’t really work that way. Not in real life.
We’re far more complicated than that.
After Viktor Frankl survived Auschwitz, he wrote about his experiences. He talked about the Jews he was terrified of, and Nazis that risked their own lives to smuggle food to the hungriest prisoners. Shoes to those who had none.
It wasn’t black and white. It was more of a sliding scale.
Some Nazis were unspeakably cruel, without a doubt. But some Jews were, too. Some fellow prisoners would rat each other out to the meanest guards, hoping to curry a little favor for themselves.
Whether a person was kind or cruel wasn’t determined by which “side” they were on. It was determined by who they were. As people.
The problem, he said, isn’t that we judge each other. We need to do that.
It’s how we judge each other that’s the problem.
We use irrelevant things, like race, creed, color, religion, gender, political affiliation and all sorts of things that don’t really mean anything. Not in the long run. Not in any way that really matters.
There are only two types of people, he said.
Those who have the desire and capacity to do evil.
And those who do not.
Donald Trump gave us a box of darkness…
Mary Oliver is a well known poet and a Pulitzer Prize winner. When her beloved partner of 40 years died, she wrote about a box of darkness. Said it took her years to discover it, too, was a gift.
I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking of the last four years. Of the ways he talks. The Twitter rants. The bleach nonsense and the way he handled the pandemic. Or, didn’t.
But that’s not what I mean.
I’m taking about the hate and malice we saw. In us.
The insults, slurs and name calling.
Ignorant. Stupid.
Libtard. Demoncrat.
Cuckservative.
Repugnican.
That happened on both sides. Not just one.
How is that any different than assuming all Germans were cruel? How is it any different than lumping people together by race, creed or color?
Donald Trump is a polarizing man. No question. But he didn’t turn anyone into anything they weren’t to begin with. He just shone a magnifying glass on it.
He made it okay for everyone to show who they really were all along.
Donald Trump gave us a box of darkness.
Are we brave enough to look inside?
In my sleep, I dreamed this poem.
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness. It took
me years to understand
that this too, was a gift.
—Mary Oliver
What I wrote this week…
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Have a great weekend!
xo,
Linda
Since the 2016 election, I've been saying that electing Trump was akin to setting a fire in the forest to clear out the deadwood and let new things grow. I think it's functioning that way. It's been revealing. For years we complained about corrupt aspects of government and society but, deep down, we didn't believe it. We needed this magnifying glass on the leaf pile to see the ugly truth of what our country has become. The trick will be to fill the vacuum that will occur whenTrump leaves with positively. We don't start that by gloating, we start that by reaching out. I encourage everyone to make random acts of kindness a priority. The fault, as Shakespeare said, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. We all need to focus on loving our enemies and on being better people. That's a pretty good starting point.
What surprised me the most wasn't the lack of a landslide, it was how surprised and disappointed other people were. The reason he was elected in the first place is still there. We might have managed to find enough support to change the leader but the moral core of the country remains divided. I feel very sad for the woman in the small town. It will take empathy to heal these rifts- empathy that might not be available to some. Thanks for your thoughts. I always read your posts.