Maybe This Is Who We Are

A couple of weeks ago, CNN’s Harry Enten declared that the widespread interest and bipartisan fury over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files had evaporated. This was according to polls and Google search trends that quantified the impact of (some) of the manosphere and right-wing influencer industrial complex being brought to heel, and everybody else being nudged to pay attention to one of the many acts of chaos from the last month or so. You could also come to that conclusion by watching who is and isn’t talking about Epstein at this point. Trump/Epstein will be a forever talking point among hyper-political people on the left, but it feels like we’re in the death spiral of the scandal as a crossover story.

In addition to reporting on those discouraging trends, Enten also praised Trump for his political instincts in evading yet another potential scandal. That kind of appraisal might make you twitch if you think about the nature of the sexually predaceous and pedophilic accusations against former Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein and potential future Trump pardon recipient Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as Trump’s association with them. 

It’s also praise lacking nuance. Did Trump engineer all of this apathy, hopelessness, and blind rage, or did he simply identify a fracture of the human spirit and push on it until it broke? It’s still unclear: is Donald Trump an evil genius with incredible political instincts or a loud and lucky idiot who regularly gets pulled into a wave of information overload to narrowly escape political consequences?

The answer to that question has far-reaching implications as well when assessing the deeper impact of Trumpism on our sanity, our souls, and what happens to our politics at the end of his 2nd term (whenever that happens). Will someone else take the baton and re-insert it in-between our bike spokes? Is the next Trump going to be a product of skill or fortune, and is that person guaranteed to spring up, or are we going to find a way back to normal (if ever there was such a thing)? 

If the Biden years demonstrated one thing, it’s that the Trumpification of the US political system certainly can outlast Trump’s time in the White House. Cruelty, revenge, and tribalism as drivers for policy aren’t things that are going to go out of style. While I would bet most people are tired of such things, I don’t think they’re so tired that they want their team to lose. Even if that means they need to slow walk away from their own moral center. Winningness is above Godliness and goodliness. 

Once upon a time, Donald Trump proudly said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Like you, I have no idea what is or isn’t in the Epstein Files, but if Trump’s name is all over them, as some have speculated, and people really have moved on from caring about that, then it’s further confirmation of his boast and our collective complicity by callousness. Though many of us don’t want it and can’t face it, the fact is, this is who we are now. We’re not better than this.