I continue to struggle to understand the presidency of Donald Trump. His flaws are pretty much all that he is - corruption, racism, bullying domination, lying, incompetence, ignorance, disloyalty - the list can be extended I am sure; these are just what comes off the top of my head.
But why is he our president? I want to look at it in a much broader scope than electoral constituencies and grievances.
I think that Trump is a face of America that has always been there, and one that the rest of the world has always known. It is one that blacks and browns and yellows and reds in America have always known. It is a racist and violent face that I, and I think a very large majority of Americans, had thought was behind us. I think we thought we were beyond the George Wallace, Jim Crowe South, white supremacist racist domination of the past. It is a shock to me to see it take over the county.
But, even deeper than the horrors of racism, I think there is something underneath it holding it up - a toxic masculinity, a macho chauvinism, that is dying out and is making a last gasp effort to reassert its tyranny. We are in the emergence of the Me Too movement that includes punishing sexual predators, but also includes the emergence of women as a political force. And more than that, I think we are in the process of awakening more feminine energies and turning away from the twisted masculine energies of brutal domination and violence.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote that the Muslim extremists were violently reacting against the what they saw as the corrupt influences of the West, and especially they thought the West had lost control of their women, and Islam was not about to lose control over their women.
I think the emergence of Trump and the Trumpsters is a kind of a parallel to that desperate urge - they want to assert their control over women - and even more so they want to assert their control over the feminine energies - to make sure that force and domination and bullying are in charge of America, not the more feminine energies of caring, compassion, negotiation, win-win solutions, and respect for people who are different.
I am hopeful that this remarkably toxic president and his domineering and racist followers, by marching proudly into the light, lets America see them clearly and know we can no longer turn away and pretend they aren't there.
I am hopeful that Trump and the Trumpsters are exposing themselves and the true Spirit and Soul of America is in the process of waking up and turning away from their toxic brew of bigotry, hate, and domination.
It is time for a renewed American spirit to emerge. Or so I hope.
