It’s Bigger Than Trump
By: Brian Peterson
Tags: America, Social Justice, Democracy, Election 2020, Racism

It’s Bigger Than Trump

Why “battle for the soul of America” is not hyperbole.

A piece from the artist Titus Kaphar.

Donald J. Trump is not going to like this.

In a reality that he’s constructed, where everything is about him, his brand, his name (I would imagine the fact that there are other people named Trump bothers him), he is the savior, the story, the judge, and the king. We’ve always revolved around him (in his mind anyway), so being elected President clearly affirms all the things that he’s told himself for decades.

It’s his world.

To exemplify his prowess, he dropped phrases like “China plague,” “the suburbs will be gone,” and “radical left” in the first Presidential debate, as if these things were real, accurate, or helpful. He also — as an impeached President, the day after the New York Times broke his income tax story (which, for the many reasons it is disturbing, I find it fundamentally odd that he could arrive at the same round number, $750, two years in a row) — had the audacity to call someone else “crooked.” He lost the 2016 popular vote to this very same person, which, had the roles been reversed, would be a major point of contention for him that we would still be hearing about today. He also just a couple of weeks after making the news cycle stand still to watch him be helicoptered to Walter Reed Hospital for COVID-19 treatment refuses to tell us when he first tested positive for the virus, or be any more definitive about the need to wear masks. Instead, he’s packing people into non-socially distanced, mask-optional rallies.

This piece is not about him. This election and the future of America is not about him. It’s really about the people who would wait a half day to catch a glimpse of Trump at one of his events, and the many others who have a bit more sense to not attend but are still going to vote for a man who has little interest in being the President of the United States, and even less interest in what everyday Americans believe, experience, or need.

This is about how we once again have arrived at the point of our own undoing.

As noted by Elizabeth Dias in the New York Times this weekend, both the Trump and Biden campaigns are putting the idea of the “soul of America” in key messaging, but it’s not clear as to what each camp means, or what is at the core of America’s soul.

Here’s my take: This is the most divisive election of my lifetime. Perhaps my view is heavy on the Black-hand side — a point I will return to in a sec — and I didn’t see a Barack Obama White House as the downfall of (White) America. But I imagine for some folks, 2008 and 2012 were tough pills to swallow. Still, it doesn’t compare to today’s madness.

Amidst what were previously nonpartisan reminders to register and vote, I’m now hearing people literally pleading for the White House to get a makeover in January for the basic survival of democracy, America, and people. Which again raises the questions — how did we get here? And if this is where we are, how are there still living and breathing humans thinking that four more years of Trump is the way to go?

A recent Comedy Central piece covering a Trump rally in my hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (big shoutout to all of my friends and family who I did NOT see in the rally footage) offers six minutes of insight into how vast the racial and ideological divides are presently in the U.S. Maybe the most important moment comes just a half minute into the clip when, in his intro, Jordan Klepper says that we are “probably about a year away from losing a loved one in the inevitable civil war.”

You know when dark satire hits a little too close, and you don’t know whether to laugh or re-up your passport and write a Medium piece? (This is the Medium piece, btw).

It’s become clear to me over the election cycle sub-plot of America’s Next Great Pandemic that I have taken my Africana Studies and racial inequities training for granted. I’ve moved on to evaluating reparations strategies while other (White) folks haven’t even wrapped their heads around the notion that Black people didn’t actually enjoy slavery.

“Well, why’d they keep doing it?”

Really? That’s the conversation you want to have with me, having read nothing written by a Black person, on any topic, in your entire life?

This is why we must talk about the “soul of America.” Because for too long America has been lying to itself about who it really is and how it came to be. Too many people simply don’t know, and are now choosing to use their MAGA visors to stay blind to the human — and at times deeply tragic — stories that make America what it is. Then, when I enter the conversation with an informed perspective on race and racism, I’m cast aside as leftwing radical, or perhaps even a racist.

So, if I’m an un-American racist because I believe that critical race theory can help us grow, what do we call the woman who felt the need to accost Gisele Barreto Fetterman, wife of Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant Governor, during a recent grocery store run? At the tail end of the lengthy encounter, Mrs. Fetterman captures the woman on video calling her an “n-word,” after being told that she didn’t belong in the U.S. These kinds of attacks, at times with violence or the threat of it, are nothing new to America but made a significant comeback in the Trump era.

This is who we are. This is who we’ve always been. There are more than enough lynchings, false arrests, brutality cases, and hate crimes to paint the picture, clear as day. But the calculus can be puzzling; I mean, if you can’t say Black lives matter then how can all lives matter?

I started thinking about this piece a little over a week ago, on what shows up on my Google calendar now as both “Columbus Day” and “Indigenous People’s Day.” I can hear the Columbus camp now at the next Trump rally — “it’s like they want to erase our history.”

Here’s where we insert the Gene Wilder / Willy Wonka “Please tell me more” meme.

America’s soul is counting on us to learn how to listen to each other in new ways, see through the veil, and fill the gaps of half truths and lies that were easier to tell. We’ve got to figure this thing out, break through the chasms we’ve let widen, undo the long list of damages, and carve out a collective path forward to something better. If we’re not ready for this truth telling, our future is an absolutely horrifying proposition. For all of us.