Perhaps we are sacred beings, anointed with reason and intelligence by an omnipotent Creator who frees us to pursue our individual wills and find our way back to Him.
Or, perhaps we are merely another flavor of organism in the vast array of life we see around us; a random accumulation of cells and tissue with just enough self-awareness to generate the kind of unconstrained fear that sows the seeds of our own destruction.
But, whether we humans are here on Earth in order to fulfill a divine destiny or whether we are simply a free-floating array of mechanized molecules looking around at each other and wondering what the hell we are supposed to be doing with ourselves -- all of us carry around with us these things called "beliefs" and we attach ourselves to these "beliefs" with great passion. It is these "beliefs" which lead us to our greatest achievements as a species and also to our most violent downfalls.
These "beliefs" -- these systems of thought relating to how we perceive this earthly environment, these ideas about how those around us should rightly function and behave -- these "truths" either draw us together in love and cooperation or separate us in the most calamitous of ways.
And because we are so inextricably attached to these systems of belief, he who can control them can control human civilization.
A man like Donald Trump is a mercenary and a parasite. He preys on our desire to attach ourselves to a set of belief systems. He feeds into the beliefs which strengthen his grip on power and with sheer and utter recklessness, he systematically and relentlessly attacks the beliefs — and the believers — which threaten him.
A man like Trump has no real beliefs, no true philosophy of what the rightful role of individuals, societies, or governments should be. But, he does have one uniquely uncanny ability. He recognizes how deeply people attach themselves to their belief systems and he can, with complete and total disregard for the well-being of others, exploit that intrinsically human condition.
Trump’s power derives from his preternatural ability to construct his own world of "truths" and to relentlessly hammer them into vulnerable, uncritical minds needing to attach themselves to a system of beliefs.
He feeds like a carrion vulture upon our human need to align ourselves with others who share our beliefs.
He unreservedly divides and conquers us in shallow, spasmodic pursuit of whatever his own miserly goals are at any given moment.
By profiteering off of our collective desire to discern truth, and then shamelessly promoting any narrative that benefits him, Trump has, thus far, succeeded in exploiting and strengthening the political and cultural divides that predated his entry into politics.
He has now concocted and commandeered a world of alternative truths which he incautiously brandishes like loaded guns about our heads. Through threats, intimidation and sheer malignant force of will, he has gotten many equally amoral mouthpieces to fall in lockstep with him. It is not despite, but precisely because of, this unerring ability to appropriate our belief systems for his personal benefit that he has gained and maintained power.
The litmus test that defines which tribe an individual belongs to --- the one unique qualifier for identifying with either liberalism or conservatism, right or left, Republicans or Democrats....is now belief: belief in either the inherent evil or the sublime beneficence of Donald Trump. It is the perception we hold of the character of this one man which now determines where we belong in this exceedingly divided society.
We, who call ourselves Americans, have learned to our dismay, that when there is no such thing as objective facts or provable truth, it is shockingly easy to usurp the minds of human beings. When a wanton, parasitic individual like Donald Trump succeeds in controlling what should be regarded as "truth" for enough people in the right places, there is truly no limitation on his ability to amass power.
Our Founding Fathers realized this.
Other societies in the past have realized this.
Now it is our turn to see whether or not one pernicious man can successfully create, control, and disseminate truth for an entire civilization for an unlimited amount of time.
As we careen towards an uncertain, yet defining, 2018, we who believe in the evil of Donald Trump brace ourselves for an unprecedented struggle against those who sustain and support him.
Can our combined resistance overcome this one man’s brittle, self-indulgent version of reality?
Or will 2018 be the year where all our prior belief systems fail and we reconcile ourselves to living in a different sort of nation --- a strange, distorted world without truth that reflects, with tragic accuracy, the fractured mind of Donald Trump?