It’s time to really look at the state of this nation the way a clinical psychologist would look at a patient in extreme mental and emotional distress.
The rift that now so clearly comprises the collective American psyche has been thoroughly exposed in the volcanic expression of cognitive dissonance: a plurality of people who strongly identify as having traditional American values have elected a leader who has built his triumph on the trampling of traditional American values. Even in our celebrated entertainment culture (apart from, say, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation), has there ever been a film, TV show, pop song—whatever—in which the precepts of equality, tolerance, charity and civility are portrayed as impediments to freedom? Instead, we have all commonly referred to Judeo-Christian Values as guiding principles in how civilians living in a modern society coexist.
From the very start of his Quixotic campaign (though Sancho Panza would have been deported, of course), Trump has only embodied the “Mr. Potter”s and “Darth Vader”s of the traditional American narrative. Sure, he was wealthy (a standard American goal) but he was also incurious and arrogant and notoriously thin-skinned, not to mention regularly demeaning towards women, minorities, or anyone critical of his self-proclaimed (and to a great extent unproved) assets.
And yet, his victory was made possible by the tapping of the traditionally offensive and even criminal attitudes which had been relegated to the darkest fringes but, abetted by the blanketing dissemination afforded by social media, found their way to all levels of society and government.
It might be worth noting that The Enlightenment comprised about 200 years. The rest of the time, civilization was all brutality and plagues. History reflects many attempts at redress of the wrongs committed by countries led by men with attitudes similar to the president-elect. Maybe it’s just basic to human character to go low rather than aim high; equality, compassion, charity, humility have always been difficult to engender let alone fully embrace as governing principles.
The most important thing the Trump candidacy has achieved is the unmasking of the closeted loathing for self and others which had been festering inside a marginalized but seething demographic since Reconstruction. It can no longer be denied that at the core of the American psyche lay the very thing which bred Trump and got him elected. It had been preserved in secrecy by those who continued the aims of the Confederacy; it had been stoking the embers of Jim Crow since the Civil Rights Act was implemented; it found new life in the framing of America’s global presence as the target of foreign terrorism and as brewer of the homegrown kind. It’s been there the whole time, muted, its movements restricted, but always there, in the dark, waiting for an opportunity.
So perhaps we can look to this next challenge as a positive development in the restoration of America’s mental health. Recovery begins with the task of humbly confronting one’s demons.
To do that, however, requires that we who do try to embody values of the enlightenment, who value science and decry superstition, who embrace diversity rather than fear it, not to run or fold, but to practice what we preach: love, compassion, charity, equality. For all.
The election of Donald Trump has allowed this nation’s inner demons to be seen. And now the nation can—and must—be treated.