October 21st, 2024
It’s me. Hi. I’m the enemy within. It’s me.
It is really interesting to me how failing to address alienation in this country has exponentially produced more alienation. Allow me to explain?
One the reasons social and political experts have given for the rise of Donald Trump is the alienation so many people in the middle and lower classes feel towards the American government and systems in general. He saw the vulnerability and potential in those groups and has exploited them, again and again and again.
By doing so, he formed something more than a political party. He created a cult.
He picked up a line that existed between people and the systems, and he placed it between people and people.
It’s a tactic as old as humanity, and we as a society were ripe to fall for it. Half of us did.
I’ve written about gossip before, but I want to again highlight one of its purposes. We bring up what’s happening in the world with our family, friends and neighbors because we want to know what kind of people they are. We want to see if they react to situations like or unlike we do. We want to hear their thoughts, to try to understand how they think.
It is very difficult to wake up every day and see all the abhorrent things Donald Trump does, hear all the hateful, ignorant and sometimes nonsensical things Donald Trump says, feel the effect his bigotry and hate has on the world around us, witness the countless political, financial and legal battles he’s lost, and have to nod our heads when other people say he’s a good or even normal man.
It alienates us.
From each other.
He’s been saying for weeks now that he plans to use the military against our own people, the folks he calls “the enemy within.” This is anybody who disagrees with him. Who dissent. People like me.
Remember that he used the same people who distrust the government to take control of it.
In his rallies, he regularly calls us a failing country. He says that our home has never been in worse shape.
Well, I disagree. I dissent. I think America is still a place of kindness and strength and ingenuity and, most of all, despite everything, a place of hope.
And this point of view makes me an enemy.
Maybe this will be one of my last posts. (Are you crossing your fingers?) Maybe I’ll get arrested for this occasion of free speech in two weeks’ time.
But the good news for you, if you feel alienated from this essay? You won’t ever have to hear from me again.
Vote.
The Den 