by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I recently went to my 25th high school reunion and it was an interesting experience, to say the least. Now, let me start by saying that I everyone met was gracious and kind and I don’t have anything against them. But there definitely was big pink invisible GOP elephant in the room, as it were.
You see, I went to a private military academy and of the approximately 30% of the electorate who will travel to the gates of hell with Donald Trump, all of them I went to high school with. I am ardently ant-Trump and they know this, so this lead to an interesting dynamic.
Unfortunately, there was a huge amount of unnecessary tension in the air. Since Nov. 9th, I have for months raged on Facebook at how completely surreal Trump’s election is and I have lost probably a dozen Facebook friends because of this. I am not ashamed of this, I am old enough to own something like this. If I make controversial remarks in the public, I’m not going to run from them.
But this personal anecdote is an example of how divisive Trump is and how there probably is no going back. It’s not like I’m going to get any of the people I alienated from all my ranting back into my life even if something dramatic happens to Trump politically. And that’s just sad.
We have entered a scary new period in American history where the basic building blocks of our society are being ripped apart by Donald J. Trump. There are no easy answers. My fear, of course, is we’ll look back on this period of time as the obvious moment when something we’ve taken for granted for over a hundred years — the unity of the American Republic — started to be in danger.
Do I think there will be another Civil War?
I doubt it for various reasons. But I do think the United States is no longer a Republic in the traditional sense. We’re now some sort of weird quasi-Empire went an elected emperor. I think this will be proven correct when Trump is re-elected.
Maybe I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I just don’t see Trump going anywhere and the damage he does to the collective America psyche may be irreparable. It is difficult for me to understand who it is that anyone would vote for someone like Trump. Period. At all. There is so much wrong with Trump that it makes me angry just thinking about how people in my life could possible vote for the man.
But I know this is what he wants. He wants to divide us. Yet I don’t know any easy answers as to fix the situation. I don’t know how to bridge the gap. It just doesn’t make any sense. I can’t understand how otherwise normal people would act like the classic “Good German” and vote for someone as horrid as Donald Trump.
And yet they did.
What the center-Left has to do is figure out a way to address the economic fears of Trump voters in a way that strips it of the racism and bigotry that Trump tapped into.
I’d just hope that at my 30 year high school reunion we will all be able to look back at Trump and laugh — and not cry.
