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Enlightening Donald

Howell Hurst 2020 Presidential Election, Climate & Environment, Defining Trump, People, People Politics, Presidential Election, Trump

FROM MY CORNER

Several people have written me lately that they are pessimistic anything can be done to bring Mr. Trump’s thinking into that of mainstream America. Some couch their gloomy vision in terms of whether “we,” the public, can actually “take him down.” Destroy him, if you will.

It is not an issue of “taking him down,” or destroying him. It is an issue of “taking him Up,” of “Enlightening” him. Because Mr. Trump is neither an emotionally healthy nor an intellectually insightful man.

He does not appear to know history. He is inarticulate in English. He never reaches out. Rather, he always punches. When he gets beyond a 140-character Tweet his attempts at communication implode chaotically into essentially meaninglessness.

The many voices rising against his views are coming from a immensely broad spectrum of American life. His own Republican party members are increasingly criticizing him. World leaders condemn his thinking.

Our military leaders directly refute him. Major business leaders abandon him. His steadfast followers and supporters appear to be rightist-leaning religious leaders, fanatic Fox fans, and the 35% of disaffected Americans, who voted for him.

It strikes me that the tide of public American opinion has clearly turned against him and his view of the world, of our country, of us. Assuming I may be correct, I hope that Americans act with restraint.

As we realize, which I believe we will, that we jointly possess the combined power to neutralize his toxic message, it will greatly enhance our own legitimacy if we strive not just to “take him down,” but in that process to hope to Enlighten him.

Something in Mr. Trump’s past has made him what he is. Every result has a cause. Something caused him to become the result who he has become. Therefore, It should be the intent of all who want him to become irrelevant to have our collective eye on an over-riding higher goal.

We should be bent on wanting him to find somewhere within himself the capacity to reflect upon himself. That by inner inspection he could join the American mainstream. Of course, it is unlikely he will drop to a full cross-legged lotus position and start meditating twice a day.

But, that might not be a bad idea. And if that is too extreme a spiritual strain on him, maybe he could just go climb a tall mountain somewhere and sit on it and gaze at the sky for a couple of years. Or watch a creek flow for a while.

I think the mountaintop and the creek might just do the job.

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One comment on “Enlightening Donald

  1. Donald Trump is an old and ignorant man who suffers from the personality disorder known as Narcissism. He will NOT change. He hasn’t the ability or the desire to change. Our democracy must try to survive his term of office.

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