Donald Trump will return to power as the nation’s 47th president. He says he has never changed. And WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says that maybe America has never fundamentally changed, either.
The most revealing thing Donald Trump has ever said about himself was a quote he gave one of his biographers: “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same.”
We know what first-grade boys can be like. At their worst, they hate girls. Bully those who are weak or different. Tell outrageous lies. Take joy in destroying rather than creating.
This, I think, both describes and explains Donald Trump. He is the terrible boy who never grew up. And by rising to the highest office in our land — now for the second time — he has enabled tens of millions of Americans to embrace the terrible children inside themselves.
Many of them are white men, but lots are women and people of color. In the voting booth, they turned into destructive 8-year-old boys. They held our precious country in their hands, and they handed it to the man who desperately wants to break it.
Trump, like many of his followers, was born white in America — one of the luckiest breaks a human being will ever get. He grew up in a rich and powerful family. He has been a celebrity of one kind or another nearly his entire adult life. But like so many others, all he gleans from that good fortune is rage and resentment. And as a politician, he taps into the rage and resentment that fuels so many Americans. It is our purest flame. Sometimes it is built on real issues, such as the troubled economy for blue-collar workers. But often it burns with simple hate for others — women, minorities, immigrants — who dare lay claim to the full promise of America.
First-grade boys hate to share.
Joe Biden could’ve dropped out sooner. Kamala Harris could’ve run a bolder campaign. Professional Democrats will analyze this loss to death. But I’m not sure any of it would have mattered when so many people embrace a man who has already done so much damage to this country. It’s like watching a NASCAR race and rooting for the wrecks. Maybe people just crave the drama. Maybe they want others to hurt. Or maybe they don’t care what happens as long as they get what they feel is rightfully theirs.
I hate saying these things because some of those Trump voters are my family and friends. I know there is good inside them. But Trump has a unique ability to make people’s worst impulses feel justified. He stands on a stage, in a coat and tie, and trashes not just his opponents but America and democracy itself. If it’s OK for him, it must be OK for them.
I wrote in a commentary a few days back that I wasn’t sure whether Trump, and all he stands for, is a fever or a cancer. I know the answer now. Fevers don’t come back like this. Now the question is more about what we have to do to survive.
Mostly, in the short term, it is about being kind to the ones close to us, and kind to ourselves. It is about extending that kindness to the least among us, the ones most likely to suffer with the incoming tide. It is about remembering history, how all those monuments to all those powerful men are broken into rubble. It is about believing that one day grown people will run the country again, and we will once and for all rid ourselves of the man-child still stuck in first grade.
Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
