By taking Trump seriously — whether it’s because he’s the president or because we don’t want to look petty ourselves — we make him appear credible. And he’s not. We shouldn’t treat him like he is.
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Trump’s idea of unity is that everyone else should conform to his wishes, and if they don’t want to, he’ll force them to do so. But more than half the nation doesn’t agree with this concept, and that’s what has brought us to where we are today: An unyielding chief executive, backed by a minority of followers who hold political power on the one hand, and the rest of us, who are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.
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There’s never been any question that Donald Trump wants division, and now it’s equally clear that he wants violence, because it plays right into his hands. The minute people become so frustrated, so infuriated, that they lash out against his policies with any semblance of force, he can strike them down, say, “I told you so!” and impose martial law. That’s where we’re heading.
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Yes, the majority of people in this country still identify as Christians, but that figure is dropping, and what does being a Christian even mean? It’s hard to say. Are we to accept the contemplative, inwardly focused view, as represented in the Beatitudes and Jesus’ “peaceful” sayings, or the outwardly focused template that puts “wheat-and-chaff” divisions and “compelling them to come in” front and center?
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Somehow the American talent for innovation that gave us the airplane and the personal computer, that invented the telephone and put a man on the moon, has failed spectacularly in its most basic test: improving the way we treat our fellow human beings. Especially those we perceive as different.
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Trump’s unwillingness to accept blame for anything is a problem because, if you don’t admit you’ve made mistakes, you’ll never learn from them. And if the mistakes are big enough, that comes with a cost — as in one of Trump’s failed casinos, the cost gets higher every time you “double down.”
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